Antlers (from Lanterns/Antlers 7” and Song Islands CD)
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As mentioned previously, this mix was, I believe, made concurrently with Lanterns, but the differences between them are very much night and day (“there’s a light side and a dark side…”) Also as previously mentioned I have no idea what was going through my head as I put this together or why it is so, so different from Lanterns. It is lost to wear and tear of history now.
In what was, certainly, an unintentional happenstance, this mix created the template for the entire game mix series. Start low-key, slow, understated, and let that play out for a number of songs, a calm preamble, then burst in with the jarring switch to big hits and sing-alongs. In the record industry they sometimes refer to it as “the big three”. Three (or any number I guess) colossal hit songs back to back to back which announce the official arrival of an album (I sort of learned that phrase at an Owls show at the Middle East Upstairs with Matt).
And from there the mix just kind of sprawls out. Get in as many songs as you can, as many different artists and bands, then end it on a few big high notes.
And that’s the format. It’s a simple and classic as that and somehow it has never gotten old. Oh, of course deviation happens and is fun, but this map is what I think we would all consider to be the “classic” game mix flow.
And here we have it. As Zoe once described, The Microphones song which gives each mix its namesake is generally the first or last song, although I think that is actually not as much a hard fast fact as it might seem. Here, however, is the first example, haha. Antlers is a beautiful, subdued, Phil, being plaintive and in love. I’m always a sucker for starting a mix with a song that is, in its way, completely removed from the rest of what follows, false starts, last songs put first, things like that. I think it lends an inherent epic-ness to the ordinary. Then when the second song comes bleeding in it just feels so cinematic. As is the case here.
I had known of Soul Coughing for years and always struggled with them/not taken them too seriously. Classic example of good ideas and interesting sounds housed in, what I always considered to be, silly dressing. But somehow my eyes opened and my mind changed. I wish I could recall what the defining moment was for me. Like many of the early mix revelations, the people around me and their affection for bands made me reassess my own take on them (Marty: Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Seminara: everything he listened to, and in this case Coree. She’s also personally responsible for me giving Ben Folds another shake).
I had no idea at the time that Screenwriter’s Blues was such a huge song, and would, in turn, basically become the defining manifesto for the entire mix project and my own life.
I was not aware, consciously, but, like many things in my life, maybe my subconscious mind knew exactly what was going on and was gently guiding me with its invisible hands. This song is practically, single-handedly responsible for all of what followed, it accidentally, eloquently, expressed out loud everything that mattered. It symbolized the entire atmosphere of the time.
I was, and am, in love with Los Angeles, it’s strange history and glamour, its trash and ghosts and horror. Its squalor and magic. And this song, more than any I have heard before or since (except maybe “Los Angeles, I’m Yours”) hit’s the nail on the head. This lays out the entire feeling of it for me.
There it is, everything I dreamed of and escaped to in my mind when the world was too awful to look at, “And the radio man says ‘it is a beautiful night out there in Los Angeles…’” It is the middle of the night and I am out here, awake, reaching out to the living city, the sleeping world, is anyone else awake, is the world still going on. At night the world feels more magical, less real, more like a theater, when the sky gets black but for the lights on buildings and the stars and the moon above, it is hard not to feel connected to something huge and invisible. It is a beautiful night out there.
The One AM Radio might still have been a local band at this point or he might have already moved away. I think this record might have just come out at the time, and, like all One AM releases it was like a perfect little grey jewel that washed up out of the ocean for you. This opening run of songs, I kind of recall now, was sort of me continuing that quasi-hip-hop/indie rock thing that I was trying to explore on Lanters. Wow, I haven’t thought of this for years. I haven’t thought of or realized or remembered that these two mixes were in fact closely related after all. I remember it vividly now. Though this run is decidedly less hip-hop than the run on Lanterns, I remember trying to keep the thread alive.
Soul Coughing always has that mildly hip-hope tone, with the upright base and the tight drumming and Doughty talking beautiful nonsense over top of it all. The One AM song has that slow-down funky drummer sample going behind it which spills perfectly into what else? A Portishead song of course. Speaking of grey and slowed down and spooky and quasi hip-hop, of course they’d have to go here, and especially the song where they use that weird tiny Pharcyde sample. This run, of course, culminates in our first look at Creeper Lagoon on the mixes and our first experience with the thing we came to call “The Wraith”. Again those slowed-down hip-hop drums loops come in and suddenly we are greeted with this strange warbling blur, what sounds like an audio recording of a ghost, The Wraith became one of the weird characters in the story of the mixes, a strange bit character that somehow defined apart of it all. One spooky song spills into the next, creating a little pocket of oddness, not hinting at all towards where the rest of the mix is headed. This would become a standard mix set-up.
