Who Taught You How To Do That?

a response to Bill's MTC mixes*

listen here: http://analog87.muxtape.com/

this mix is a response to bill's excellent mtc muxtapes which have made me very happy during these past few weeks. i threw this mix together last night. i listened to it on my morning walk and came up with the following annotations as i listened and later mowed the lawn. it's brain dump time now.

i am tempted to remove the track and artist titles and replace them with the titles below, but right now that doesn't seem fun and i need to clean the basement. i request that you start the mix and minimize the window--save the "reveal" for later.

1. a response to... the beatles singing in german.

you and larry have this german vibe going on with your mixes, and I thought the early beatles tune in german was great touch, great touch indeed. i know that they learned to get a crowd going in germany. before you dropped this tune on us, i had made a mental note to put this song on a mix. this artist did 4 great solo records (and many more, but I especially like the first 4) after leaving a mega group that found its way on glenn's sweet 16 mix (which is one of my favorites so far). tony levin plays amazing bass on this track. i have always liked the german version of this particular song better than the english. no offense to the mother tongue, guys, but it's the perfect language to use when you are telling people they are no longer in the club (the message of this song), so to speak. the fantastic percussion at the end was used for the flying scenes in "birdy."

2. a response to... lou reed.

lots of bands and singers are doin' the lou reed thing, which is really great. this band doesn't sound especially like the velvets or lou's solo stuff, but the vibe is way there. i love the way the vocals are mixed on this track. owen is dancing around the house doing air guitar to this song right now. is it right to let a 6 year old listen to songs with the f-word in them? will cps come and take my child from me?

3. a response to... the carter family and old-time close harmony.

i tried to put a few 30s close harmony tracks here, but none of them felt right. this one from the 50s fit right in. this brother act specialized in what could be called "creepy christian murder music." i love this song. two voices, guitar and mando. that's all i need.

4. a response to... howlin' wolf.

speaking of that's all i need, here is a track from my favorite electic bluesman. it's a different side of the blues than you hear from howlin' wolf, but i sure love it. this is the opening track from one of my all-time favorite records, and the best electric blues album ever recorded in my opinion.

5. a response to... james bond and the beach boys.

this is kind of a weak connection, but the tune really works. this japanese duo is one of my favorites. their best known tune is probably "twiggy, twiggy, twiggy... james bond, james bond." i like hearing this song outside of their record. it's a really happy song; in fact, my favorite song by this band is called "happy end of the world."

6. a response to... tom waits.

there's a great phrase from shakespeare's coriolanus: "there is a world elsewhere." for me, that world is often between my ears when good pop tunes are playing. in this wonderful song, i can picture all my tunes living together in a hidden, underground universe. because of this song, marc ribot is there playing guitar, and vic feldman is there. lots of your tunes live down there, too. when this song comes on, julia says it's scary and wants it turned off (which, of course, makes owen beg to have it turned louder). i tried to explain to her that it wasn't really that scary: "it's just about lots of people living under the ground, doing things that we can't see up here." kathy shouts from around the corner: "sounds kind of scary to me." oh, well.

7. a response to... gypsy punk.

i remember dropping by your office a couple of years ago while you were listening to some good gypsy punk. this week my pals curtis and jamie were here in town and i was playing some random mix with this song on it. come to find out that jamie, who is a graphic artist in nyc, had just finished doing some gig posters for this band. this song is great... they do a fantastic cover of the meters' "look-ka-py-py" which i will need to put on a future mix; it's amazing, but it didn't fit here. there's a section of this track that reminds me of those really great black marching bands from southern colleges. don't much care for marching band music, otherwise. i think i've been to one college football game in my life. but i digress.

8. a response to... your mix method/tom tom club.

i love that this song will fit on a mix. this artist was a tom tom clubber (though he's not mentioned on their current web site, probably because this band is now for couples only), a modern lover, and of course, a talking head. this late 80s record is kind of an historical footnote. i saw him while he was touring for it (the heads were busy deciding how/when to call it quits). the production on this tune is so late 80s, which unfairly links it to a number of really bad songs that you have heard too many times. the lyric provides the title for this mix, "who taught you how to do that?" the violent femmes opened for this guy when i saw them, and if i am not mistaken, they had found jesus or something: their show was mostly gospel tunes and they had a black female singer with them. i have half a mind to google this and see what was going on with them during this period, but to be honest, i am not all that curious about it.

9. a response to... the hives.

i really liked that hives tune and it reminded me of this band which didn't go very far in the mid 90s, despite their excellent choice of influences. 10 years later and their wire/blondie thing would have hit fertile ground. a couple of the tracks on this record are really to poppy for me, but i like this one a whole lot. i also found a great live version played for bbc radio 1, but it didn't have the vibe i was going for here.

10. a response to... lou reed (again).

here's another band that did the vu thing for real (and if you're reading this larry, the vu rock. period. end of story. steve covers his ears and begins saying "blah, blah, blah--i'm not listening" over and over). this is a cover of a not-very-well-known vu track. i think it made it on the 2nd "lost velvets tapes" lps that came out in the late 80s. neither of these records were the true "lost tapes," but they had songs that weren't on previous records. the vu version had no lyrics, but i'm sure these are the real deal; the band recording this cover came closest to carrying the velvets' torch, imho. i saw their 2nd to last gig at St. Andrews a few years ago.

11. a response to... the 50s.

with the exception of your mixes, the 50s are way underrepresented in our mixes. [note to self: put "not fade away" on a future mix.] so i've tried help you shoulder the burden with #3 above and this one (the next tune counts, too, now that i think of it). i have my mother's original vinyl of this one, but it would have been too much effort to digitize it. plus i think it is shot to hell from me playing it over and over. one of the best songs from the 50s, imho.

12. a response to... our jazz lp exchange.

our musical fun started out, as you know, by swapping vinyl jazz records. i don't think i've been happier sharing music in the past several years then when i was able to hit you with the previously out-of-print and amazing charlie mingus lp "charles mingus presents charles mingus," which has the vocal version of "fables of faubus." i need to put that on the jazz primer compilation for aaron. man, now that i see that video (somebody did a nice job), aaron needs to play this song in class. that will be track #1 on his jazz primer.

in closing, you're a great musical buddy. thanks for the tunes. i hope these give you as much as your tunes have given me.

* in order to increase its hip factor, this blog entry was composed without capital letters. i had to go back and remove several... it's next to impossible for me to avoid them. i didn't even try not putting two spaces between sentences.