Get it now and/or read on! (324MB)

Two Christmas ago, I did a 2 CD (actually 4 CD) mix made up of covers. I wanted to dip back into that since covers, especially when they’re more of a reinterpretation than a straight cover, are always fun.

For this mix, I’ve decided to focus on one particular artist: Syd Barrett. Syd was a founding member of Pink Floyd, playing on all their early singles, the first and some of the second album. At the start he was their vocalist, guitarist and principle song writer.

Due to drugs and a going a bit crazy, he left/was kicked out of Pink Floyd. He still performed and put out two albums over the next few years before “retiring.” Though his musical output lasted barely over five years, he is still seen as in influential legend.

I got into Syd Barrett in the late 80s after I got into (then) current Pink Floyd. After dipping into their back catalog, discovered Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Floyd’s first album) and snatching up Barret’s Madcap Laughs and a few bootlegs courtesy of the guy who used to sell bootlegs at the Frackville Mall, I was hooked.

Living in central Pennsylvania, I was the only person I knew who was into Syd. Towards the end of high school, with the explosion of “alternative music” finally bubbling its way into Mifflinburg, others got into him too.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a Syd Barrett tribute album at a record shop in Williamsport. Beyond the Wildwood had a bunch of great songs on it, some of which have made it to this mix. Most of this mix, however, comes from research.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard most of the songs (or even most of the bands) prior to making this mix. Sure, I had heard of Jesus and Mary Chain, David Bowie and Robyn Hitchcock, but who are Dream Divers, Midnight Movies and Carnival Act? Beats me! But everybody here, all 46 bands, have been influenced by Syd Barrett enough to cover one of this songs.

I wanted to do something fun with two discs full of music, so I have the same 23 songs done twice by two different artists. For example, “Long Cold Look” is done by both Fat & Limo as well as Dolphins.

Some of the songs are pretty straight forward. Robyn Hitchcocks “Dominoes” sounds almost exactly like Syd. I can hardly tell the difference between Paul Roland’s “Matilda Mother” and the original. Other songs, however, are drastically changed. The Polka Floyd Show does a polka cover of “See Emily Play,” while Fortran 5 does a very liberal interpretation of “Bike.”

Some other new found favorites are: “Terrapin” by Big Blood & The Bleedin Hearts, “Arnold Layne” by a very European-sounding Etienne Daho, an instrumental version of “Vegetable Man” by Larsen that really does need to be listened to intently and a dance version of “Rats” by What Noise.

Oh there’s quite a lot of fun to be had here.

This is the whole track list…

Want to hear some samples?

Big Blood & The Bleedin Hearts – Terrapin

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Gloves Leeches – No Good Trying

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Chandeen – Apples and Oranges

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The Polka Floyd Show – See Emily Play

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Larsen – Vegetable Man

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Etienne Daho – Arnold Layne

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Kevin Blechdom and Eugene Chadbourne – Chapter 24

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The Soup Dragons – Two Of A Kind

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Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Check out my other mixes right here…

Get the mix here and now and/or continue reading… (173MB)

Here it is! The second volume of the Flip That Bastard series, which is pretty much just the B-sides of The Bastard Love Child of Punk & Disco series, which is (or will be) three mix CDs full of first singles of bands that are commonly thought of as 80s bands, but actually started in the 70s.

Got it?

Well, in March I released Volume 2 of The Bastard Son…, which featured the first singles of Joy Division, PiL, Simple Minds, The Cars, B-52s, The Fall, Magazine, OMD, Ultravox and many more. This CD contains the b-sides to all of those singles.

I’ve always been a huge fan of b-sides, especially when they we non-album tracks and even more so when they were weird. Weird is something that we get here. Take, for example, PiL’s first b-side, “The Cowboy Song.” Weird, huh? And how about the amazingly unexpected “Circus of Death” by The Human League?

Not all is weird, of course. Some songs are just good songs. Magazine’s “My Mind Ain’t So Open” and OMD’s “Almost” are every bit as good as their A-sides. The Buggle’s “Kid Dynamo” even rivals “Video Killed The Radio Star” (or surpasses it if you’re really sick of hearing that one).

