workoutwednesday

This is one where the songs all just happened to be around the same tempo and the idea just sort of coalesced. The “wild west” theme fades in and out, and as a listening experience it becomes more about the Idea of West: a code of honor, a landscape, a set of hardships; freedom, opulence, danger; Western Civilization (which might’ve been a better title for this mix, honestly). Campfire melodies and big trotting beats.

132 bpm 2: Wild Wild West This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us – Sparks Prairie Rose – Big Country Theme from Deadwood – David Schwartz Horseback – Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas North, South, East, and West – The Church Ring of Fire – Wall Of Voodoo Virginia Plain – Roxy Music Don’t Run Wild – The Del Fuegos All The Way To China – James Figurine with Erlend Øye Flame – Sebadoh (cooldown) Showdown At Big Sky – Robbie Robertson

But of course the listening experience is only part of it; this being a workout mix, it’s also about motion, which is how the not-particularly sun-baked but snake-hipped danceable Del Fuegos snuck in here. (Dan Zanes is now a children’s entertainer; he knows how to get ‘em moving.) Not so much talk, now. More motion.

(But it must be said: …the hell? Did the dude that uploaded that clip to YouTube just point a camcorder at his TV?)

Sparks: man, the camera loves that Hitler ‘tache, doesn’t it?

I’ve written about this cover of “Prairie Rose” before (it’s in the middle somewhere), and I’d rather not repeat myself here.

I know I’m getting old, because Kings Of Convenience is one of the few bands to come down the pike in the last five years that I’ve wholeheartedly dug, and they sound just like Simon and Garfunkel. This is The One With The Glasses, singing with one of those indie electronica kids who record under ten-fifteen different names for the sole purpose of confusing and alienating old bastards like me who might like to support them and their music, if we could only keep it all straight in our heads. Thanks for nothing, “James Figurine”—if that is your real name.

A little technical hoo-hah with “Flame”: the album version has a false ending, then fades back in again, before collapsing into sheets of noise. I overlaid the out-in (which is why there’s a moment that loops and repeats), then faded the whole shebang before the real ending.

Lastly: For a long time, I’ve thought that someone should remix and remaster Robbie Robertson’s first solo record. The songs cry out for a spacious, widescreen approach, but the record hasn’t aged well. All the guitar parts (and there are five or six going in the mix here) are crammed together, the backing vocals don’t blend—the whole thing generally sounds boxy and claustrophobic. I don’t think it’s Daniel Lanois’s fault—in his work with Bob Dylan and U2 he worked with similarly detailed multi-guitar arrangements (I’m thinking of “Cold Irons Bound” and “One,” respectively, as mixes of comparable complexity), but they were open; they breathed. This one, though, as good as it is, is still a letdown, because in my head it sounds so much better. The songs on Robbie Roberston are better, but I’d almost rather listen to Storyville, and avoid ear fatigue.

The remaster will never happen, though. Nobody’s marketing product to sad old fuckers like me anymore.

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This one’s good for the arc trainer, I find.

Of course, you realize this means war…

132 bpm 1: Taken To The Front of The Line

Had a Dream (Sleeping with the Enemy) (edit) – Roger Hodgson Life During Wartime – Talking Heads Hell’s Half-Acre – Robbie Robertson Street Fighting Man – The Rolling Stones Love Of Life – Swans House On Fire – Arkarna Cope – Gigolo Aunts Give The Po’ Man A Break – Fatboy Slim Children of the Revolution – T. Rex Dad’s Gonna Kill Me – Richard Thompson (cooldown) The True Wheel – Brian Eno

Notes:

I swear, I only have two Roger Hodgson mp3s—and this is the other one. That said, there’s a great joy that radiates off his music, solo and with Supertramp, even when the song is as grim as this one; the jaunty piano, the rubbery slides of the fretless, the high, pure vocals and the surprisingly scorching guitar work. If you can get past the ponderous intro and the frankly unhinged video, it’s a fantastic piece of power pop. (I edited about a minute 15 off the album track, shaving the intro down and excising the long bridge to approximate the radio/video mix.)

I first heard this Swans track on an ancient mixtape I got from my friend and sometime artistic collaborator Oscar Stern. I lost track of Oscar for a few years, and all trace of his excellent comic Wu Wei appears to have disappeared from the Web. However, I am amused to find him now fronting a band of his own. Rock on, Sweet William.

You know, say what you will about the Joel Schumacher Batman movies (go ahead; you wouldn’t be the first and it wouldn’t be the worst) but between them the two soundtrack albums had some pretty heavy hipster cred. Maybe not so much the U2 and the Seal, but honestly: PJ Harvey, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, REM, Soul Coughing, Underworld, the Pumpkins, Moloko, Massive Attack… and, uh, these guys.

Gigolo Aunts came out of Potsdam by way of Boston, and fell by the wayside when Nirvana broke. Neither particularly punk nor (Syd Barrett references notwithstanding), particularly psychedelic, this is just good old-fashioned Loud Guitar Pop; in the early 90s, The Kool Kidz thought it was “too pretty.”

Story of my life.

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