Ruined Music with Tom Waits

In case you were curious, one of the essays that I was using for the mixtape project is now up on Ruined Music. To honor that, let's sample a track from the album in question, the 1973 Tom Waits masterpiece, Closing Time.

Mixwit #2

Decided to try and have some more fun, fun, fun with Mixwit. This particular mix reeks of hipster-friendly artists, which is cause for apologies. But there are some great ones on there. I'm particularly fond of mixed-genre Avett Brothers song, "Die, Die, Die", which is catchier than it sounds.

My only real complaint with Mixwit would be that a user cannot upload files. You have to use the search engines provided. Yet as frustrated as I get trying to find an Etta James track other than "At Last", I still love that Mixwit manages to capture the vibe of the individual mixtape as it can best be captured through the internet. Maybe it's just the faux acetape reel that tugs at my sentimental heartstrings.

A Common Case of Jealousy

I'm a regular reader of numerous pop culture blogs, as it sort of comes with the territory about writing about music, movies, etc. When I checked out one of my favorites, Whitney Matheson's Pop Candy, I learned that there's a new mixtape blog in town.

Cassettes From My Ex is an essay project that discusses--what else?--the mixtape. Do they have their own domain name? Yes. Do they have a flashier webpage? Check. Do they actually put up the mixtapes? Hell yeah. Do I feel jealous? You betcha.

That's one thing they never teach you to deal with in grad. school--professional jealously. Maybe I'm just being lazy. Maybe I haven't been writing fast enough. Maybe I should spend more time (and more money) on jazzing things up a bit around here. Maybe I'm still living under the delusion that looks don't matter and that it's quality that the people want. Not a bunch of hipster flash. Or maybe I'm also having issues with the fact that I'm not seeing this project take off like I had imagined. I guess I have a plain, old-fashioned case of envy. While it isn't very becoming, it's true. Perhaps the epitome of envy is represented best through song.







Perhaps it's important to take a lesson from the Stones:

Kate's Quick Summer Mix: A MixWit Experiment

Testing out another mixtape product for the Commonplace Mixtape project. MixWit is my favorite maker out of the bunch, mainly because it not only looks like it is a cassette, but it has the acetate thread. I'm such an elitist.

The Exploding Hearts - "I'm a Pretender" 2:32

One of the mixtapes I've always wanted to create is one of those "Only the Good Die Young" sorts of mixtapes--a collection of artists that died before their time but left a significant musical legacy. It is, admittedly, a sick and morbid fascination. I'd probably pull an iconic James Dean image for the cover art, just to play it up.

Recently, I stumbled upon a band via Last.fm radio, which allows you to listen (commercial free and unlimited skips) to radio based on an artist or tag. That just sounded like a sponsored endorsement, but I swear no one's sending any cash in my direction (though I wouldn't complain if they did). Anyway, I had plugged in "The Reigning Sound" for the artist selection (Greg Cartwright is one of my favorite musicians) and it plays a variety of artists. Which is how I found out about The Exploding Hearts. This group of young 20-somethings from Portland, Oregon were poised to lead a neo-'70s punk revival. Their album, Guitar Romantic treads the same ground of The Ramones and the rest of the founding fathers of punk and glam-rock, but the song composition and lyrical harmonies give a shout-out to the under-appreciated mothers of punk--the '60s girl groups, like those tough-as-nails chicks of The Shangri-Las. Though they follow in the glue-sniffin' footsteps of classic punk rock, The Exploding Hearts add their "modern kick."

If you remembered your literary terms from high school English class, you'll know that I've foreshadowed that The Exploding Hearts reached an untimely end. According to the Wikipedia:

On July 20, 2003 the band was in a car accident which claimed the lives of three members. Their touring van flipped over on Interstate 5 just north of Eugene, Oregon while en route from San Francisco to Portland. Jeremy Gage and Adam Cox were thrown from the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene. The driver, Matthew Fitzgerald, died at a hospital. Terry Six and band manager Rachelle Ramos both survived with minor injuries.

There were no attempts made by surviving member Terry Six to reform the band. There was a compilation of demos and unreleased material, and there is a website available, but that is it. Nothing more.