Then finally, twenty minutes into the mix, the mix really arrives. And it’s Ben Folds making his debut appearance, roaring out of the gloom. As I mentioned BF was another one of those people I had long ago written off and decided to reassess in light of the opinions of my friends, an thank goodness I did. This was just one of those songs that everyone loved and knew. It is probably an amalgamation of different times in my head but I have this image of me, Chad, Liz, Coree and maybe Fred and some others singing along to this at the top of our lungs one sunny afternoon at Bmax during the shift change-over when the entire morning and night crew and whoever was there hanging out were all there together.
What follows is a serious run. I always enjoy this moment on the mixes, after a brooding and sometimes dour opening suite of some length all of the sunshine bursting through the clouds and just really stacking up a line of really awesome ultra-hits, and this is one of the best ones ever executed on the mixes. July, July comes next, a direct result of Fredrick Walter Shannon’s presence and mixes in my life and at Bmax. I remember when he started working there and he was going to Emerson and indie rock was starting to blow up in the world again and I thought to myself ok, we have a bonafide college indie rock kid who is not afraid to bring in mix Cds full of very current “new” as-yet-unproven music. It was refreshing. I had been sort of off of the whole putting very, very up to the minute things on mixes for a little while (not since the “…today is the first day of the rest of your life” series of a couple years before) and it was nice to be reminded that it was ok to do that. He often had The Decemberists on his mixes and I had sort of forgotten about them (I’ll never forget, years before, when I first heard them, totally writing them off as Neutral Milk Hotel rip-offs, I mean come on, really affected vocals, singing about “sinews”, gimme a break! I guess I was really only looking at a tiny detail of their amazing whole). In that way Fred is one of the people most directly responsible for the existence of these mixes. He and Coree were probably the biggest inspirations on their initial creation, one person reopening my eyes to the world around me at that moment, the other reopening them to the one I had been carrying with me for years, and both of them, inspirations to reach out more to the people around me and connect. Ironic in a way, haha, we were/are all, in our different ways, such closed-in-our-own-heads people. “July, July” was a particular favorite around work when July actually rolled around. We had been listening to those first 8 mixes since the winter and it was a serious kick when July finally got there, not only for the weather change but also for what amounts to another of the very first examples of the mirror-facing-mirror concept. I remember I was on a trip to Atlanta when all this went down and I remember Coree telling me about it and being really fired up.
That, of course, gives way to a another one of those epic, mission-statement, mix songs, “This Year”. It is always really heartening to me when an artist, who has been putting out amazing music for years and years, late in their careers, releases what is, arguably, their best album ever. It is very much the opposite of most creative arcs but it does happen from time to time and this gives us all reason to go on living, which is, of course, the theme of this song. Man, this was then, and still is serious rallying anthem for many of us I’m sure. I can remember a lot of very serious sing-alongs to this in Bmax, in particular, again, with Chad hitting those serious high harmonies. I can remember the first time I heard this on a real stereo (though I have one, many do not and even so I still listen to music much of the time on a computer or on headphones, which are both totally fine) and, like hearing most music in that way, hearing the low end and the bass of the song for the first time, this was in my room in Allston, and just literally starting to tear up as the song opened up.
“Son of Sam”, oh Elliott. You are sort of the eternal patron saint of KINGS, you are very much our Kurt Cobain. This is one of those songs we have spent a lot time puzzling over the lyrics and sentiment of. “I’m a little like you, but more like the Son of Sam” what?
I have always championed Figure 8 as maybe the best Elliott Album, and I feel like it gets maligned a lot for reasons I don’t comprehend. It seems like it always comes down to people talking about it being too “polished” or too produced. I mean, come on, what is this 1987 and we’re all worried about who’s going to “sell out” next? And if that is your argument where the hell were you when freaking XO came out as his first one on a major label and all that? Figure 8 is a discussion all by itself. Let’s just say I happen to think he really gets it all right all the way through on that one.
Years before, when I worked at Newbury Comics, I remember this song having a lot of particular meaning to myself and a few others who were all also very unhappy with our jobs and the management. That line about “told the boss off, made my move” I would always get really pumped for that one and I’d think to myself “someday…”. Years later, at Bmax, I think it took on a similar significance for a lot of us.
There is one part in this song which, ironically, really makes me think of my own father, which is something that doesn’t happen all that much in mixes. My dad plays piano/keyboards and pretty much toured in shitty bar bands my entire childhood. But I do have some fond memories of him playing around the house sometimes (he knew I liked Lady Madonna” by The Beatles a lot and he would always launch into that), albeit, often completely drunk, but hey, the man has his own demons to deal with. The point being there’s a part in this song around the 1:40 mark where Elliott is really like swinging it out on the piano in this breakdown and it just really, really sounds like what I hear when I hear my dad playing piano in my head, and that has always meant a lot to me.