The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising.

One little oddity shows up here. The A-side mix featured The Specials first single “Gangsters.” The B-side was actually by The Selector – it was a split 7″. Fun!

The song that really blew me away was the B-side to Men At Work’s “Keypunch Operator.” It’s called (and basically is) “Down Under.” This is the song that would eventually give them worldwide super stardom. However, this is a very early version and very different from the tune we all know (and love?). You’ll definitely recognize it.

Remember, many of these songs were only available on the first 7″s. Sure, some were slapped on remastered CDs as bonus tracks, but many were not.

Ok, ready? Here’s the track list…

And now, how about some sample songs?

Men At Work – Down Under

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PiL – The Cowboy Song

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The Human League – Circus of Death

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The Fall – Repetition

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OMD – Almost

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Magazine – My Mind Ain’t So Open

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Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Check out my other mixes right here…

Want to hear a bunch of songs about animals? Click here and/or read on!

What do ants, eels, muskrats, dogs, cats and horses all have in common? That’s right, they’re all animals! Not only that, they’re all featured on the new mix CD!

It’s really a bunch of fun to do mixes based on a theme that’s not a genre of music. This way, I can chuck all sorts of styles at you. And chuck, I do! We’ve got the alt country stylings of the Handsome Family as well as the punk rock screaminess of Submission Hold. There’s fun from Louis Armstrong, Sparks, Lou Reed, They Might Be Giants and a lovely little duet by David Bowie and Iggy Pop.

Animals are weird, so I’ve found some equally weird songs. Take Fishfood’s “Seventeen Eels,” please. Also, ever wonder why there wasn’t an answer to “Surfin’ Bird”? Well there was! Wade Curtis does “Puddy Cat.” “Monkey Speaks His Mind” is an old gem about how a monkey disagrees that humans came from the noble ape. Actually, most of these songs are weird. The Handsome Family has a song about being a “Giant Ant” (“My ass is as big as Omaha”).

I’ve been able to find some rarities as well. “The Caterpillar” by The Cure, for example, is from an early demo. Pink Floyd’s “Pigs on the Wing” is the full version that was only released on the 8 Track of Animals. “Bring on the Dancing Horses” is an extended version only on the 12″ single. The whole mix ends with Talking Head’s “Animals,” but it’s a live version and they’ve changed the bridge. You’ll see.

Here’s the track list…

And here are a few tracks for you to enjoy?

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Fishfood – Seventeen Eels

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Submission Hold – Last Surviving Crocodile

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Wade Curtis – Puddy Cat

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Pink Floyd – Pigs On The Wing

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Syd Barret – Effervescing Elephant (Take 2)

Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Check out my other mixes right here…

Every road trip needs a soundtrack. Those are usually created on the fly – CDs pulled out from dusty bins or quickly burned before leaving. This spring trip is no different, it needs one. However, listening to music while riding isn’t the best idea ever.

And that’s where you come in.

Get the mix here, or keep on reading…

Last year I did a road mix for a road trip that could never happen. That was Hot Sun Beating on a Blacktop. And like that mix, this mix is set up like a mix tape.

There are two tracks: side one and side two. Like a mix tape, it’s meant to be listened to front start to finish, like watching a movie or reading a book. If you want to skip a song, you’ll have to fast forward through it. But really, you shouldn’t do that.

Between the songs are bits of found sound, samples from little things here and there. It’s fun to make these and hopefully fun to listen to.

Of course, the real point of this (and any) mix is the music. Finding songs about the road can lead to cliche boredom and predictability that will put you to sleep. I’ve steered clear of such things (hopefully).

Side One, however, does start rather predictably. How could I not include a Springsteen song? And, as the title of the road trip and the mix would indicate, “Born To Run” had to be here. However, this is a live version from a 1975ish bootleg. I can’t remember which one, but you’ll dig it.

Aside from that, this is a pretty eclectic mix. Some songs are about driving, sure – Sparks’s “How Are You Getting Home” and Aerosmith’s “Back In The Saddle,” specifically (ok, that last one could be called predictable too – sorry). But most everything else seems to come from several different left fields.