The Exploding Hearts ran from 2001-2003, but I can't but wonder what would have been. Would America's youth be listening to them instead of, well, whatever over-produced, manufactured garbage the children are listening to these days? Would The Exploding Hearts have made a follow-up album as impressive as their Guitar Romantic debut? Would they have peaked, fizzled out, and ended up on a VH-1 "Where Are They Now?" special? Would they have continued to make great music?

I will never know.

If you had to choose between dying before your time or dying a washed-up has-been, but either way still make a significant contribution to the musical landscape, what would you choose? It's kind of like asking whether you'd want to be Buddy Holly or Elvis Presley. On the one hand, you die. On the other hand, you end up a bloated Vegas lounge act in Bedazzled jumpsuits, which is a metaphorical death in itself. Either way, you'd score with Billboard and the chicks and end up in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Shame Fame. Is one more dignified than another? Does the end justify the means?

Jon Brion - "Theme (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)" 2:24

It's a snowy November day in 2005 and I'm sitting in the conference room with Josh, a guy from my Postmodernism course. We're supposed to be meeting our other two group members, but they aren't going to show. Secretly, I'm pleased. He pulls out a portable cassette/CD boombox and pops in an unlabeled cassette.

"Have you seen 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'?" asks Josh. Josh is my first real exposure to anyone truly counterculture. I'd associated with my share of wannabe punks and anarchists, but Josh is something new. Josh sings of Whitman, lauds Kerouac, and carries around books on Van Gogh.

Josh is my first college crush.

"No," I reply, but I know I should if he says so. I'm 19. Before the piercings. Before the tattoos. Before anything truly tragic has happened. I'm wearing my favorite knee-length green corduroy skirt and long-sleeved pink cotton t-shirt. I am as frumpy as a schoolmarm.

"This is the soundtrack. It is beauty and chaos." Josh always makes rather grandiose statements about things he likes. We listen as we pour over photocopied articles by Jean-Francois Lyotard. But as we talk, as our words mix with the music blaring from his speakers in an empty conference room, something is happening.

"This soundtrack. It's--" Words fail me. My mind is images. I can see the snow falling outside on the campus quad, covering picnic tables and naked trees in a dusting of white. I can hear the wind shake the branches of those trees and the way they crack and clatter together.

"It's like nothing you've ever heard, right?" he asks me, his brown eyes searching my face with earnest. I nod. "That's the way I felt too when I first heard it." He gives me a list of musicians that I should listen to. He tells me about Brian Eno, Philip Glass, a quick run-through of the avant-garde.

My head spins. All these musicians I don't even know. I should know. I want to know everything. My innocent curiosity makes Josh smile. He finds it fascinating that I am so young and yet so old. My naive affection for him aside, Josh is the first person I've met that actually understands all the things I cannot say.

Before we leave, Josh ejects the tape from the boombox and hands it to me.

"Take it," he says.

"Really?" No one has ever given me anything like this before.

"Yeah. You get it, Kate," he says, and he presses the bare cassette into my hands, closing my fingers around the black plastic shell.

The Ruts - "In a Rut" 3:35

Maxell C90 under the red light.

I've been debating about what to do with the mixtape project. I want to pursue it and make a big deal out of it. I do. But in order to do it right, I need a space in which to work. Sure, I can drive to the nearest coffeeshop, but it's not the same. I need my turntable and my box of records at my side. I need a physical space to call my own. A space in which I can blast Van Halen records and nobody will judge me.

And I need my record store boys. It was wonderful having that one day a week in which to speak geek. They'd give me all this music that I'd never heard and they were interested. They were a part of it. I was doing this for me, but they were there for me. They listened to my mad woman ramblings and crazy thoughts and I think that they were my muses--my inspiration--week after week. I'm sure they didn't think as much of me, but I cannot get them out of my mind.

Yesterday, I stopped at a record store on my way to yoga class. I'd been to this record store before, but never in the springtime. I walked in and, of course, I was made to feel like a chick in a record store. Two hipsters were having a discussion about The Clash, but the way in which they talked about The Clash, one of my favorite bands, was not the way in which I would ever discuss them. They were too busy trying to one-up one another by making comparisons to The Sex Pistols and talking about record labels and it was just stale corporate mumbo-jumbo. I wanted to talk about how I love Strummer's work with The 101'ers, but I wasn't welcome. The two braggadocios carried on and I went to yoga class in need of a good workout.

I'm going to try and work on the mixtape project, but I don't think I'll be stepping into any record stores in the near future.