Troisième (Near Mint "outtakes")

Songs that did not make my recent "guest DJ" stint on Near Mint, for one reason or another. I thought the closest runners-up might make an interesting mix in itself.  

It runs a little on the long side but my inner editor was not fully engaged - and, since being asked to guest DJ the show with the brief being "the weirder and more obscure, the better," it led me to pulling out some stuff I'd not dug up in a while (including some things I thought I'd lost along the way).  (I also found I could have gone far weirder but I didn't want to ruin someone else's show completely - just a little bit.)  Hopefully you'll enjoy this adjunct, parallel-universe bizzaro mix tape, put together with Mr Robin the Fog's blessing (and seriously, check out his website and the most excellent Howlround, and of course Resonance FM, which has more outstanding shows - ALL available as podcasts - than they should be allowed, really - one can't keep up with all of it!)

Tracklist:

Intro
2002: A Hit Song (The Free Design)
Highly Illogical (Mr. Spock)
UFO (Pink Lady)
Strong Electro-Magnetic Waves (Tomita)
Spaceport (Toomorrow)
Spaceman (Beast)
Interlude (Lord Buckley, "The Hip Einie" exerpt)
Electrocation of Fire-Ants (Turn On)
Machines (Lothar and The Hand People)
Building (Chevrolet)
Mr Freeze (N Hefti)
Love Today, Cry Tomorrow (C Stapleton)
I Love All the Love In You (B Crewe & C Fox)
Glowin' (Dr John)
Hippy Version of the 23rd Psalm (J Rydgren)
Light My Fire (B Auger & J Driscoll)
Program 10, Pt 6 (Dreamies)
Little Green Bag (Jerry Ross Symposium)
Waiting for the Gold (Supercasanova)
The LS Bumblebee (Cook & Moore)
The Riddler (F Gorshin)
Barnabas (Vampire State Building)
Moontown (Lucia Pamela)
The Transformed Man (W Shatner)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Earth (L Nimoy)

Near Mint mix part 2

The second part of my mix for my good friend Robin The Fog's radio show Near Mint on Resonance FM.  A big thanks once again for the honor of being asked to contribute.  Here's a tracklist if you're interested:

1. Intro (The Beach Pick-Up - Eric Weber)

2. You Never Come Closer - Doris

3. Speech Exercises: Trees and Flowers - The Children of the Italia Conte School

4. Alibi Annie - Trifle

5. Robot de Janeiro - Jean-Jacques Perrey and Daniel Longhein

6. A King Size Drag - Supercasanova

7. It's the Going Thing - Ford Motor Company

8. Puella! Puella! (Woman! Woman!) - Man

9. Sexy Mood - Daniel White

10. Weather Girl - Dr. Hooker

I remain ultra-flattered and hopefully Robin's show will recover from my abuse.  And please check out his website as he does nothing but wondrous things - too many, in fact.

Of Cities and Escapes

1. Of Cities and Escapes - The Poppy Family
2. Escape Lane - The Advisory Circle
3. It's Raining Today - Scott Walker
4. Hélicoptère - Mireille Darc
5. Citta Violenta - Ennio Morricone
6. House of Mirrors - David McCallum
7. Take Me With You - Lyn Christopher
8. The City Life - Piero Umiliani
9. Instant Night - The Luv'd Ones
10. Atlanta Inn - Janne Schatter
11. Young Freedom - Francis Lai
12. Gate City Savings and Loan - Thes One
13. Promenade Solitaire - Ennio Morricone
14. Dark World - Sven Libaek
15. April Grove - Chrysalis
16. Move With the Dawn - Mark Eric
17. I'm Not Living Here - The Ballroom
18. Frankly, Mr. Shankly - The High Llamas
19. Angels of Ashes - Scott Walker
20. A New Career In a New Town - David Bowie

(Download to come)

Inspiration - # 1

According to a few people I know, I need to "actually blog."  This blog has more or less just been a place I've put links to my Mixcloud page.  Which is, of course, a page that anyone can just directly go to.  My attempts to post about anything else have been awkward at best.  I have no intention of blogging nakedly about my personal life or my views on politics or what I've had for dinner.  The blog was set up because I do have a musical project in the works (which I expect will be completed in the Spring) and I was told that I needed to have "web presence."  (I have very helpful friends - many of whom are actual musicians, so I try to listen to their advice.)  In thinking about what I might blog about, I thought it perhaps appropriate, if obvious, to blog about inspiration.