The Jam, Bauhaus, Anthrax, Bunny Grunt, Tubeway Army, Holy Model Rounders, Rollins, TV Personalities and The Smiths would seemingly have very little to do with each other. But on this mix, the flow into and complement the songs fore and aft. Not bad, eh?

With most of my mixes, I give you samples. It’s not really easy to do that for this one. So let me walk you through some snippets.

This is how we’ll start the mix…

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How would you slide from Red Monkey to Bauhaus? Here’s how I did it…

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And from Holy Model Rounds to Rollins?

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Can you think of a better way to introduce Anthrax’s “Indians”?

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What can we make of this?

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Make whatever you like of it, I guess – but I’d suggest getting it here.

Get the mix here, and/or continue reading… (174MB)

In music, and pop culture in general, decades don’t really mean what we think they mean. For example, most of what we call 60s music lasted well into the 70s. Punk rock, generally thought of as 70s music, didn’t really start until 1976 and died out quickly, by ‘78 (take THAT!). Disco started a bit earlier than that and died out a few years into the 80s.

This six volume mix consists totally of first singles (and their b-sides) from bands that had their biggest success in the 80s. All of these songs were recorded in the 70s.

For this, our second installment, we again explore what we typically think of as 80s music and how it was actually 70s music. Sure, bands like Boomtown Rats, The Cure, OMD, Ultravox and Men at Work went on to fame, fortune and failure in the 80s, but their starts were well rooted in the late 70s.

We’ll start with Joy Division’s “Transmission,” a dark post-punk number filled with guitars and reverb and wind out way through Men At Work’s first single (but wait till you hear the b-side in a couple of months!).

The Buggles’s “Video Killed the Radio Star” is now pretty much the quintessential 80s song. It was the first video MTV ever played and is on pretty much every 80s comp known to man. But no, it was 1979. The 80s got off to an early start.

Post punk was probably a mutual invention, but if there’s a band that should be the pioneers of the field, it would be Public Image Ltd. They took punk rock and flipped it over, enough though their first single could easily be mistaken for a Sex Pistols song.

In the US, The Human League were best known for happy pop songs about working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, but in the late 70s, they were dark and strange. “Being Boiled” has become one of my favorite songs ever.

“Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds sounds very little like their first single, “Life in a Day.” Same goes for OMD’s stark “Electricity,” which is a far cry from “If You Leave.”

One of my favorite pieces on this comp was saved for last. Magazine’s “Shot By Both Sides” gets added to a lot of post-punk comps, but that’s usually the album version. The version that I’ve found is the first version which was released as a single prior to the first album. It’s a completely different recording, so if you’re used to the album cut, you’re in for a few subtle changes that will throw you a bit.

How about some samples…

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Men At Work – Keypunch Operator

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The Human League – Being Boiled

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Simple Minds – Life in a Day

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Magazine – Shot by Both Sides

Get it here! (174 MB)

It’s a zip file, so everyone in the universe should be able to open it.

Check out my other mixes here.

This is a strange mix, even for me. Click here to get it and/or read on…

The idea was simple – seven songs about days, twelve songs about months and four songs about seasons (one song for each). Now, my music collection is pretty large, but not large enough to cover the scope of this mix. I had to do a lot of searching for the right songs to make it all fit. I’m not totally sure that it works. I’ll leave that up to you.

Days
We’ll start the mix with days. There are a lot of songs about Monday. The cliche thing to do would be to pick “Tell Me Why I Don’t Like Mondays.” I almost did. It’s a great song. But instead I opted for Duran Duran’s “New Moon on Monday.” This is an edited down (and slightly changed) version of the Dance Mix. I picked this over “Blue Monday,” which isn’t the best way to start a mix.

The next three songs were in my collection. I discovered Clem Snide a very long time ago and they’ve showed up on several mixes. My dad introduced me to Simon & Garfunkel at a really young age. I think we had this album on 8 track. Giles, Giles & Fripp is a forgotten gem from the late 60s. Definitely check them out. I bought this in high school completely based on the album cover.

