I won’t be burning and mailing this compilation for at least four or five more months, but I’ve been playing with the structure and tracklist for that long, if not longer. The original intention every time out is to tell a sort of story about my son Nodin or about me; inevitably that plan gets thrown out the window as I attempt to create an interesting collection of songs that transition smoothly instead. In all likelihood the songs below will be switched or replaced or something between now and Christmas – until recently Lily Allen, Yoko Ono, OOIOO, Lagwagon, Love of Diagrams, and Islands were included, but were ultimately scotched because the thing was starting to feel totally cluttered and out of control; I think I had like 23 tracks here or something equally ridiculous. Really, I guess, these projects are a way of sharing with my wife, my parents, and my friends some of the music I’m into at any given time, minus, for the most part, rap and noise, because the audience for these things would be turned off by it and I’m trying to appeal to every recipient on some level. Alecia, Thom, Doug, and my dad aside, I get no serious feedback on these discs so I have absolutely no idea if anyone is driven to investigate any given artest further, and I’m frankly tired of asking people what they thought or if they even listened or whatever. Maybe that sounds bitter, ungrateful, but I suppose if people didn’t want me to send these CDs their way anymore they’d say “Ray, stop sending me these weird bullshit CDs full of nonsense I can’t relate to and don’t give a fuck about.” If anyone wants to say that, please just say it already; it’d be a surprise on one level but I’m way past the point where I expect anybody to agree with any aspect of my musical tastes. As for the unweildly title, I ripped it off from Bringing Down the House; you get three guesses which character said it. (Hint: it wasn’t Steve Martin.)
1. The Grateful Dead “Crowd”
Not an actual song. Just a means of opening the proceedings: crowd chatter, warm-up chords, some dude announcing “Remember, this is only a test!” to audience cheers. For a while the idea was to stick this at the end of the CD, and I still think it could work there, but I’ve always liked comps that kick off with something that isn’t actually musical, something like this, ala Jay-Z, who always seems to make it a point to speak directly to his listeners before the beats start banging, or slanging, or whatever.
2. Brainbombs “???”
3. Black Flag “Wasted”
4. Minor Threat “Minor Threat”
I downloaded two Brainbombs songs – quick, punkish bursts of noise – from the Load Records site; either one will do here for my purposes. Then you get slivers of self-depreciating 80s HC punk proper, bang bang. (For the sake of irony I guess I could have gone with that Minor Threat song about worthless Deadheads.)
5. Smashing Pumpkins “Glass Theme”
Angry dirty alterna metal! Billy Corgan inna-demonic-pissy-rawk-idol style! He’s irked! He’s annoyed! He’s bitchy! He’ll be “by the pool, playing with [his] thoughts”! (I don’t believe there’s any truth in this because Corgan’s perpetually vampire-pale. Does he even own a pool? Is Chicago especially sunny, ever?) Which is interesting in part because “Glass Theme” arrives immediately on the heels of two equally rough’n’raw tunes, the difference being that those guys were broke and living in squalor and traveling together in shitty vans when they wrote thse songs, but Corgan was loaded and co-writing big-ass Hollywood movie scores and world famous – if way past his popular prime – when he wrote this one, from Machina II, aka the album his label wouldn’t release so he gave it away on the internet for free.
6. The Mendoza Line “It Helps to Leave the House”
7. Blitzen Trapper “Wild Mountain Nation”
Now we shift into a less furious, more playfully relaxed gear: it’s alt-country tyme, though in a just world both of these songs would be serious CMA awards contenders. Unfair!
8. Hauschka “Paddington”
9. Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid “Greensleeves”
A classical, prepared-piano delight that acts as a transitioning shunt. Then a distorted, abstracted but still reasonably recognizable take on the traditional holiday number that reminds us that it’s starting to look a lot like $mas and effectively shepherds us into the mix’s experimental block.
10. The Orb “Oxbow Lakes”
11. Taylor Deupree “Everything’s Gone Grey”
12. Lappetites “Stop No. 394 Falkirk Street”
13. Khate “Riesling”
“Oxbow Lakes” brings to mind the Olympiad in Greek and Roman times, or maybe Icarus flapping around idly before getting too close to the sun and plummeting back to Earth. Equally lengthy but considerably more minimalist is “Everything’s Gone Grey,” which – depending on how much attention one is able to pay while it splays – may go unnoticed altogether; if so, the Lappetites’ herky-jerky laptop avant-garde will provide a rude awakening before Khate’s circuit-bent rumble quakes endeavor to lull you back into complacency.
14. Bumps “A Safe Balm”
15. Deerhoof “Cast Off Crown”
16. Dinosaur Jr. “Back to Your Heart”
17. Why? “Sanddollars”
18. The Beach Boys “Busy Doin’ Nothin’”
Here’s where, I hope, hearts will be warmed somewhat. The Bumps track is simply a tangle of percussion, transitional and fun. “Cast Off Crown” pulps a bundle of disparate genres together into this sugary, yearning slush of emotions and falsettos, which doesn’t really say much, specifically, as a description; trust me, though, when I tell you that it must be heard to be believed. Dinosaur Jr. drops some balladic/anthemic mid-tempo indie that I take to be about doing what one does for the wellbeing and love of one’s family, a theme I identify very strongly with, which is half of the reason it’s included here; it can be read, if you like, as a dedication to Alecia and Nodin and the life I hope to make for all of us. The final pair of songs are for my friends: the Why? song is drawn from Elephant Eyelash, a record so heavy on a sense of nostalgia that I get weird chills through-and-through whenever I listen to it. When I say nostalgia I don’t mean that I can directly relate to what Yoni Wolf is singing/rapping about, exactly – after all, I’m not Jewish, dad wasn’t a rabbi, I’ve never been in a touring band, never wore hoodies and jeans “as was the style that year” – in the sense of, say, when we were all watching Stoned Age back in the summer of 1998 at Steve Fuchs’ house outside of Chestertown and Labz kept saying “My life was just like that, we used to do stuff like that all the time” back in south Jersey. It’s more just the reflective style of what’s being expressed and the sort of carefree, halycon 90s college rock hooks that sends me cruising down memory lane, revisiting the tentative establishment of what are today lasting, valuable comradeships and maybe getting a little misty-eyed because I feel lucky to still know all these awesome people even though hundreds of miles separate us. The Beach Boys song, which isn’t as well known as “I Get Around” or “California Girls,” has a welcoming, mellow present-tense vibe (if maybe a little OCD and slightly unnerving for that) and acts as an florid, brassed-out invitation to come over, to visit, to get caught up and hang out: let’s make some new memories.
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