“I Felt Your Shape” is the first of just a handful of times a Phil song appears on a mix and it is not the “featured” “namesake” song. Back in the day I used to have a lot more anxiety about that. I was afraid of running out of songs to name mixes after. But, as divine providence would have it, I accidentally picked the perfect artist to couch my project in. It is now apparent to me that even if Phil never released another song we would have enough out there to make these mixes until doomsday. That he also continues to record and put out music is just the icing on the cake.
And that runs nicely, acoustically, into “The Sun” by Mirah. Again one of the ways I know these first two mixes we made simultaneously is this. Another song placed on the mix specifically to be a part where Cabrie would get happy and feel a part of the excitement. In an uninteresting side note, a copy of this Mirah record “Advisory Committee” arrived in the mail from Ebay for me today. I’m pretty excited. Phil has a lot of satellites and friends, Mirah being one of the most significant, and this record (produced by Phil) basically sounds like a Microphones record with Mirah taking the lead.
Ah, Olivia Tremor Control, you are so, so frustrating. The Elephant Six collective have always been dear to my heart, home to so many amazing artists (Neutral Milk, Apples in Stereo etc…) and so many people love Olivia but man, they have always been confounding to me. This record came out when I lived in Seattle and I really, really wanted to like it. It looked cool, I liked the ideas behind it, but it just always sounded like bad attempts and “experimental” music to me. Kind of just half-assed song writing interspersed with bad collage and whatnot. And, I mean, I love some experimental, “out” shit, but this just always fell short, with the exception of a handful of songs, that just make it that much more frustrating, “Hilltop…” being one of them. This has a good march-ing feel that really illustrates the idea of the song I think and ends with this weird collage that, years later, would really seem to be echoed in the final moments of the “Lifted…” album by Bright Eyes. The whole sound bite thing of people talking about random shit (very Beatlesque) (on here it’s something about waking up underwater and coming out of the ground, on Lifted [the story is in the soil] its something about huge staircases that lead down to the ocean).
I heard about Brendan Benson from my friend Christine (who I saw recently on one lovely day on my trip to Boston), and I forget how it came up. I just remember being at her house (she lived on like Empire street or some shit in lower Allston then) and talking about him. This comes from his first record which is really solid, pick it up. I think this song is in that “underappreciated” category of mix selections. As in, not enough people are familiar with this and I think they’d be into it.
And speaking of people with endless amounts of songs to pour over, there are so many tiny little Mountain Goats things out there we may never have time in our loves to appreciate them all. But again, that’s one of the best parts about the mixes (and mix-offs) it sits me down with huge catalogs of unconcurred forest sets me to learning about them and, in turn, putting them out there for my friends to hear and learn about as well. “Crows” is the flagship example of a song that, for all intents and purposes, is out there, lost in the world, a needle in the hay(stack), pulled out and presented and deified. (Pick one tree from the forest.”) “and they’d sold the place to some guys who were building graduate student housing”? it is lines like this that make us all wish we were on dates with John Darnielle.
Stephen Brodsky (who Jenn enjoys calling Stephen BRO-dsky) is a Boston insitution from way back. This isn’t the time or place to get into him and his history (though when, a million miles down the line, I get to the entries for the appendices, we will have a long talk about him and his brilliance and “Stephen Brodsky Day” at the Castle.) Suffice to say he is interesting and great. He is in a band called Cave-In that will melt your face off with its metal and the he does lovely solo things like this and also everything in between.
One of my favorite memories based on him come from talking to Andy Piebald at Newbury one day just before the, then new, Cave-In record “Jupiter” was do to be released alongside the first solo SB record. I asked him how they were and he’s like, “well, one sounds like Faith No More and one sounds like Elliott Smith” and that has always really summed him up for me. At that time in mixing there were still many, many more exclusions and things that would not ever go on a mix, lots of kinds of music, hardcore, metal, etc… which, to me, felt like a challenge more than an obstacle. I’m always up for trying to find a way to make something difficult palatable, to find the “single” on a hard-to-listen-to album or band. Putting SB on here was my way of being sneaky and covert. I figured if you can convert the tough audience with the E Smith-like solo work (although this song actually sounds a lot more like Guided By Voices) then maybe later you can bridge them gently into something like Cave-In.
This is also one of the only songs I ever managed to play all of and sing on the guitar.