While I had heard a lot of The Replacements songs, I somehow missed “Love You Till Friday.” And while I have recently been on an Ultravox kick, I had never heard of their song about Saturday Night. It’s from their first album. Royal Fingerbowl, however, are one of my favorite bands. And “A Month of Sundays” is one of my favorite songs. I think you’ll like it.

Months
Bluegrass in January? Sure, why not? I don’t know anything about this band, but it’s a really fun song. And while I really dig the TV Personalities, I wasn’t familiar with this song before looking for songs about February. It’s pretty cute. Mirel Reznic is a violinist who apparently makes songs for you to spin plates to. I was apprehensive about putting two instrumentals so close together, but I think you’ll be able to handle it. I had no idea who or what Rusty James is, but the song about April is pretty nice.

My friend Brad re-introduced XTC to me with some demos and this song was on a CD he gave me. Maybe it’s not really about May, but it’s a beautiful song anyway. When I was a kid, I really dug Camper Van Beethoven. I think I missed this song – it was probably on one of their later albums. A million years ago, someone mailed me a Plumtree CD scotch-taped to another CD to act as packaging. The other CD was a mix (thanks), but I fell in love with Plumtree. Maybe you will too. Mama! Milk is a dumb name for a band. But great song about August. I had never heard this before.

In honor of Alex Chilton’s very untimely death, how about Big Star’s “September Gurls”? Polaris is actually Miracle Legion. They did much of the music for Pete & Pete. Even though I want to like Tom Waits way more than I do, I continue to find songs that make me really happy. Which is odd for Tome Waits songs. When I was in high school, The Lemonheads were the cool band to like for about ten minutes. It’s good pop punk, but I never got why they were so well loved.

Seasons
The Pretty Things are now the cool proto-punk garage band to like. I get this, so check out “Spring.” “The Other Side of Summer” is the most beloved Elvis Costello song, but I really like it. It’s definitely got a summer song feel to it. Just as much as Billie Holiday’s “Autumn in New York” has an autumn feel to it. We end things with Iron & Wine, which is maybe a little surprising for me. But there we are. This is a strange mix, remember?

Let’s take a listen to some of the songs…

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Giles, Giles & Fripp – Thursday Morning

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Mirel Reznic – The Month of March

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Plum Tree – July 3rd

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The Pretty Things – Spring

Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Check out my other mixes right here…

Every road trip needs a soundtrack. Every time you hop in your car, the music makes the journey. No matter if it’s across town or across the country, what you’re listening to as you drive can define the trip.

On a scooter, however, there is no music. At least, there shouldn’t be. Listening to music on headphones while you’re riding is an incredibly dangerous and stupid thing to do. I’ve done it exactly once to see how distracting it was. It turned out to be incredibly distracting and not worth the risk.

I’ve grown to enjoy the deafening silence of the wind rushing past me at 60mph.

Still, this is a road trip, there has to be a soundtrack.

Remember way back in June of 2009? I made a mix CD that was tailored to be more like a mix tape – with songs fading into one another and little sound clips from movies, etc inserted along the way. It was called Hot Sun Beating on a Black Top and I strongly recommend you click the link and get it.

For this road trip, I’ve decided to make a similar mix. Last year’s mix was more of an ode to the summer riding that I wouldn’t get to do because I crushed one of my fingers at work – that laid me up for most of the long riding season. But this summer (well, spring, really), I’ll be heading to Miami (and back) via the Vespa for Michael’s graduation. A new mix is certainly in order!

Like last year’s mix, this year’s will contain only two tracks: “Side One” and “Side Two.” This year, I really test the boundaries at what could be considered a road song. There’s no “Riding with the Devil” or “LA Freeway” on the mix this time around. Sure, like the title would suggest, “Born to Run” is on it, but so are The Smiths, Iceburn, Tubeway Army, Anthrax and Sparks.

The sound bites were mostly road-related last year. This year, I wander off the road into the land of dreams, outer space, death and war. It all somehow connects and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

Since it’s a mix for the road trip (and I’m not really finished with it yet), you’ll have to wait until the start of the trip to hear it