My musical inspirations are laid bare pretty openly within the mixes that I make - something, if you look at my Mixcloud, I've actually been doing for quite some time.  (The first one I posted is six years old - holy cow.)  I'm sure I'll talk about those as I go, but obviously, anything from psychedelia to prog to sunshine pop to baroque rock to electronic music and radiophonics to library music to soundtracks, and everything in between, are musical inspirations.

I got started collecting music as a child at the end of the LP age (smack in the middle of the cassette age, really).  I grew up in the middle of nowhere - out in the country, the Bible Belt no less.  I was traumatized by Southern American religion by one person to the point of being left with what one doctor later surmised may have been some level of childhood PTSD; in the end, I ended up fascinated by all things occult and "pagan," as well as spirituality and religion - the one and only award I was given in all of high school was for the Old and New Testament Bible class (yes, that was an actual class I took in my senior year of high school, which was 1999). I grew up in the 80s and 90s, prior to the vinyl resurgence, and was lucky enough to snag quite a bit of vinyl from the public library when they sold off their collection and also "consignment shops" (what we called thrift stores in my hometown) where much vinyl could be had for as little as ten cents.  It's how I ended up with odd prog LPs like Second Hand (and utter crap like REO Speedwagon).  I eventually worked at that public library - it was my first job - and was given first look at a lot of great stuff being sold, including educational LPs, which began my love of older (and often experimental) teaching-aid albums.  I eventually moved out of my conservative small hometown to more urban pastures, and for a while, embarked on a successful career.  Luckily, some portion of my music collection remained with my folks, who are low-level hoarders.  Unhappily, a good amount of it got donated.  Somewhere out there I hope someone got enjoyment out of some pretty rare albums that I'd rather not think about considering what I've seen them going for on sites like Discogs in recent years.

When my career disappeared along with a sizable portion of the economy in 2008, I drifted a bit.  I eventually decided that escapism was where I belonged, and for better and for worse, my music collecting began again.  Eventually, my desire to "participate" kicked in.  I was in bands in my teens and into my very early 20s - I had no desire to try to get a band together, but surely I could pick up instruments again!  Playing an instrument is not just like riding a bike (also, riding a bike is not just like riding a bike - you absolutely do kind of forget just how to maintain equilibrium and I busted my ass getting on a bicycle for the first time in a decade - but, I digress; maybe that's just me).  It took me quite a long time and a lot of trial and error figuring out what shape my musical project would take; what I would use; and if it would even be something I would share with anyone else.  At first, I had no intention of letting anyone else hear anything I did.  (An idea that, once I'm done, may turn out to have been correct.) Some chance encounters with friends and musicians and some (possibly?) well-placed advice later, and I'm surrounded not only by LPs, but musical instruments and accouterments, with a project in progress that I intend to release when it is complete (though I do not intend to ask anything for it).  As I've watched many of my favorite, life-changing bands and artists fall by the wayside, and discovered new, amazing artists, it's not much of a question for me as to what form the actual music would likely take.  But what do I have to write about?

I would never spell everything out completely.  I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to.  But, I thought, if I was going to "blog," in a space meant somewhat as a place to talk about and post music, I would talk around some inspirations.  I don't have too many questions as to what inspired the actual music on some of my favorite albums; in some cases, especially with a few of my favorite artists, it's nearly too obvious what they were listening to.  (Here are some wonderful cases in point.)  But the chords chosen, the changes and the cryptic words, the emotions - or lack thereof - behind them - that's a conversation.  Perhaps I will get into a bit of that here.  (It's not like anyone is really reading this, is it?!)  Even before any of my actual written music is laid out before ears other than mine and my poor neighbors - what moves me and inspires me says a lot about what I love and why I love it.  I suppose this is as good a place as any to dump some word salad - as someone said to me the other day, "it is supposed to be a 'blog,' isn't it?"

For now:

The quickly and shoddily thrown together page header logo thingy - which is not at all what I envision any sort of design to be for any of my later-to-come original music - was lifted from this:

I'm sure I will write more soon.  (Even though just writing all that feels incredibly pretentious.)  For now, I have a new mix to put the finishing touches on and post.

Near Mint guest mix!

I was honored to be asked to "DJ" a two-part set for the wonderful Resonance FM radio show Near Mint hosted by my friend Robin the Fog - here is the first part!  (The second part will be on the radio - THE RADIO! - next Tuesday at 1pm EST / 6pm UK time - you can listen live on Resonance FM, but of course a podcast version will be posted afterward.)

A special thanks to Robin for inviting me to do this (with the brief of "make it weird," so hopefully I lived up to that within reason - I also tried to make it somewhat American-centric, if that makes sense; as an Anglophile, it would be very easy for me to make a mix of music from the UK or Europe, which is likely the majority of my record collection).  Please visit Robin's wonderful site and check out all of the wonderful things he does, of which there are many.

