Songs from the County Hell: The Devil Mixtape

Stay on the other side of the road
'Cause you can never tell
We’ve a thirst like a gang of devils
We’re the boys from the county Hell
--THE BOYS FROM THE COUNTY HELL, 1984

I admit it, I looked at someone else’s devil tape. It’s the only way to explain how Van Halen appears below. Plenty of better artists on that other list, but somehow it inserted that song directly in my head and now I can’t get it out. It’s ironic because that was an embarrassing mistake of a schoolboy album purchase, the first VH LP was, but now it’s come back to, ahem, haunt. Please don’t click the link.

Similarly, “Devil With a Blue Dress On” is included here for one reason only, and that’s the rare mention of a wighat. I’ve only ever come across the term here, in the Cramps’ “Call of the Wighat”, and in Tommy Tucker’s “Hi-Heel Sneakers”. Seems like something the devil would don.

The Pogues like to sing about the devil and about hell. They even use "Straight to Hell" by the Clash as their stage entrance music. "The Boys From the County Hell" could win the Grammy for Best Insult in a Lyric, should it ever be nominated:

At the time I was working for a landlord
And he was the meanest bastard that you have ever seen
And to lose a single penny would grieve him awful sore
And he was a miserable bollocks and a bitch’s bastard’s whore

Robert Johnson was the bluesman who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in return for talent – a talent which included writing at least three haunting tunes about his mythical benefactor. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a California kid who I found unappealing – the way he looked, the way he sang, and the way he appropriated from Robert Johnson for his band, the Gun Club (pictured above with Kid Congo Powers, seated)—but in "Preaching the Blues," he (along with Ward Dotson on slide guitar) got a truly diabolical result.

"Handsome Devil" is one of the Smiths harder rocking songs; I’m pretty sure it was the B side of their first single. Morrissey would hate being on a mixtape right next to someone like Tricky. I don’t think "Hell is Round the Corner" mentions the devil, but Tricky (pictured, left) does a nice job looking like him in the video, while producing a song that sounds like it's coming from an underworld cave.

The Devil Mixtape

Devil’s Haircut – Beck
Devil Dance – The Devils
Race With The Devil – Gene Vincent
Friend of the Devil – Grateful Dead
Preaching the Blues – The Gun Club
Devil with a Blue Dress on – Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels
The Boys From The County Hell – The Pogues
Whiskey You’re the Devil – The Pogues
Hellhound on my Trail – Robert Johnson
Me and the Devil Blues – Robert Johnson
Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil) – Robert Johnson
Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
Makin' Deals – The Satans
Handsome Devil – The Smiths
Hell Is Round the Corner – Tricky
Runnin’ With the Devil – Van Halen

Here’s a link to BD’s The Devil mixtape. I did not look at this list (which has four of the same songs) before I made this tape.

The Pride of Poverty

When they busted my chops over That Summer Feeling, it sent a chilling effect through the site. So cold it got, that I’ve now lost for the first time in several mixtapes. But for what it’s worth, I’m partial to the Rolling Stones’ version of Money, but I like the original too…I wanna thank Jace the Ace Face for a brief flirtation with DC funk in the 1980s, with Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers’ succinctly titled “We Need Money” one of the better examples on record…And finally (so soon?) I remember watching this clip of Elvis Costello when it first aired on Letterman about 26 years ago. In fact, for some strange reason, I recorded it on my ghetto blaster (built-in mic recording output from TV speaker), and kept it on an actual mixtape which is still kicking around the gaff. An embarrassment of riches this aint, but there is a pride in poverty.

The Poor Man's Rich Man Poor Man Mixtape

Money, That’s What I Want – Barrett Strong
The Poor Orphan Child – The Carter Family
We Need Money – Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers
Bankrobber – The Clash
Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Man Out of Time – Elvis Costello
Poor Paddy on the Railway – The Dubliners
Big Boss Man – Jimmy Reed
Promised Land – Johnny Allan
Sometimes I Wantcha for Your Money – The Milkshakes
I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Everyday – The Pogues
Money, That’s What I Want – Rolling Stones
Do Re Mi - Woody Guthrie

Here is a link to the winning mixtape. Check out some Japanese folkies rocking the last entry from BD’s homeboy.

