workoutwednesday

Good for a run on the treadmill…

152 bpm 3: Moving Forward, Using All My Breath

The Chain – Fleetwood Mac I Melt With You – Modern English Roadkill – Concussion Ensemble Who Are You – The Who Rags – The Waterboys June – Unrest Waka – Camper Van Beethoven The Saints Are Coming – The Skids Helter Skelter (live) – U2 Bang Bang Rock and Roll – Art Brut Grandelinquent – Klark Kent (cooldown) I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain – Tim Buckley

This one keeps up the energy pretty nicely, I think.

It took me a long time to feel comfortable about loving Fleetwood Mac, and “The Chain” was one of the songs that helped me get over the hump. Rumours, though one of the greatest pure-pop records ever, really brings the creep on some tracks. I love the tension in the build-up to the coda; I almost wish it went on longer—the release seems a little rushed.

“Melt With You” never gets old, does it? Ever since its release, it’s had a little radio revival every couple of years. Curious little song.

You know, I’ve loved The Waterboys for years, and viewing them through the filters of their shifting influences has brought me to a lot of great bands. And until just this moment, I hadn’t considered that for a while there, they were trying to be The Teardrop Explodes.

I got “June” from Fluxblog. I somehow managed to get through the 80s and 90s without ever listening to many of the seminal American indie bands (see also: Superchunk). I like this one, though I start getting tired at about this point in the mix and this throws me off because it slows down as it goes on. I’m sympathetic: I used to play with a drummer like that. he’s always start too fast and then run out of steam. It was a bitch when we were playing “Wipeout,’ I’ll tell you that: the first drum solo would be dynamite, but the third would be pretty sad.

(The Skids track has a bit of the same problem, to be honest.)

Klark Kent was a side project, an outlet for Stewart Copeland’s songwriting during his Police years. What’s funny is that the same riffs keep showing up, even today, in his soundtrack work. He’s spun quite a career out of what is really a very limited palette of musical ideas. He makes up for it in sheer energy, I think: and energy goes a long way, especially to a purpose like this.

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A forty-minute run, a messy freeform mix. Pure in form, wayward in intention.

152 bpm 2: Back In The Fight Always Forever Now – The Passengers 200 Ans d’Hypocrisie – Les Negresses Vertes Who Is “In,” Who Is “Out” – Mick Harvey Back On The Chain Gang – The Pretenders No More Heroes – The Stranglers Open My Eyes – The Nazz Teardrop – Massive Attack with Liz Fraser Formaldehyde (Last Words Of A Lottery Loser) – Johnny Boy Lace Virginia – An Emotional Fish Transmission – Joy Division (cooldown) The Queue (edit) – Winter Equinox

Notes—brief this time, cos that’s how I’m feelin’ it:

I always though “Always Forever Now” sounded like a great movie. Too bad it’s not real; oh, Brian Eno, you scamp!

I used to be in a band that did a version of “No More Heroes.” This comes as no surprise to anybody who’s ever met me: you can’t listen to the radio for five minutes without me saying, “I used to be in a band that did this!”

The Nazz, of course, were an early Todd Rundgren outfit—the finest British Invasion band to emerge from Philadelphia. Watch your step during the guitar solo: there’s a series of wicked (and impeccably executed) time changes that might throw you. Just keep going; it all ends up on the one again.

“Teardrop” is better known these days as the theme to House. I don’t watch House, myself. I’ve seen it once or twice, and watching it with a medical professional beside you on the couch is an interesting thing. One of D’s maxims is, “When you hear hoofbeats, don’t look for zebras”—because, naturally, 99.99% of the time it’s going to be horses.

There’s a Sufi proverb that says much the same thing: “If he tells you a dog has run off with your ear, do you chase after the dog, or first look for your ear?” On House, though, it’s All Zebras, All The Time, and the dogs run in packs with ears dangling from their jaws.

In this context, “Teardrop” is in half-time—that is (to get technical), while for most of the songs in this mix the running cadence plays out the four-four pulse, here your feet are tapping eighth-notes. I think it works here to break up the monotony and give you the perception of a breather (though your pace never actually slackens).

Two songs by An Emotional Fish in as many weeks? That’s damned odd.

Actually, I remember now how that happened. I reworked this mix a while ago: originally I had a different song in this slot—Jarvis Cocker’s remake of “I’ve Just Come To Tell You That I’m Going.” It’s another one in half-time, and in the end it was just too languid, came too soon after “Teardrop,” sapped all my energy.

And it was maybe too much Gainsbourg for one mix. The thought of using Gainsbourg’s songs for self-improvement and healthy living would no doubt have horrified him, and after a while these things just collapse under the weight of their own irony.