Saturday, January 29, 2011

Mix Tapes/Dispatches 2011 #3

Tonight I decided to take it easy and make this mix tape for my buddy Andy. Him and I have been trading tapes back and forth since July of last year, when I put together a mix of songs in heavy rotation and suggested he put together some of his favorite metal songs for me, too. We've been exchanging tapes at a fairly regular clip since then. I like it because despite our affection for classic rock, we stand resolutely divided between punk and metal. I'm the punk guy and he's the metal guy. And as much as I like metal, the genre will never supplant my love of punk rock. The same goes for Andy. His love of metal will never take a backseat to punk.* He respects my punk leanings, but doesn't care for the genre. And after seven years of friendship, his feelings aren't likely to change.

On the last couple of tapes, we've been digging deeper into our collections and have been trying to surprise each other other by taping stuff we don't always talk about—Andy and his 80s pop ballads and me and my old folk and blues, for example. This tape's both an appendix to an earlier tape and a move back into more familiar territory. I'm still including the metallic clanging of Chrome and the mainstream pop of Nelly Furtado, but otherwise, this is all stuff Andy knows I like. I included “All Along the Watchtower” because he said he hadn't heard it; “Positively 4th St.” came in because he doesn't care for Dylan but he seems to like Dylan covered by other people. Similarly, I included “Meetings With Remarkable Men” because the lyrics mention Kip Winger, of whom Andy's a big fan. I thought he'd like the reference to him. Most of the other tracks came either from recent purchases or because I've been playing them frequently in the past couple weeks.

90 minute tape
Side A
  1. The Byrds – Positively 4th St. (Dylan cover from Untitled)
  2. Johnny Thunders – Pipeline (So Alone, Chantays surf cover)
  3. The Super Stocks – Midnight Run
  4. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks (S/T)
  5. Sex Pistols – My Way (The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle, Frank Sinatra cover)
  6. Harvey Danger – Meetings With Remarkable Men (King James Version)
  7. Richard and Linda Thompson – Wall of Death (Shoot Out The Lights)
  8. Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band – U.M.C. ('Live' Bullet)
  9. Lou Reed – White Light/White Heat (Live, from Rock And Roll Animal)
  10. Urge Overkill – Stull, Pt. 1 (Stull EP)
  11. Curtis Mayfield - Superfly
  12. Chrome – All Data Lost
  13. Johnny Thunders – London Boys

Side B
  1. Bob Dylan – All Along The Watchtower (John Wesley Harding)
  2. Rocket From The Tombs – Never Gonna Kill Myself Again (Rocket Redux)
  3. Nelly Furtado – Maneater (Loose)
  4. Lou Reed – The Blue Mask (The Definitive Collection)
    5. - Coney Island Baby (see #4)
    6. - Wagon Wheel (Tranformer)
  1. Girlschool – Emergency (Live)
      1. Hit & Run
  1. The Undertones – Here Comes The Summer (S/T)
  2. The Hollies – Bus Stop (Greatest Hits)
  3. Richard Thompson – Shoot Out The Lights (Shoot Out The Lights)
  4. Elvis Costello – Green Shirt (Armed Forces)
  5. CH3 – Wet Spots (Fear of Life)
  6. Meat Puppets – Split Myself In Two (Meat Puppets II)
Notes:
- I love the irony in members of the Sex Pistols playing on Thunders' eloquent put-down of the London punk scene.
- Among my favorite musical discoveries of 2010: Richard Thompson and Urge Overkill. I've been playing stuff from both groups non-stop for months now.
- Somehow I like the Nelly Furtado track. Usually I don't like much mainstream pop, but Nick Hornby had sang her praises in Songbook, so when I came across Loose at the library I decided to give it a try.  I'd heard "Promiscuous" about ever 23 minutes during my sophomore year of college and despite the constant airplay, I do enjoy that tune, too.

* Oddly enough, he's been instrumental in getting me into metal. I daresay I wouldn't care for Judas Priest, Van Halen, or Iron Maiden nearly as much if we hadn't met. I owe everything I know and love about metal to him, Motorhead, and Ian Christe's book The Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal.

No comments:

Post a Comment