I’m going to start trying to put out a quarterly mix at the end of the first month of every season (got that? there’ll be a test) that showcases what I’ve been listening to over the past three months, what’s caught my ear in ways that I can’t explain (OR CAN I), what I’ve just remembered loving and think you should too. This isn’t a mix that will help you fill out your 2011 End-Of-Year Ballot, though there are some recent-ish songs on it — true to the Exist Yesterday remit, it’s drawn from all over the historical map, and I’ve mostly tried to stick to non-obvious songs (though next year I may just say fuck it and put Earth Wind & Fire’s “September” on just to piss off people who think it’s overdone).
If you click on everything I ever post, you may recognize some of these; but as a little bonus/incentive to download, I’ve written my thoughts on each song, how they relate to the others in the mix, and any relevant background, into the Lyrics tag in iTunes. Which I mostly use Apple products so I have no idea if those of you who are keeping the holy flame of open source alive will be able to read them. I bet I could be coaxed into emailing you the text file, though.
The album art is taken from a series of gorgeous covers the Brazilian cartoonist J. Carlos drew for the magazine Para Todos in the 1920s, and significantly worsened by me in Photoshop. The running time is theoretically around 80 minutes. The tracklisting is below. Thank you for your time.
1. The Temptations May I Have This Dance {1964}
2. Sean Kingston Beautiful Girls {2007}
3. Megadeth Skin O’ My Teeth {1992}
4. Ruth Etting Button Up Your Overcoat {1928}
5. College ft. Electric Youth A Real Hero {2010}
6. Britney Spears Trip To Your Heart {2011}
7. Donna Summer Working The Midnight Shift {1977}
8. Beyoncé I Miss You {2011}
9. Rip Rig + Panic Sunken Love {1983}
10. Helen Merrill Troubled Waters {1957}
11. Amelita Baltar Zamba De La Noche {1968}
12. Bonga Sodade {1974}
13. Sophy Almas Inseparables {1969}
14. Mylène Farmer Je T’aime Mélancolie {1991}
15. Shannon Let The Music Play (Groove Rider Mix) {2008}
16. A Lighter Shade Of Brown ft. Huggie Boy & Shiro On A Sunday Afternoon {1990}
17. Aaliyah I Can Be {2001}
18. The Darling Buds Burst {1988}
19. Transvision Vamp Velveteen {1989}
20. Pál Kalmár Szomorú Vasárnap {1935}
21. Joe Ely Honky Tonk Masquerade {1978}
(Note: Google informs me that Five For Fighting have a song called “This Dance.” There are no certainties in this world, but I feel pretty safe in saying it will not be included in future editions.)
Another mix from all over the historical map. (The previous edition is here.) I found a certain logic to the progression here, although you need to be prepared for wildly different production styles and fidelities as it flows from song to song. It took me a while to come up with this precise set of songs; I went through several trials before I hit on the right set of mathematical constraints.
The cover art is from the May 8 1926 edition of Brazilian magazine Para Todos, as drawn by the great cartoonist J. Carlos. The tracklisting is below; my annotations will follow some time later this week.
1. Isham Jones and his Orchestra The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise {1922}
2. Space Carry On, Turn Me On {1977}
3. Cleo Brown (Lookie Lookie Lookie) Here Comes Cookie {1935}
4. Tony! Toni! Toné! If I Had No Loot {1993}
5. Madness Grey Day {1981}
6. Madalena de Melo Quem Mais Jura {1926}
7. Chris Connor Blah, Blah, Blah {1956}
8. Sarah Vaughan Trouble Is a Man {1947}
9. El Perro Del Mar God Knows (You Give To Get) {2006}
10. Sylvia Teles Se Todos Fossem Iguais a Você {1957}
11. Hole Heaven Tonight {1998}
12. Neneh Cherry So Here I Come {1989}
13. The Kronos Quartet El Sinaloense {2002}
14. Sam Cooke Sad Mood {1960}
15. Harry Cooper et son Orchestre Nuages {1943}
16. Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair {1964}
17. Nico Winter Song {1968}
18. Rose Elinor Dougall Goodnight {2010}
19. Geeshie Wiley Last Kind Word Blues {1930}
20. Benny Goodman and Béla Bartók Pihenö (Relaxation) {1939}
21. Tom Waits Downtown Train {1985}
22. Funkadelic Wake Up {1972}
The third edition of my quarterly mix of music of varying degrees of pastness. (Click the tag below to see previous editions.) The cover art is from the July 9 1927 edition of Brazilian magazine Para Todos, drawn J. Carlos.