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.

No Xmas for John's Cache

And the Christmas lights, they blew up
Now the leccy's all gone dead
I look like a coal miner
And I've a pain inside my head
--A CHRISTMAS LULLABY (1996)

I’m not gonna dwell on the negative, but this theme is woeful. Both the theme itself and my attempt to make a tape. It’s like the baseball theme – there’s just so few songs on topic that are any good. Two of my favorite artists from the borough of Queens – Run DMC and the Ramones – both made very forgettable Christmas songs late in their careers, leaving a bad taste, so I’m not gonna bother with them. It’s ill-timed too, so let’s just get it over with, concede to BD, and move on.

Little Saint Nick – The Beach Boys
Christmas Greetings – The Beatles
Merry Christmas Baby – Chuck Berry
Little Drummer Boy – Bing Crosby and David Bowie
Santa Claus is Back in Town – Elvis Presley
No Xmas for John Quays – The Fall
Christmas Episode 1946 – Jack Benny Radio Program
Run Rudolph Run – Keith Richards
Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
A Christmas Lullaby – Shane MacGowan and the Popes
Santa Claus – The Sonics
Comanche (Link Wray's Christmas) – Wild Billy Childish & the Musicians of the British Empire
Jesus Christ – Woody Guthrie

Bob Dylan's victorious Xmixtape.

Locked Up: the Jail Mixtape

Back in 1981, someone pointed out to me the macho cartoon aspect of The Clash, mostly in their choice of lyrical content and song/album titles. I wasn’t too interested in that kind of analysis at the time, but I filed away the information anyway. Visual image-wise, of course, they loved dressing up. Sometimes you’d see pictures of the group and they would look like bikers-- other times, they would be cowboys, policemen, soldiers, foppish dandies (is there any other kind?) -- or all of the above. That’s it! The Clash were the Village People!

I’m not sure if they ever dressed up specifically as jailbirds, but they certainly looked liked some kind of prisoners on the cover of their very first single. Some editing was required to get the Jail Mixtape to include only three Clash songs. In Jail Guitar Doors, they sang about real-life musicians who fell foul of the law, including Peter Green, Wayne Kramer and Keith Richards. Stay Free was a sweet ode to a thieving friend. Julie’s Been Working for the Drug Squad was inspired by the bust of a drug factory in Wales, IIRC.

They put him in a cell, they said ‘you wait here’
‘Now you got the time to count all of your hair’

Other jail songs on the tape feature more serious crimes, including at least three murders. You'll have to scroll down, though. Too clever by half with the Jail song table -- there's a big blank space and I can't get rid of it:

Song	Artist	Crime(s)	Sentence(s)
Worried Man Blues	The Carter Family	Went across the river and lay down to sleep	21 years on the R.C. Mountain line
John Hardy	Billy Childish	Murder (multiple)	Death
Jail Guitar Doors	The Clash	Deals of cocaine / gun threat / heroin possession	2 years / institutionalized / out on bail ($25,000)
Julie's Been Working for the Drug Squad	The Clash	Illegal manufacture of tablets…in their millions	10-25 years
Stay Free	The Clash	Went on a nicking spree	Three years in Brixton
Jailhouse Rock	Dean Carter	Unknown	Unknown
007 (Shanty Town)	Desmond Dekker	Looting and shooting	Probation
Folsom Prison Blues	The Huns	Shot a man in Reno just to watch him die	Life (implied)
On Parole	Motorhead	Looking for fun / forgot the reason	Forever and a day / parole
Prison Cell Blues	Blind Lemon Jefferson	Nell	Undetermined number of days
The Old Main Drag	The Pogues	Vagrancy	Beaten and mauled at Vine Street lock-up
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos	Public Enemy	Draft dodging	Serving time in the state pen
The Auld Triangle	Ronnie Drew	Unknown	Death
Your Funeral and My Trial	Sonny Boy Williamson II	Threat of murder	None--yet
Prison Cell of Love	Werly Fairburn	Love	Love
Bad Lee Brown (Cocaine Blues )	Woody Guthrie	Blowed his woman down	Life in the penitentiary

Traditional music features heavily when it comes to the Jail Mixtape, but not everything is pure roots. There's comedy, too, from Motorhead, and from Public Enemy:

I got a letter from the government the other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me givin' a damn - I said never

For such an over the top song, I find its opening verse hilarious. Chuck D. deserves credit for inserting humor where you least expect it: there's plenty of wit dispensed throughout his otherwise often angry oeuvre.

