That Summer Feeling? (Redux)

Blogger deleted one of my mixtape posts. There was a copyright complaint. This is the first time I've been exposed to such a thing, and I assume it was because of the three MP3 files linked to the post. (They don't explain what the particular infraction was, just delete the whole post.)

I'm wary of posting portable versions of copyrighted works (i.e. MP3s). I've only posted stuff that is presumably in the public domain, or came from an obscure non-commercial source, or was out of print for decades because there's no market for it. I only post the odd tune, not whole albums. We'll see if any of my other posts get zapped; I wonder why only this one did.

I'm reposting it again, this time without the link to any portable musics.

Monday, December 01, 2008

That Summer Feeling?

The local radio station played a set of summery songs the other day, thumbing its nose at the season that’s in it, and in the meantime reminding me of a one-hit job that should be on the Summer mixtape. Len’s (or is it LEN’s?) charming nerdpop illuminated some year or other approximately a decade ago, or at least its one hit “Steal My Sunshine” romp did…At least two tracks here – “Parklife” and “Rockaway Beach” – are included because they put me in mind of a warm summer’s day without necessarily being explicit about it….But it is just the start of winter where I am, and so bracing workouts of “School’s Out” and “Surfing USA” seem just a bit silly right now…

The Undertones are here twice, because despite their dour appearance on the cover of their first LP, here was a band that actually sounded like summer, notwithstanding the one track that namechecks the season. Something about Feargal Sharkey’s high vibrato vocal and two bright rhythm guitars that evokes hot pavement, bright skies, and sweat…Jonathan Richman recorded "That Summer Feeling" at least twice, but here's a live version from a 1983 tape called The Penthouse Radio Show. It's been sitting in my attic for a very long time and needed to be heard again...

The Summer Mixtape

School’s Out – Alice Cooper

Surfing USA – Beach Boys

Parklife – Blur

Summer School – Bucky and the Premiers

Under the Boardwalk – The Drifters

Summertime Blues – Flying Lizards

That Summer Feeling (Live 1983) – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

BONUS TRACK: I’m a Jerk (Live 1983) – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

The Trip – Kim Fowley

Sunny Afternoon – The Kinks

Steal My Sunshine – Len

Summer in Siam – The Pogues

Rockaway Beach – Ramones

It’s Up to You – Shop Assistants

June Rhyme – The Stingrays (London)

Here Comes the Summer – The Undertones

Under the Boardwalk – The Undertones

Island in the Sun - Weezer

Here's a link to the original Summer mixtape tracklisting.

Java Jive: The Coffee Mixtape

John’s Cache 3, Bob Dylan 2

After going undefeated in the first three, the gap is now closing. That’s right, it’s been a competition all along, and how can you not win when you’re your own DJ? By not having the tunes, that’s how. These last two themes have been junk, to be sure, and it’s the only way BD can win (I think). But I admit, with Coffee, this is the first time I’ve had to go fishing outside my own collection and knowledge, just to fill up half a tape. To counter that unfortunate decline in standards, I’ve also included two very personal selections that are unique to my collection—a couple of audience recordings—one of which I made 25 years ago.

~

Well, it’s, FIFTY CUPS OF COFFEE and you know IT’S ON

So announces Adam Horovitz at the start of the Hello Nasty LP, pretty much summing up the Beastie Boys’ approach to music-making. “Super Disco Breakin’” isn’t about coffee, but the hyperactive MC-ing that rips through the first two minutes and seven seconds of the band’s fifth album—their second-best—exhibits the over-caffeinated methodology that has been a trademark throughout their long career. No one else on the mixtape is quite as embracing of the stimulating properties of the bitter bean—bouncing off the walls, rocking, joyful.


Except Bal Croce, that is, spastic singer with the Stingrays (the 80s, psychobilly/folk rock ones from London, not the 90s surf rockers, 21st century cruise ship entertainers, or various 60s garage incarnations). “Another Cup of Coffee”, one the tracks on the B-side of the group’s debut “…On Self-Destruct” EP, was one of the few ‘rays originals co-written by Bal with main songwriter Alec Palao. On the original recording, it’s hard to make out what words his highly amped and sometimes guttural motormouth is spewing besides the title refrain (“another cup of coffee, and everything’ll be all right…”), but my understanding has always been that it’s about a spoiled rich girl with a drinking problem (intelligible words include “your daddy’s car,” “down another pint on the way to the bar,” “bourgeois ways,” and “mom’s expectations”). I'm not completely sure those are accurate, but good luck making out the lyrics from this exclusive live version which I recorded on my old ghetto blaster at Mike Spenser’s original Garage club in Brixton, south London, on March 19th, 1983. Extra bonus track from same gig: "My Flash on You" (cover of the original by Love). [photo: The Stingrays on stage at the Garage]


Other coffee songs? In my groping around for filler, I was pleased to learn about The Mods, a Japanese punk band formed in 1974. Listening to a snippet of Espresso, I hear echoes of the Godfathers and the Sid Presley Experience, hometown contemporaries of the Stingrays. The last of the truly wired tracks on the mixtape is "Mug A Joe" by Mug A Joe, a short-lived teen band that played about a dozen gigs in the Dublin area in 2004. The live recording is very likely from this gig. The other songs all namecheck coffee but are mostly smooth or at least less frantic, recognizing that caffiene can, actually, be taken in moderation and be quite calming.