1. Cerrone Midnite Lady {1976}
2. Noël Coward This Is a Changing World {1947}
3. Sylvia Teles Dindi {1960}
4. The Kinks Tired of Waiting for You {1965}
5. Lizzie Miles I Hate a Man Like You {1929}
6. Chris Connor Ballad of the Sad Café {1959}
7. The Pointer Sisters Telegraph Your Love {1983}
8. Anjali Misty Canyon {2003}
9. Ray Barretto Espíritu Libre {1968}
10. Pee Wee Hunt Moon Country (Is Home to Me) {1934}
11. The Sound of Feeling Hex {1969}
12. Lead Belly How Long Blues {1943}
13. Fleetwood Mac Walk a Thin Line {1979}
14. Fennesz Shisheido {2001}
15. Margaret Johnson Dead Drunk Blues {1927}
16. Black I Just Grew Tired {1987}
17. Annie Laurie It’s Been a Long Time {1953}
18. Fania All-Stars There You Go {1975}
19. Tropics Celebrate {2011}
20. George Jones We Can Make It {1972}
21. Agustín Lara Otoño {1937}
This edition of my periodic mix departs from the precedent set by the last three, which roamed around in space and time and attempted to fit together according to some mood or other, to (in my opinion) diminishing returns. This one, by contrast, has a very narrow theme: “modernist” symphonic music of the 1920s.
I put modernist in quotes because this is not the rigorous anti-melodic modernism of the serialists, but boisterous populist work, sometimes programmatic but mostly concerned with the rhythms and sensations of urban and technocratic life. Jazz phrasing, blues harmonics, and Latin American rhythms inform some of the pieces, but so does the expanded sense of what can qualify as music that the Futurists and Dadaists put forth in the 1910s, in a sort of analogy to what Duchamp was doing in the art world.
I’m mostly doing this just because I’ve wanted to collect a bunch of these pieces together in one place for a while now, and this was a fine opportunity. The composers are credited as artist and the dates in brackets are the dates of composition; the actual performers and recording dates are in the Comments field of each file. I’ve dropped all pretense of squeezing the running time into the hour-twenty of a CD; this is a two-and-a-half-hour mix. Hurrah for the anarchy of digital!
As always, the cover art is adapted from Brazilian cartoonist J. Carlos’ gorgeous Para Todos covers; this one is from the June 8, 1929 issue.
1. Darius Milhaud “La création du monde” {1923}
2. Arthur Honegger “Pacific 231” {1923}
3. Edgard Varèse “Amériques” {1921}
4. John Alden Carpenter “Skyscrapers” {1926}
5. George Antheil “Ballet Mécanique” {1924}
6. George Gershwin “Concerto in F” {1925}
7. William Grant Still “Darker America” {1924}
8. Ruth Crawford Seeger “Music for Small Orchestra” {1926}
9. Karl Amadeus Hartmann “Jazz: Toccata and Fugue” {1928}
10. Carl Ruggles “Portals” {1926}
If you know the pieces, you may already have spied a slight programmatic theme. From Europe to America is the general drift, with one return visit that’s like a funhouse mirror of both. Anyway. I really love this music, and I hope you enjoy it too.
The most recent, and I think the last, of my seasonal mixes drawing together music from all over the map and (twentieth-century) timeline. Unless I come up with a theme as good as the last one, that is. I’m realizing that I should wait for mixtape inspiration to strike rather than try to force one out according to an arbitrary schedule. Which isn’t to say all these songs aren’t great, or don’t have a lot to say to each other — they are, and they do. But it took a whole lot of cajoling.
The art is from the April 30th, 1927 cover to the magazine Para Todos by the cartoonist J. Carlos.
- Michel Polnareff Computer’s Dream {1971}
- Ella Fitzgerald Out of This World {1960}
- Donnie & Joe Emerson Baby {1979}
- Gal Costa Deixa Sangrar {1970}
- Annita Ray I’ll Be Around {1962}
- Freddy Fender Before the Next Teardrop Falls {1975}
- Cristina The Lie of Love {1984}
- The Cake Extroverted Introvert {1968}
- Herb Ellis Pogo {1956}
- Das EFX Jussummen {1992}
- Rafael Yepes Crespo & Sus Negros de la Región Nubia en la Playa {1967?}
- Margo Guryan Sunday Morning {1969}
- The Blue Nile Saturday Night {1989}
- Fred Astaire So Near and Yet So Far {1953}
- Franco & Le Tout Puissant OK Jazz Tozonga Na Nganga Wana {1966}
- Björk Jóga {1997}
- Thelonious Monk Monk’s Point {1965}
- Slim Gaillard Taxpayer’s Blues {1952}
- Lizzy Mercier Descloux Five Troubles Mambo {1980}
- Del Shannon Jody {1961}
- Bryan Ferry This Island Earth {1978}
- DJ Shadow Midnight in a Perfect World {1996}