Disparaître

Fever dreams of escape.

1. Karmic Dream Sequence #1 - The Millennium
2. I Said Goodbye to Me - Harry Nillsson
3. I Will Be Absorbed - The Egg
4. Déshominisation - Alain Goraguer
5. Shadow of Death Hotel - Barry Adamson
6. La Horse - Serge Gainsbourg
7. L'enfant Au Royaume Des Mouches - Jean-Claude Vannier
8. Fire, Damp & Air - The Advisory Circle
9. Les Aimies des memes - Stereolab
10. My Soul Was Lost, My Soul Was Lost, And No One Saved Me - Jane Weaver
11. Dave's Dream - Broadcast
12. Braindead - Gloria
13. So Long Supernova - Comus
14. Come and Buy - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
15. Le Chat du Café des Artistes - Jean-Pierre Ferland
16. Nautilus - Bob James

That's How the World is Made

Self-explanatory.

1. That's How the World is Made - BJ Ward
2. Rainy Day - Susan Christie
3. Lost in a Lost World - The Moody Blues
4. My Death - Scott Walker
5. It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl - Faust
6. A Famous Myth - The Groop
7. Man is Not a Bird - Broadcast
8. Where Do I Go - The Free Design
9. To Put Up With You - The Sunshine Company
10. Walk On By - The 18th Century Corporation
11. I'll See You There - The Poppy Family
12. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times - Peggy Lipton
13. It Might As Well Be Dumbo - The High Llamas
14. Sad is the Way that I Feel - Mark Eric
15. Five O'Clock in the Morning - Wendy & Bonnie
16. The Sign (Pt. III) - David Axelrod
17. I Start Counting - Basil Kirchin
18. Old Man Willow - Elephant's Memory
19. Spleen - The Sound of Feeling
20. On Your Own Again - Scott Walker

Ripples

Two mixes in two days?!  What, am I spending all of my free time laying in bed with synthesizers and my external drive with all of my music on it?  Yes, yes I am.

This one is a bit more coherent than the last.

Wistful melancholy; Oncoming rush of Autumnal emotion; Endings and beginnings

Library music of the 70s and 80s.

1 Birth of the Universe (A Baker/R Morgan/P Jackson)
2. Wind Surf Ballad (Dominique Guiot)
3. End of a Summerlove (Milan Pilar Group)
4. Eternity (A Hawkshaw)
5. Round (Yan Tregger & Pierre Devevey)
6. A New World (Brian Bennett)
7. Girl on a Bike (Brian Dee)
8. Rainy Road
9. Tomorrow's Dream (Geoff Bastow)
10. Tuned Waves (John Fiddy & Norman Chandler)
11. Station Farewell (Vic Flick)
12. Starlight (Francis Monkman)
13. Fathoms (Frank McDonald & Terry Devine-King)
14. Melancholy Moog (John Fiddy & Norman Chandler)
15. Lisbeth (Oscar Rocchi)
16. Ripples (Julian Nott)
17. Dusk (Jacky Giordano)
18. Bucolic (William Gum-Boot & Lawrence Wiffin)
19. Mistral (Astral Sounds)
20. Surrealism (Andrew Jackman)

It looks like I may have a new source for the downloading of the mix, but it's uploading extremely slow.  So, maybe a link eventually?  If you really must have a download, there are a number of ways to just rip the mix - but hopefully I can provide one for possible future peoples who may read this one day--certainly no one now is reading this!

How do you take an already transcendent piece of music and make it even more beautiful? Here's how.

God bless YouTube - of course someone would have uploaded chunks of MTV's show Amp, which I would watch in the middle of the night when I was 13; some of it is a bit dodgy now I suppose, but nostalgia. Also, that Ken Ishii song and video hold up.



One thing I always quite loved about the show was the way it almost felt stream of consciousness; in my memory, which these clips are proving to be mostly false, they didn't necessarily tell you right off when they were on to a different song.
Besides the Ishii video, the one I remember most was Future Sound of London's "Max," which is still a gorgeous piece of music that completely holds up. (Future Sound of London, in my opinion, are one of the great unsung acts; they get lumped in with "techno" from their first album, which was dance-y, but Lifeforms and Dead Cities are far beyond anything most other electronic acts were doing. They should be mentioned much more often.)

Lord have mercy.





(By the way, this comes from a wonderful show called The Beat, of which you can find several full shows uploaded on YouTube. Well worth checking out - it was a regional show, and have some wonderful performances, in addition to having possibly the greatest set design in the history of everything.)

