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:
- Oh Well- Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon (a cover of the Fleetwood Mac song)
- Smile (Mark Ronson Remix) - Lily Allen
- Pressure Drop - Keith Richards and Toots & The Maytals (free? on iTunes)
- 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.
- 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...)
- You Only Live Once - The Strokes (I think I found this song while listening to the Adult Alternative channel on my cable TV.)
- Hollywood - Collective Soul (I heard this shameless Cars style-ripoff on WXRV and I knew it would make it onto a mix someday.)
- If You're Into It - Flight of the Conchords
- The Way I Am - Ingrid Michaelson (I am only a little embarrassed when I include songs from iTunes commercials on my mixes.)
- Dark Horse - The title track from the George Harrison LP best known for George's rough, laryngitis-damaged vocals.
- Everywhere I Go - I really like the chorus of Shawn Mullins's almost-hit.
- 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.
- 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.
- Ride - The Vines
- Fell In Love with A Boy - Joss Stone
- Long Limbed Girl - Nick Lowe (from his latest album "At My Age")
- To Know Him Is To Love Him (Napster live session) - Amy Winehouse
- Someone To Love - Fountains of Wayne
- 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.
- September Gurls - From The Bangles second LP, Different Light, which I got for a penny from the RCA record club.
- Wake Up - Rage Against The Machine (aka the closing credits song from The Matrix.)
