Mix #1: 5/27/2011

1. Exotic Talk – RJD2
2. Floating – Jape
3. Cult of Personality – Living Colour
4. Peter Gunn – Dick Dale & the Del-Tones
5. Hound Dog – Elvis Presley
6. Bullet to the Head – Village Green *
7. Inhale – Cunninlynguists
8. Triple Science – Amon Tobin
9. Piano Black – Seatbelts
10. Friend is a Four Letter Word – Cake
11. I Hate My Generation – Cracker
12. 3’s and 7’s – Queens of the Stone Age
13. “Cha!” Said the Kitty – Local H
14. Cochise – Audioslave
15. Mr. Jinx – Quarashi
16. Keepin’ Up with the Kids – Mindless Self Indulgence
17. Where There’s a Will There’s a Whalebone – Islands
18. 7th Chamber, Part 2 – Wu-Tang
19. Hold the Ladder – Octopus Project
20. Wild Pack of Family Dogs – Modest Mouse
21. Anti-American Graffiti – J Dilla
22. Creep – Radiohead
23. California Dreamin’ – Mamas and the Papas
24. Instinct Blues – White Stripes
25. M62 Song – Doves

* = video not found

RJD2: Exotic Talk

If you're going to start a ten year mixtape project, why not start with the song that has the most registered plays in your iTunes software?

Jape: Floating

One of the keys to having a badass music collection is to get lots of compilations like That's What I Call Music and the soundtrack to the movie Witness. This will ensure you have a large amount of powerful singles to work with, and you'll also be exposed to lots of bands you haven't heard of before. This particular song I found as part of a compilation series called Back To Mine, wherein dance music DJs put together albums of their favorite music for when they're not DJing.

Living Colour: Cult of Personality

Lookit all these black guys rocking way harder than white guys ever could. Look at Corey Glover's junk underneath that Mr. Perfect Body Glove uniform. I learned a lot watching this video as a young man, but I never learned about guitar. One time I told the guys I play cards with that this song has the baddest guitar riff of all time and this guy who graduated music school told me there was no guitar riff in this song. I don't know.

Dick Dale & The Del-Tones: Peter Gunn

Spy Hunter.

Elvis Presley: Hound Dog

You ain't never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine. Old-school diss song.

Cunninlynguists: Inhale

You're going to need a break before all the ass kicking that happens later on in this mix.

Amon Tobin: Triple Science

Proper mixes need lots and lots of instrumentals to signal shifts in tempo and flow and style. I don't know anything about tempo or flow or style, but I do know a cool instrumental when I hear one. Sometimes I send some music to a friend and tell them they can't handle it. You can't handle this one.

The Seatbelts: Piano Black

This song comes from an animated series about bounty hunters in space who listen to jazz. It's not as good as Big Bang Theory, but, you know...

Cake: Friend is a Four Letter Word

I look for you on every subway car, and if I saw you, I'd keep walking.

Cracker: I Hate My Generation

I only have ten or so songs left over from that first glorious flash of Napster in 1999 or 2000. This is one of them. Cracker, again with the boxing theme.

Queens of the Stone Age: 3's and 7's

This video is awesome, but I don't find that it fits into the aesthetic of the Era Vulgaris album. Which isn't to say that the Era Vulgaris album had a distinctive aesthetic, just that compared to the spooky forest of Lullabies to Paralyze and the black-and-red semen of Songs for the Deaf...

Local H: "Cha!" Said the Kitty

My memory is bad so I'll probably tell this story a lot of times. The only time I saw Local H happened to be at a time in my life where I was starting to realize that going to a lot of live shows was beginning to affect my hearing. Local H was loud as fuck, so I decided to give it a shot. I put the earplugs in and then some guy a few feet behind me shouted "EARPLUGS ARE FOR PUSSIES!" and I thought, yeah, they kind of look like it, and I've never worn them again, and my ears ring for at least a day after every show.

Audioslave: Cochise

I cringe at how much I used to love this album, but our friend who worked at a radio station got us a demo bootleg of it a few months before it came out, and we thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Then Tom Morello did some interview where he was like, "Yeah we know about that bootleg but it's not a good representation of the album, it's totally wack, you still need to buy the album," and the album was almost exactly the same as the demo. That was a bad sign. Then they had a video later on that was one of the worst I've ever seen: just the band driving through the desert and I think they try to drive through a roadblock at the end and the car explodes. Just terrible. Still, for at least two months, this was my Friday-and-40s album, and it was a perfect synthesis of what Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden SHOULD have sounded like.

Quariashi: Mr. Jinx

I remember a street-teamer hustling a Quarashi CD in front of the Avalon (R.I.P.) and it really seemed to me like he didn't believe Quarashi was as awesome as he was making them out to be. This CD has held up much better than whatever show it was I was seeing that night.

Mindless Self Indulgence: Keepin' Up With the Kids

Can't keep up with all of the kids. Which is why we'll play The Mamas and the Papas later on. In the meantime:

Islands: Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone

Haha, fuck you, you thought this was a nice crooning indie jam, you thought you weren't going to have to listen to any hip hop.

Wu-Tang Clan: 7th Chamber Part II

Snake Deadly Act.

Octopus Project: Hold the Ladder

One time I produced a performance for Salem Public Access Television (not to be confused with SCAT TV, Somerville Cable Access Television), and this song was the closing credits.

Modest Mouse: Wild Pack of Family Dogs

The emo kids who I used to work at Borders with (c. 2000) would skateboard and steal books and tell me that Modest Mouse was the next big thing. I never got all the way into them, and I fear it's too late to get all the way into them, but they have a few enchanting jams. Here is one of them.