Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
To celebrate All Countries Matter day, a (somewhat cynical) genre-spanning selection of songs for the Fourth of July.
If you’re American and will be 18 or older in November: Make sure you’re registered to vote, and vote this November. We could be so much better than we are right now.
Moving into our fourth month of COVID-19 induced restrictions and “shelter in place” recommendations, I think a lot of people are getting a little frisky. So here’s two hours of tunes that could be considered either entirely appropriate or entirely inappropriate for the situation, depending on your point of view.
Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends (prompted by the Gigs mix I posted) to create a mix based around songs that I’d have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. To get a little help putting together the playlist, I put out a call for requests on Facebook, and ended up with something around 14 hours of possible songs, almost entirely pulled from requests by people who used to see me spin at the Lost Abbey.
Since 14 hours is far too long to do as a single mix, I’ve broken the requests up into multiple 80-ish-minute playlists. Here’s the fourth of quite a few to come!
After taking last weekend off (but hey, I gave you almost four hours in two mixes last time I updated), here’s another new practice mix. Every song in this mix is somewhere between 105 and 115 BPM. And as always, this was mixed “live” and has no post-processing or editing work, so while it may not be perfect, it’s all me!
So this is a little bit of silly self-indulgence…but then, wouldn’t that pretty much describe this entire website? ;)
Back when I was DJing at Gig’s Music Theater, I was also running a website for the club (and though I have no way of verifying this, I’ve always assumed that we were one of the first clubs to have a website running). As part of the website, I kept track of my requests, and kept a running “top requests” list. Since I archived the website as it was when the club shut down, I still have the last “top requests” list that I posted, back in 1998. Looking at it the other day, it struck me that it could make for an entertaining playlist….
So here we are: Two hours and forty-five minutes of the top club hits in 1998, as determined by the requests at an all-ages, non-alcoholic, alternative club in Anchorage, Alaska. In other words, this list probably wouldn’t match a similar list anywhere and anytime else.
It’s a little rough around the edges in spots, but that’s cause it’s recorded “live”, with no post-processing or editing. It’s not perfect, but I’ve rarely been perfect, and I think it ended up an honest and pretty fun throwback to what you’d have heard at Gig’s “back in the day”.
Since I’ve kind of slacked off on my ‘Gallimaufry’ meme posts over the past few weeks, here’s a music meme from Don to play with.
How many songs?
15,293 songs, 69.10 GB, 51 days 11 hours 46 minutes 42 seconds total playing time.
Sorted by song title, the first and last songs:
Sorted by artist, the first and last songs:
Sorted by album, the first and last songs:
Top 10 most-played songs (Most-played song at No. 1):
(Um…yeah. I’ve been listening to this a lot recently.)
Last 10 recently played songs (Most recently played at No. 1):
Find “sex”; how many songs?
Find “death”; how many songs?
Find “love”; how many songs?
Find “peace”; how many songs?
”To Strong (Cosmic)“ by Ultimate from the album Tripnotized Vol. 3 (1996, 6:33).
Some people. I mean, come on…
My first exposure to the Pixies was when i was in Europe with the also now reuinited Skinny Puppy on their Mind TPI tour. Must have been 1987….
The Skinny Puppy guys were driving me crazy. Cevin was fight with the tour manager on a daily basis. It was just not an environment that i was particularly enjoying. I was helping to set up the stage and sell merchandise for Puppy. It meant i had a fair amount of down time during the day. So i wrote long notes to the Throwing Muses and the Pixies begging them to get me off the Skinny Puppy tour. I would write them on the back of the posters for our shows and then leave them a kind soul from the club to hand off to someone from the Pixies and the Throwing Muses the next night.
And if that weren’t enough…
Did i mention that i once had dinner with Michael Stipe? But by now, who hasn’t? He liked my shirt. I was tour managing the left wing of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, Consolidated, when we were playing in Athens. The drummer for Consolidated (Phil) was putting together a compilation album for In Defense of Animals and Michael was contributing a song. He came and joined us for dinner.
As someone who, having listened to the Pixies, the Throwing Muses, Skinny Puppy, R.E.M., and Consolidated for more years than I can think of, but because of living in Anchorage — who nobody cool goes to when they’re touring — never having had even the chance of seeing these artists in concert, let alone having dinner with them, I want you to know that I say this from the deepest, darkest depths of my heart:
You lucky bastard.
;)
Sorry. Just had to get that out of my system.
(And yeah, R.E.M. does still rock — their Bumbershoot show was excellent.)