From Way Out

I'm incredibly late here, but of course Jean-Jacques Perrey died recently. (The day he passed, I was in hospital, and the days immediately following weren't very good, so I blame that somewhat.) Obviously Perrey's influence in music, especially electronic music (and rock and pop groups incorporating electronics into their music), cannot be overstated. I was somehow Facebook friends with the man - just one of those automatic things I suppose - and he was, to the end, extremely vibrant and full of life and clearly loved what he did and what he got to do. A life very well lived. If James Brown is The Godfather of Soul, Jean-Jacques Perrey is The Godfather of Electronic. Some of my favorites - I still quite enjoy the wonderful oddity that is Mr. Ondioline:



I will always return to Perrey-Kingsley's The In Sound From Way Out, it's just utter perfection and madness:



I really love the library music he produced, and he actually did a good few, like Moog Sentations on the Editions Montparnasse 2000 label:



Or an album called Moog Mig Mag Moog, also for Montparnasse, which is delightfully bonkers:



And lastly, one that I don't think gets mentioned enough but that I quite thoroughly enjoy:



To bring a Broadcast connection into this, here's a lovely picture of Trish Keenan having a chat with Perrey:



Rest in pease, Mr Perrey. I know angels generally play harps; I hope an exception is made in this case and you get a Moog.

I Am Going to Set Myself on Fire

Here is an interesting bit of business posted by the wonderful Starving Daughter's Vinyl Impressions blog - the wonderfully named artist/group I Am Going to Set Myself On Fire (which is about how I and probably many other people are feeling right about now), with an album called The Challenge of the Salt, which, I don't know, but this song in particular is quite good:




He's generous enough to offer up the entire album for download - and there's many more where that came from; seriously good stuff on offer there, I highly recommend checking out that blog.  The album is one I'd never remotely heard of, and has an interesting pedigree which I'll leave it to you to click the link above and read it from that blog directly.  The album is a mixture of songs with vocals - which I don't particularly think work all that well, but it's not horrible - and then instrumental versions.  The track above it my favorite of the lot, but it's a nice oddity that's worth checking out - and then check out the other extremely generous offerings of that wonderful blog.  Now excuse me, I am going to set myself on fire.

Soundcloud

In addition to making mixes and collecting music, I am working on a musical project (which is starting to finally come along nicely).  I have a Soundcloud page which has very little on it at the moment, but eventually will continually be updated.  It does have a couple of instrumental pieces that may or may not be used as interstitials - but they are all done via tape (namely, my old Akai reel to reel that I rescued from a thrift store and my Echoplex EP-3).

I also have posted the wonderful song from Fiona Richmond and twenty minutes of choice game show music from the 70s, so there's that too.

Hysterie

No rhyme or reason - just a mix of library music from my collection that caught my fancy in the past few days.  Some of it is probably somewhat obscure.

I pulled a boner and neglected to write down the tracklist, so I'm going to have to figure it out.  I'll post as soon as I've got it sorted.  If a track catches your fancy, let me know and I'll figure out what it is.  (Said to no one.)

This is fun.



I've been obsessed with hidden messages in music since I was very little and my father scared me shitless by turning the motor off on his turntable and playing Revolution 9 backwards for me.

And just because I like Boards of Canada, though this has nothing to do with possible "secret messages" - it's very well done, especially the 1969 segment:





Happy Cycling.

Program Me!

Part 1.

A fever dream stream-of-consciousness audio of songs for or by children, from Film / TV, children's records, etc. from the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

I'm not even going to attempt a track listing here. If there is something you hear and would like to know what it is, let me know and I can tell you.

There will be a second part eventually.  

Why

Emotional; Bittersweet; Bemused; Existential


Scott Walker - Plastic Palace People
Bulbous Creation - End of the Page
Euphoria - There is Now
Susan Christie - No One Can Hear You Cry
Michel Legrand - Ask Yourself Why
Shuggie Otis - Aht Uh Mi Hed
The High Llamas - The Hot Revivalist
Broadcast - Hawk
The Association - Pandora's Golen Heebie Jeebies
50 Foot Hose - God Bless the Child
The Left Banke - Dark is the Bark
C.A. Quintet - Dr. of Philosophy
Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends - Snow Queen
BJ Ward - That's How the World is Made
Stereolab - Galaxidion
Scott Walker - The Seventh Seal


I'm having trouble with the Mediafire account so I will have to find other means to provide download. (I do realize no one is reading this now - but perhaps in the future.)