Here is the track list for the Coffee tape:

Black Coffee - All Saints
Super Disco Breakin’ – Beastie Boys
Black Coffee – Black Flag
Java – Bob Crosby and His Bobcats
One More Cup of Coffee – Bob Dylan
The Coffee Grind – Charlie & the Jives
One Cup of Coffee and a Cigarette – Glen Glenn
Cappuccino Bar - Jonathan Richman
Cappucino – MC Lyte
Espresso – The Mods
Iodine in My Coffee – Muddy Waters
Mug A Joe – Mug A Joe [MP3]
Black Coffee – Peggy Lee
Another Cup of Coffee – The Stingrays [MP3]
BONUS TRACK: My Flash on You -- The Stingrays [MP3]
Coffee in the Pot – Supergrass



Click here to see Bob Dylan's Coffee mixtape selections.

Lame Ballgame: the Baseball Mixtape

Baseball has had a measurable impact on popular language and culture, at least in the English-speaking world. Right now in Ireland, for example, a country where nobody plays or watches baseball, I guarantee somebody is speaking in a business meeting about their company needing to “step up to the plate”, or that the latest projection for next month’s revenue is only a “ballpark figure”. No one will think about baseball when saying or hearing it, nor even realize there is a connection.

In terms of popular culture, one needs to look no further than Hollywood, where a new baseball movie begins production every three weeks. I made that statistic up, but here’s a real one: the phrase “baseball movies” returns 207,000 hits on Google. (“Rugby movies” is good for only 9,510.)

Baseball + Language = :-)
Baseball + Movies = :-)
Baseball + Internet = :-)
Baseball + Hot dogs = :-)

Baseball + Music = :-(

Baseball hates music

It’s partly because of those movies that the global language has absorbed baseball-derived idioms beyond the borders of FOX’s MLB franchise coverage map, and definitely not because of popular music. Baseball hates music, and vice-versa. I defy anyone to come up with a baseball mixtape that anyone wants to listen to. Sure, I’ve seen lists of baseball songs before, but they’re full of maudlin dross that reduces fine songwriters to sophomore philosophers. John Fogerty’s “Centerfield”? MORsville, no thanks. Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”? I heard former major leaguer, broadcaster and amateur guitarist Bob Brenly on WGN this year say that no one “inside the game” has ever used or would ever use the term “speedball”, as featured in the Boss’s otherwise inoffensive ditty. It didn’t take long to find corroboration for my thesis that music/baseball hates baseball/music:

“…baseball is only a .180 hitter as a songwriter’s game. It has seldom secured substantial links with commercially successful music. During the past three decades, in fact, the decline of baseball-related lyrical imagery is staggering. The Billboard-charted tunes of Simon and Garfunkel, Meatloaf, John Fogerty, Bruce Springsteen, and The Intruders are really anomalies to a dismal showing for contemporary baseball tunes…Since 1960, baseball tunes have simply failed to attract substantial national interest.”

This is not to say that musicians don’t like baseball. On the contrary, look at Billy Corgan, Nils Lofgren, Eddie Vedder, or Johnny Ramone. Bing Crosby owned 15% of the Pittsburgh Pirates for over 20 years. Emmylou Harris, it turns out, is a baseball fanatic (“As soon as the show is over, I get on the [tour] bus and watch [ESPN’s] ‘Baseball Tonight.’ ”). And the players love music too: Roger Clemens’ favorite group is Led Zeppelin, Bronson Arroyo has his own band that plays in the clubs in Cincinnati, and Kerry Wood shills for Gibson guitars. None of this has resulted in a thing called “good baseball music”.

Bob Dylan’s baseball mixtape seems over-populated with novelty songs and olde time stuff. To fill up an hour-long show, he was forced to include two versions of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”—perhaps one of the worst songs ever written—with one of them performed by himself. This tune--used constantly in the background-- almost ruined Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary on the history of the sport, and it has taken on a grotesque level of over-importance at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where celebrities beg to lead the crowd in singing it during the 7th inning stretch so that they can also plug their latest project during in-game interviews on Cubs’ TV and radio telecasts.

But at least BD could come up with a tape. I feel like I got "caught looking," with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. I think I might need to forfeit on this one, and “take one for the team”. Because this is all I got:

· 2 promotional jingles for the Cubs: “Hey Hey Holy Mackerel” by Johnny Frigo, circa 1969, and “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame” by The Harry Simeone Songsters, dating back to 1960 and used on broadcasts by the Cubs, Dodgers and Mets intermittently ever since. There’s also the cheesy “Go Cubs Go” by Steve Goodman, recorded in 1984 as a radio promo and currently the team’s victory song, but I don’t like it and would not put it on a tape. Don’t much care for Goodman’s more serious “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”, either.
· I’m a Little Airplane (“I fly in the dark…over the baseball park…”) – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
· Beat on the Brat (i.e., “with a baseball bat”) – Ramones
· Brown-eyed Handsome Man (“2-3 the count, nobody on, he hit a high fly into the stands…”) – Chuck Berry
· Mrs. Robinson (the Joe DiMaggio references) – Simon and Garfunkel
· 10 different songs by the Beastie Boys with throwaway references to baseball, including teams (Yankees), players (Mike Piazza, Rod Carew, Phil Rizzuto, Sadaharu Oh), stadiums (Shea), pitches (curve) and bats (Wiffle).

Seriously, that’s all.

Here’s a link to BD’s baseball mixtape on Amazon.com. Its sales ranking is not provided. No customer reviews yet. Be the first.