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| Wendex Records, a non-distributed CD custom label |
Admittedly, I haven’t come up with any new stuff in the better part of half a year, mostly because I’m having trouble coming up with Really Neat Ideas and I’d just as soon not grind out yet another sequel to one of the series already in place.
At the very least, I’d like to get 100 compilations done at some point. (I’m currently at 90.) I’ve learned over the years, though, that it’s impossible to force inspiration.
Of course, utterly irresistible to me, what with all the dust on my heart. This comes from Muzzle of Bees, and it leads off, sensibly, with Frank Sinatra and “The Way You Look Tonight.” The tenth and final track: “Song to the Siren” by Tim Buckley.
Insight within:
The real sadness of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” comes not from the fact this guy and girl are totally done, but that this guy is so sure they’re done that he’s decided to phrase everything in negative constructions: “It ain’t no use,” indeed. But beneath the bravado, there’s hurt in him, too. The line that’s always haunted me is “You could have done better, but I don’t mind,” which sounds like precisely the sort of self-preserving rhetoric one expects from a ten-year-old who is trying to dismiss the fact that you just stole his toy. Or, you know, a twenty-two-year-old kid who’s had his heart broken.
It doesn’t change so much in one’s fifties, either.
A number of folks have come through wondering how they could get their hands on some of this groovy Wendex stuff. The answer: they can’t, really. I’m not going to put myself in the position of having two thousand downloadable songs in the face of ongoing threats from, um, intellectual-property types.
Remember: this is here to show you what you can do by showing you what I, among the rankest of amateurs, have done. But it’s like a cookbook: you have to bring your own flour and eggs and such.
This time it’s 2.6.1. (I have learned not to mess with the .0 versions.)
Addendum: And by “2.6.1″ we mean “2.6.2.”
John Cale, after departing the Velvet Underground, made solo records. A lot of solo records. Boiling down a nearly-four-decade career to a single CD-R would seem impossible, but Jeremy Richey at Moon in the Gutter has taken a stab at it, with nineteen tracks, starting with two from the mostly-pastoral Vintage Violence, circa 1970, and winding up with two from 2005′s blackAcetate. Says Richey, “This isn’t much of an introduction but it is one killer CD.” I don’t doubt it.
Half a dozen of them, in fact: Hidden Track suggests six versions of the Beatles’ “Day Tripper”, including the classic Otis Redding recording. Better yet: no American Idol versions. For a B-side — “We Can Work It Out” was the nominal A-side — this is some seriously powerful stuff, even today.
I’ve always blamed the CD, which offers scant space for cover art: less than one-fifth the whole square foot you got with an LP jacket. However, this belief is not entirely universal.
We’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.5. If you see anything that makes less sense than usual, please advise.
Addendum: And by “2.5″ we mean “2.5.1.”
Prodded by Both Sides Now, I put together twenty-six songs about fools, of which there have been an abundance during what Mr Kasem calls the Rock Era. The Mothers track is not the original from Freak Out!, but the doo-wop remake from Cruising with Ruben and the Jets. The original photo is “The Pigeon Crowd” by Andrew*, borrowed under Creative Commons.
Track listing for 111140-2:
If you’ve been through here before, you’ve probably noticed one or more of the Major Babes series, which includes songs incorporating girls’ names.
Captain Obvious, more of a purist than I, has restricted his mix tape to songs where the name is the entire title, starting with Dylan’s “Delia” (from 1993′s World Gone Wrong) and finishing with “Rebecca” by Summer at Shatter Creek, aka Craig Gurwich. Despite this restriction, the collection is far more eclectic than anything I’m likely to come up with. Highly recommended.