Ok, so Olivia Tremor again, and this one is even bigger. This is a great song made humungous by the tiny cameo by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel. This is one of those instances that I love. A situation where someone is just like so bad ass and so down that they can bring in some crazy heavyweights (who themselves would be the sell point or the attraction) to just like do a tiny little cameo and then peace out (other examples include Eddie Van Halen’s Guitar solo on “Beat It” By Michael Jackson, Bill Murray’s scene at the beginning of “The Darjeeling Limited”, Night Rally playing a short, opening band slot on a four band bill 81 Linden, and so on). When Jeff comes on here its like the whole world stops. His voice is his magic and you kind of almost forget that sometimes or have it mildly diluted just listening to his music. To hear it, however, taken out of context and dropped somewhere unexpectedly really pounds the nail. My hair still, as of this writing, stands up and I get chills when he emerges out of nowhere on this song.
“Nuclear War”, the Sun-Ra cover, no idea how I thought of this or what drove me to put it on. I think the kid chorus thing seemed like the kind of thing Coree would get a kick out of, and for me, its always been about the drums in this one, they just make me wanna dance. Much like “don’t sweat the technique” I think this phrase is just really summarizing and important.
Nuclear war: it’s a motherfucker.
what else is there to say?
(also someone post the story of the night Zoe and I listened to all 30 something minutes of “Space is the Place” and much of the “Nuclear War” album by Sun-Ra waiting for Coree to run to the store)
I guess the kid chorus, for me fed, into the cartoon samples that kick on “Beelzebub”.
This one has always struck me as one of the more badass bass-lines of our times. This song really reminds me of living in Nashua, NH and working at that Newbury. I guess that would have been around the time that this album came out and I was going through my first struggle with appreciating Soul Coughing. I remember distinctly there were some mornings when I had no car for a little while for reasons I cannot now recall that one of my managers would sometimes come and pick me up and give me a ride to the stor (also for reasons I cannot now recall) and there would usually be a stop at Dunkin Donuts and at least one morning I recall vividly this song being put on and the both of us just really getting down to it.
The Promise Ring will make appearances later on, but early in the goings all of that middle or “second wave” “emo” stuff still seemed too loaded and loathed to try to hoist upon an unknown audience. But once again (the Stephen BRO-dsky precedent) side projects seemed easier to stomach. Though I guess, to be fair, Maritime had, by then, become Davey’s real, full time project. What can I say, we have all always been suckers for pop songs with pianos and horns and people talking about wanting to sleep away their problems. This almost feels like my own sort of easing myself into reaccepting Ben Folds into my life, though I cannot confirm that.
Again, no idea here. Ok Go had like done the Buzz Bin thing and had a couple radio hits and were of that station where it seemed like people knew them and just thought they were lame for that. Somehow I had a copy of this CD laying around and I cannot at all recall what led me to put it on and browse, but, lo and behold, they write a lovely tune. And so on it went (really wish I could remember this thought process). This was one of those me and Liz songs I seem to recall. You can always count on Liz to randomly come out of the woodwork on something weird and out of left field (more on that when we get to mix 8). I just remember she and I dancing around to this on several occasions in the back of the restaurant.
And, um, yeah. I guess this is sort of a throwback, er, throw sideways, to Lanterns. Certainly a song that seems out of place here on its own, but if you look at Lanterns it has some precedent. Another song that was a big hit around Newbury back in the day, one of those moments where I saw people I thought were cool and respected getting into music that I thought, at that time, had no intrinsic value, and I then decided I needed to reconsider. I mean come on, who doesn’t love this song? That fucking breakdown? It goes down to just the snare and hi-hat. And so it was written.
Once again, no recollection how this ended up on here, other than that I was banking on lots of us liking Weezer? I wish I remembered. Weezer of course would go on to be a staple of mixing and mix rules and all that. Certainly the whole world can attest to the brilliance of the first two Weezer albums, and we are no exceptions. (Is this the time and place for me to recount some personal Weezer history? I can’t decide. Maybe save it for the appearance of some other “Pinkerton” tracks).
And finally, “The Phantom of the Opera”. I mean, this is just me trying to put one over on the audience. I got turned onto Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, again, at Newbury in Harvard Square, and I credit the amazing Dan Goldberg with that (Dan, I miss you sir! You are truly a good egg.) I mean, I’m always a sucker for good pop punk and harmonies and over-the-top-ness, and here we have it. Can’t think of what made me think to include this other than the serious stage-grabbing rock presence of it and that crazy minor half-step harmony thing during the chorus that just makes my blood boil (0:59-1:03 and 1:28-1:32). For me this is always the claw-throwing, devil-sign raising, foot up on the monitor guitar playing crashing finale to the mix. What can I say? I’m a dork.
And that was “Antlers”
it is 3:06 AM
this is the seance
xo
