February 17, 2008

116: Soup Du Jour

I don't know why I haven't called a mix "Soup of the Day" before?

The Cover: A collage of snaps from our digital camera, including a view of New York City, me playing guitar at this very desk, our cat Max and his needlepoint doppleganger, and our infant friend Isaac.

The Tracks: Only six of the songs are from the 20th century:

  1. Oh Well- Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon (a cover of the Fleetwood Mac song)
  2. Smile (Mark Ronson Remix) - Lily Allen
  3. Pressure Drop - Keith Richards and Toots & The Maytals (free? on iTunes)
  4. Tenderness (Live at the Channel 1984) - I really like this modern soul song from General Public. Too much of the soul music of the Eighties has aged poorly, but this track still sounds good. I found this live recording on a cancer benefit record called LIVE! for LIFE, which we had in the library of my high school radio station, WBMT 88.3 FM. In those days, I had a negative bias against live recordings, but now I am totally into finding rare live records like this. I also like the idea that this was recorded in Boston, a mere 28 miles from where I was living my 12-year-old existence, playing air guitar along with "Footloose" and dreaming of seeing Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium.
  5. Union, Jack - Big Audio Dynamite (I only heard this song once before: when I was interning for Neal Robert at WFNX in 1993, he played this track, whose drum track sounds like a sample from "Honky Tonk Women". Fast forward 14 years, and I buy a used vinyl copy of Megatop Phoenix at a record shop in Red Bank, NJ, for $2, and here we are...)
  6. You Only Live Once - The Strokes (I think I found this song while listening to the Adult Alternative channel on my cable TV.)
  7. Hollywood - Collective Soul (I heard this shameless Cars style-ripoff on WXRV and I knew it would make it onto a mix someday.)
  8. If You're Into It - Flight of the Conchords
  9. The Way I Am - Ingrid Michaelson (I am only a little embarrassed when I include songs from iTunes commercials on my mixes.)
  10. Dark Horse - The title track from the George Harrison LP best known for George's rough, laryngitis-damaged vocals.
  11. Everywhere I Go - I really like the chorus of Shawn Mullins's almost-hit.
  12. Fair - This piano arrangement on this recording-- from Ben Folds's 1990 solo demo tape-- sounds like "Virtual Insanity", which never ceases to amuse me.
  13. Make It Easier - My high school radio station, WBMT 88.3 FM, was on the mailing list of only a few select record labels. Because we had nearly no budget for buying music, we ended up playing a lot of music from artists whose music we got for free. One of those labels who sent us free records was Epic, home of Living Coloür and Indigo Girls, along others. That's the long story of where I got to know Indigo Girls's music from the very beginning.
  14. Ride - The Vines
  15. Fell In Love with A Boy - Joss Stone
  16. Long Limbed Girl - Nick Lowe (from his latest album "At My Age")
  17. To Know Him Is To Love Him (Napster live session) - Amy Winehouse
  18. Someone To Love - Fountains of Wayne
  19. Yellow Ledbetter - A great Pearl Jam B-side from the Versus era. This song always reminds me of my old friend Meg (Goldstein) Chapman, who was the biggest PJ fan in the world back then.
  20. September Gurls - From The Bangles second LP, Different Light, which I got for a penny from the RCA record club.
  21. Wake Up - Rage Against The Machine (aka the closing credits song from The Matrix.)

115: Eye In The Sky

#115 and 116 were composed simultaneously. The Cover: My wife's new commute route takes her past this monstrosity on a hill every day- that's her woodsy pondside road cutting diagonally through this Microsoft Visual Earth photo.

This disc is very current-heavy: over half the tracks are from the last five years, and seven of them are from 2007:

  1. Tears Dry On Their Own - Amy Winehouse
  2. Winning Ways - The Vines (I found this song on Music Choice channel 414.)
  3. Hero Takes a Fall (Live in London 1986) - The Bangles
  4. Robots (Live in NYC 2007) - Flight of the Conchords
  5. LDN - Lily Allen
  6. Our Town - Marshall Crenshaw
  7. Traffic and Weather - Fountains of Wayne
  8. Don't You Evah - Spoon
  9. A Life Without You (Is No Life at All) - John C. Reilly (Reilly as Dewey Cox, singing a Roy Orbison-style torch song.)
  10. Eye In The Sky - Jonatha Brooke (an interesting cover song, discovered on iTunes while looking for songs for my "1982" mix. I actually met Ms. Brooke circa 1992, when her former folk duo The Story visited WERS-FM.)
  11. The Breakup Song - Greg Kihn (heard on the PA system before a New Pornographers concert.)
  12. Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens (My wife included this song on a mix. Possibly the saddest song of the year!)
  13. Uncle Walter - Ben Folds Five
  14. Seen The Doctor - Michael Penn
  15. All In My Head - Shawn Mullins
  16. Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
  17. Getting Better (Live 2002) - Paul McCartney (I only bought this song because I remember liking the newly-arranged ending when I saw this show at the Meadowlands with my friend Robert.)
  18. Happier (Live In Portland 2003) - Guster
  19. Are We Ourselves? - The Fixx
  20. Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen
  21. The Melee - Beastie Boys