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 #7 – LINK
A few notes on this mixtape:
· The first song on this one is the opening song from the documentary series, “Wild Wild Country.” I was recently just reading up on the Rajneeshees again, and thought about this song. I tracked it down and have been listening to it A LOT. It’s gorgeous and heart-breaking at the same time. I’ve never really listened much to Damien Jurado, but this one has really got me.
· “Interstellar Love” features a great sample from The Alan Parsons Project, whose gloomy cartoony music videos I loved on MTV.
· “Some Weird Sin” is such a great band name. Unfortunately, there is a band with that name already, and – no shade – I doubt they are worthy of it. I feel like that happens a lot – great band names are adopted by okay bands.
· Vern Rumsey’s riff on “Corpse Pose” is just one of many amazingly agile and groovy bass lines ever. It’s part of what got me to pick up the bass a few months back, following his death.
· “Wild Geese” by Adhamh Roland is based on an essential Mary Oliver poem of the same name. It’s a beautiful adaptation.
· “There There” by Radiohead is the best song off of their 2003 album Hail to the Thief, which honestly, is their weakest work in my opinion after their debut, Pablo Honey. So many great lines (“We are accidents / Waiting, waiting to happen”), and the breakout into the ending bridge hits me every time.
· “A Little Respect” is another one of my karaoke songs.
· “Play the Game” is another one of the few songs I would like played at my funeral. I think it’s the superior version of the sentiment expressed in “All You Need is Love.”
· “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” by Radiohead also gets me every time. It puts me into this wonderfully sad trance.
· “ego slave” by doNormaal is just so good.
· Check out the video for “Dawn Chorus.” It’s a wonderful mini-film.
· And Shabazz Palaces are strange and transcendent.
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (AND IT WAS ME) MIXTAPE #8 – LINK
A few notes on this mixtape:
• I noted that the number “thousand” is referenced a few times in this mixtape. There is no significance, at least not conscious.
• “Margin Walker” is one of my favorite Fugazi songs, featuring a cool bass line by my bass teacher, Joe Lally. He talked to me about his original idea for it, which Ian suggested he tweak and play a little differently.
• Tomo Nakayama’s Melonday album is easily one of the best albums of the last 10 years, but definitely of last year. It was a go-to for me all year.
• “Campfire” has an interesting story. A band I was in called Tin Tree Factory played Phoenix, AZ, on a tour in 2008 (I believe), which this duo Uggamugga also played. We fell in love with this song, and ended up adopting it as a regular cover we would play.
• “Venus in Furs” is my favorite Velvet Underground song. ManDate worked on a cover version with me singing we had planned to unveil at what is currently our most recent show during Pride 2019. But I got cold feet, and I think we figured we needed to keep the set short. But the future is unwritten…
• “California Love” features one of my favorite rap beats ever. • The video for “I Want Your (Hands on Me)” features a solid rap section by MC Lyte.
• “Mummified” is my favorite song on the most recent album by Versus.
• Sw33t T00th was a dream pop/art rock band in Charlottesville, that included two incredibly talented folks I knew, Ryan Maguire, and Paige Naylor. I wanted to see them and kept missing them, but caught them at the last show they played the month my partner and I moved back from there to Seattle in August 2018. Tragically, Ryan passed away suddenly this past October of a heart attack while jogging. He was 36.
• “Commando” is my favorite Ramones song.
• “Don’t Answer Me” is a song I remember from the video – a narrative one in comics/cartoon style – from the early days of MTV. I have a soft spot in my heart for this song. It was sampled in the Avalanches’ song, “Interstellar Love,”which appeared on the last mixtape, and brought me back to the song.
• Sault dropped two amazing albums this past year, with this song, “Stop Dem,” just one of many bangers.
• Trophy Wife was/is a rad duo from Philly that I saw play once here in Seattle, and I became friends with Katy Otto, the drummer/co-singer. She’s a rad musician, activist, mom, and cultural dynamo, who runs Exotic Fever Records. Trophy Wife is an example of how just two folks with two instruments and voices can make something more exciting and interesting than some bands that have six, seven, eight people.
• This song by Bowie is simply an underrated classic by him, that is the equal of any of his 1970s work, in my opinion.
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (AND IT WAS ME) MIXTAPE #9 – LINK
A few notes on this mixtape:
• “My Adidas” is one of my favorite songs by Versus. It’s about the Heaven’s Gate cult, with the title a play off a Run-DMC song. (The Heaven’s Gaters were actually wearing Nikes, but why let details get in the way of such a good song and title idea.)
• “The Biz” is off an album of the same name that came out in the mid-1990s, when I was working part-time at a record store called Cheap Thrills in my college town of New Brunswick, NJ. It was one of many albums that came out during the two years or so I worked there that really have stayed with me (Bjork’s “Post,” for example). Funnily enough, I’ve never really listened to any other album by this band. John McIntire’s drumming on this album, though, has influenced my personal drumming style here and there. It’s a great, solid album.
• I was introduced to Shudder to Think at the beginning of my time in college, by a woman I had an intense crush on (nothing ever came of that). I distinctly remembering first hearing this album – Funeral at the Movies – in her dorm room, and not being sure what I thought about Craig Wedren’s idiosyncratic singing style. I’m still not sure, all these years later; it works for me on some of their songs and not on others. I also remember this woman telling me about this band from the Pacific NW named Nirvana, and about how they were about to release this album in a few weeks that was supposed to be amazing…
• I just learned about the artist Sophie following her recent accidental death. I’m really sorry to not have caught her work while it was being released, but am glad to have what we do.
• You just can’t f*ck with how good this Queen Latifah song is.
• I wouldn’t say I love Soundgarden, but the Soundgarden songs I love, I love – including the two songs featured on this mixtape. They easily have one of the best rhythm sections around, with Matt Cameron an absolutely incredible drummer.
• The album Temple by Thao and the Get Down Stay Down was one of the best albums released last year, in my experience.
• I became aware of the Au Pairs while reading a book about Riot Grrrl that focused a lot on the UK movement. This post-punk band should be much more prominent in our histories of post-punk, especially UK post-punk, as they are both a solid band, and also, I’d argue, an influential band. Several songs on their anthology Stepping Out remind me of the vibe of a band that would come towards the end of the 1980s, the Sugarcubes, from the singing to the sound/tone/texture of the instruments.
• 1987 was a pretty amazing year for music, with several essential albums released that year– U2’s The Joshua Tree, The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Sonic Youth’s Sister, Guns and Roses’ Appetite for Destruction, 10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe, Midnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust, and INXS’ Kick, among others. R.E.M.’s Document is just one of them. It was this year I really decided to start playing music, leading to me picking up the drumsticks the next year.
• I grew up in the NJ scene that birthed Lifetime, and remember matinee shows during my first days playing music that featured them. I didn’t like them; they felt way too earnest, too emo. Fast forward a few years, to when I’m in college, have become friendly with Ari (the singer), and both they and I have shifted. This is my favorite song from that period.
• Versus’ “Double Suicide” is a prime example for me for how much a bassist – Fontaine Toups, in this case – and a melodic bass part can add to a song. It’s parts like these that have caused me to stay interested in bass parts over the years, and pick it up four months ago. This video features a live performance in Manila (without Fontaine), with an audience member singing her part. The parenthetical part of the title refers to the fact that the ending part is repurposed from a song called “Mercy” by the band Wire. I knew the Versus song for probably about 20 years before I heard that Wire song.