the online home of Wendex Records, a non-distributed CD custom label
Not a Bryan Ferry reference, but a description of this set of cover versions at Middledawn, including some well-known (Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss,” for instance) and some I’d not heard before (Dishwalla’s take on “Tainted Love”). Definitely worth some of your time, and you can actually listen to the tracks onsite.
Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Daniels has something like seventy-five tracks in this ongoing mix, and she’s posted 20 of them (so far) for public consumption. I’ll mention one here: “Black Metallic” by Catherine Wheel, which, says a friend of hers, is “the most majestic, awe-inspiring song of the 1990s,” and she’s not inclined to disagree.
This is, of course, a collection of Temptations tracks, and mostly a fairly-obvious one, though stuff like “My Baby” (and its pretty-decent B-side, “Don’t Look Back”) had to be snipped to fit on the disc, and I was quite insistent on including the always-overlooked “I Want a Love I Can See,” which dates to 1963 and features a Paul Williams (!) lead vocal. (David Ruffin had yet to come on board.) The young lady with the 360-degree perspective was working for Van Raalte.
Track listing for 111133-2 (all tracks by the Temptations:
Once in a while for no particularly good reason I will call out “Time!” as though I were doing my own version of the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today,” in which you hear this word shouted at regular intervals. (This particular lyric technique has largely fallen into desuetude: the most recent variation I can recall is the periodic call of “Science!” in Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science,” more than two decades ago. Updates will be welcomed.)
Time is also a good subject for a mix, and Monty has a two-disc mix of time-related songs, including most of the obvious ones (the Chambers Brothers were left on the shelf) and, in a stroke of genius, the Guess Who’s “No Time.” I will have to plunder this for a Time cycle of my own.
Stephanie’s “Sock Hop Tape” starts with Debbie Gibson’s “Shake Your Love” and ends with the Promise’s “When In Rome,” both sort-of-iconic 1980s tracks, but in between there’s serious outside-the-decade action, going back as far as 1961 and the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Ingeniously, she’s stuck it between Tiffany and New Edition, and fortunately, I’m not so much of a purist that it would ever occur to me to complain about such a thing.
Assignment: A lot of songs with “Bad” in the title. Difficulty: No Michael Jackson or Jim Croce tracks. Success: Reasonable. This is, of course, the Dark Side of last month’s The Good Stuff, and it might even have been more fun to assemble. The cover is swiped from a legendary French hosiery ad by the late René Gruau.
Track listing for 111132-2:
Are the 1980s the Big Bang of mix tapes? Here’s an artifact from that era:
I, like a lot of kids that grew up during the Reagan years, put a lot of thought and effort into the making of mix tapes.
Here is a playlist I found in a journal from 8th grade. Actually, the journal was given to me for 8th grade graduation, so I guess you could say I was a freshman. Even after all of these years, I can tell I was in the brainstorming phase for this mix tape; because I could give a damn about some of these songs, for instance the Chuck Berry tune. The theme was song titles that were girls’ names.
Been there (a couple of times), done that. Here’s what was on his track list:
- “Diane” by Husker Du
- “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel
- “Maybelline” by Chuck Berry
- “Vicky Verky” by The Squeeze
- “Lola” by The Kinks
- “Athena” by The Who
- “Michelle” by The Beatles
- “Suzy Q” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
- “Delta Dawn” by the Ray Conniff Singers
- “Rosemary” by The Dickies
- “Roxanne” by The Police
Which reminds me: I need to get started on Major Babes 3.
Assignment: A lot of songs with “Good” in the title. Difficulty: No “Goodbye” or “Goodnight” tracks. Success: Reasonable. Besides, where else are you going to hear Tammy Wynette and the Knack on the same disc? Oh, and if you don’t recognize the cover, don’t blame Desenex.
Track listing for 111131-2:
This past week has seen an absolutely astonishing uptick in bogus TrackBacks. Spam Karma 2 is duly shuffling them off to Buffalo, as it should, but I do wish these people would go back to fellating farm animals and leave us bloggish types alone.
I’ve already taken a shot at a Valentine’s Day Mix — and, being properly cynical, I did it in October — but I’d hardly consider it definitive, and I’m always delighted to spot a workable alternative.
This compilation by a Michigan law student looks promising enough that I may actually put it together myself, and damn the iTunes expense. It’s more contemporary than mine, which cuts off in the 1970s: the leadoff track is “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” by the Jayhawks, which is not the song of the same title that every single Motown act seems to have recorded at one time or another.