Other stuff: I used to see Ronnie Drew around town before he passed away this year, having lived in his parish for the last while...The 80s Huns (not the 70s Texas ones) demoed Folsom Prison in Iowa...I've been to the Vine Street police station, where the protagonist of the Old Main Drag was brutalized "between the metal doors", but only to give a statement as a witness...Dean Carter's performance is the wildest on the mixtape, Desmond Dekker's the prettiest, and Werly Fairburn just has the best name.



Click here for Bob Dylan's Jail mix.

My Mixtape Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Bob Dylan has a mixtape radio show – it’s on Phantom FM here in Dublin. I like Dylan a little, and I used to love mixtapes. I can’t say I’ve been a faithful listener, but I did catch his holiday theme show last December. He played a bunch of obscuro Christmas records and spewed a surprising lot of between-song patter. Like Joe Strummer during his vanity gig as a BBC World Service DJ, Dylan seemed to be getting off on some kind of midnight hipster Wolfman Jack fantasy. It was a good show, but his shtick did get a little tiresome. Anyway, I like the choice of themes he has used for his shows (“Weather,” “Coffee”, “Trains”, “More Trains,” etc.). So I guess I’ll post my mixtapes using the same themes, and throw in some links where possible. First up is Weather.

Looks like I overlap with BD on three songs, but on two of them, it’s not the same version (see BD’s list at the end of the post)... For all those who still fail to understand that Elvis Presley was once a performer full of only innocence and no artifice, listen to him on I Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine, or any other song on the Sun Sessions LP... The White Stripes are the perfect modern band for the middle aged dude who went through Led Zeppelin, Muddy Waters, Kinks, Buzzcocks and Cramps phases in the 70s and 80s... Epicycle was a band at my high school back then, and props to them for not sounding like Foreigner, whose sampled Cold as Ice chorus is chipmunkized on M.O.P.’s gangsta rap hit, the other redeeming feature of which is a truly monster bass line... Archive.org--a.k.a. the basement of the Internet--has demos from the Warlocks, the precursor to the Grateful Dead... And finally, there are times when I would agree with Youtube user prolo67, who says A Rainy Night in Soho is the best love song ever written. Shame the video features the extra slick 1991 remix (added strings and horns), not the raw, original Poguetry in Motion version.

The Weather Mixtape

300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues - The White Stripes
Four Strong Winds - Johnny Cash
California Sun - The Ramones
Keep on the Sunny Side - The Carter Family
Have You Ever Seen the Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday
Life is a Breeze - Epicycle
Cold As ICE - M.O.P.
Johnny Thunder - The Kinks
Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall - Bob Dylan
Hurricane - The Collins Kids
I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine - Elvis Presley
Storm Warning - Mac Rebennack (aka Dr. John)
Who Loves The Sun - Velvet Underground
Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters
Early Morning Rain - The Warlocks
A Rainy Night in Soho - The Pogues

For reference purposes, here’s Bob Dylan’s Weather tape:

Blow Wind Blow - Muddy Waters
You Are My Sunshine - Jimmie Davis
California Sun - Joe Jones
I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine - Dean Martin
Just Walking in the Rain - The Prisonaires
After the Clouds Roll Away - The Consolers
The Wind Cries Mary - Jimi Hendrix
Come Rain or Come Shine - Judy Garland
It's Raining - Irma Thomas
Didn't It Rain - Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Raining in my Heart - Slim Harpo
Jamaica Hurricane - Lord Beginner
Let the four Winds Blow - Fats Domino
Stormy Weather - The Spaniels
A Place in the Sun (song) - Stevie Wonder
Summer Wind - Frank Sinatra
Uncloudy Day - The Staple Singers
Keep on the Sunny Side - The Carter Family