A few months back, I decided on a fun project: to begin to put out online mixtapes every two weeks or so. I decided to call give it a name I’ve had floating around in my head since I was probably in high school, “It Came From Outer Space (And IT Was Me).”

I created a Mixcloud account, built my first playlist, converted it into a single MP3 stream, and posted it to Facebook with some commentary. Every few weeks, wash, rinse, repeat. Here are links to the first three mixtapes, along with their accompanying commentary…I’ll post the rest of the mixtape links with commentary in two additional posts.

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IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (AND IT WAS ME) MIXTAPE #4 – LINK

A few notes on this mixtape:

• This PJ Harvey opener is just…I can’t love it enough.

• “September” can make any dark moment brighter.

• The NIN/50 Cent mashup is easily my favorite one I’ve ever heard.

• Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” video is a masterpiece; it’s early music video narrative storytelling at its absolute best. The director, Bernard Rose, also did the videos for “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (!!!), and “Red Red Wine” by UB40 (whatever), as well as directing the original horror movie Candyman.

• Team Dresch is an amazing Voltron of Pacific NW queer power. I bought their first album, Personal Best, on cassette at Cheap Thrills in New Brunswick, NJ (a record store I later worked at) and have a distinct memory of listening to it three times in a row on my Walkman as I made my way home to the collective house I lived in. It’s a perfect album, one of the few that comes to mind when I think of such things.

• The Melba is a band from Ann Arbor, MI. It features James Baluyut, later of both Versus and +/- (plus minus) alongside his brothers Ed and Richard. This is from a compilation my friends Brandon Stosuy and Mark Gutkowski put out in college. I hope to be able to cover this song with a band some day.

• The band Stump put out only one album, but it’s incredibly strange. It’s on the list of one of a handful of albums I say broke my brain – in a good way. This song, “Chaos,” yielded a name for a band I was in for a few years, Mutiny Mutiny. I came up with the name, which the other two folks kept after they kicked me out. I think it’s better than Clustercuss, a humorous name related to the movie The Fantastic Mr. Fox (which I still haven’t seen), which was their idea. Honestly, I’m more bitter about them keeping a song title I came up with, “I’ve Swallowed Alphabets,” that they used with other lyrics after I left.

• I’ve recently rediscovered Jets to Brazil’s Orange Rhyming Dictionary album. It’s really hitting me hard. Especially this one.

• Heathers is a twin sister-duo from Ireland. My band Tin Tree Factory played a few shows with them (Spokane, Tacoma) when they first toured the U.S. They had just graduated high school. That was probably about 10+ years ago, though, and I think they are still around.

P.S. Sending love to so many of my CVille people, upon hearing of the passing of Ryan Maguire. I didn’t know him well, but always enjoyed being around him, and loved his restless creativity. Love to all who are mourning, especially his partner Paige and his family.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (AND IT WAS ME) MIXTAPE #5 – LINK

A few notes on this mixtape:

· Hannah Blilie, the drummer of Shoplifting, later became the drummer for Gossip.

· “Don’t Dream It’s Over”was the first song I ever sang at a karaoke bar. The rest is history.

· Tiger Trap was a great band from my college days. My friend Tony and I were in a band called Grit at the time, and struck up a correspondence with them. When they played a show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, we went up to see them, and saw that Angela (one of the guitarists on whom I had a massive crush) had “Grit” written on her arm in marker. We introduced ourselves and hung out with them after the show. Rose Melberg, the other guitarist and main singer, went on to many other amazing projects.

· “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is one of my karaoke standards, usually with my buddy Andy if we’re both in the same place.

· I’ve been learning bass the last month or so. “Cutoff” has one of my favorite bass sounds ever. Sorry, it might be a musician nerd thing.

· The Shoe is a duo featuring the actor Jena Malone. They frequently perform improvisational sets in random outdoor places.·

Kate Bush was 18 when she wrote “Wuthering Heights.”

· Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” is better than any other cover, ever. It’s also another one of my karaoke songs, though it does usually bum everyone out.

And yes, I know Morrissey is a racist reactionary idiot, but I just can’t quit The Smiths.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (AND IT WAS ME) MIXTAPE #6 – LINK

A few notes on this mixtape:

• “El Matador” aka “Matador” is a really awesome political song about the oppression and political disappearances experienced in Argentina during the military dictatorship there in the mid-1970s to early 1980s. It also references one specific activist, Victor Jara, who was killed in Chile by Augusto Pinochet during that country’s dictatorship. Several activist street marching bands have played or continue to play it, including my last one – Movitas Marching Band.

• Seven years back, I played in a Roky Erikson tribute band called the Unlimited Horrors for the Halloween holiday season. We only played three shows, but it was one of the best experiences of my life. I bought us all miniflasks with a picture of Roky and the line, “In the night, I am real” from this song. We all still text each other every Halloween, usually other lyrics from this song. Maybe we can have a 10-year reunion in 2023, when bands can actually play shows again?

• “Cry” is a song (and video) I remember from 1980s MTV, which I grew up on, the same way earlier folks grew up listening to the radio. It’s both melodramatic/campy and beautiful at the same time.

• Another McGruff banger.

• Putting “Tame” on here to show how easy it is for the Pixies to write a song that’s better than “La La Love You.” I know that latter song is meant to be a jokey song, but I just don’t like it. “Tame,” on the other hand, is so much more interesting, even though Joey lead guitarist Joey Santiago is playing only one chord during the chorus.

• Marnie Stern is a guitar badass. She put out a bunch of solo albums, and now plays with the house band for Late Night with Seth Meyers.

• I love a lot of the songs on Radiohead’s album “In Rainbows,” but I distinctly remember the first time I heard the bridge in “Bodysnatchers”(about two minutes and seven seconds into the song), when everything opens up, and Thom Yorke sings, “Have the lights gone out for you? / Because the lights gone out for me.” It still gets me every time. It’s one of my favorite moments in recorded music.

• “Under Pressure” is another one of my karaoke standards. I sing both David Bowie and Freddie Mercury’s parts. There are two versions of this song, one where the ending has the line, “This is our last dance” twice, and another where it only happens once. I much prefer the emotional trajectory created by the first one; saying this one time doesn’t feel like enough.• Aye Nako makes me feel all my raw, broken places with this one.

• “The Charade” still hits hard six years after its release. Because it’s so beautiful and still so relevant.

• Listening to Anita Baker (and Sade, and Whitney Houston, and Dionne Warwick, and Kenny G) reminds me of my mom. I still enjoy all of these artists because of that (yes, even Kenny G – at least some of his early stuff).

• I’ve been watching Peaky Blinders, which has caused me to start listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds a lot. I love the glorious, delicate raggedness of his work, so precise, and yet so brutal at the same time. So human.

• I frequently think about getting a few lines from Helms Alee’s “Worth Your Wild” tattooed on my arm. Can’t say enough things about how much I love and miss seeing this band.

• “God Only Knows” is the best Beach Boys song ever. Don’t even fight me, you won’t win. Those ending vocal rounds are on my side.