To keep our spirits up amidst the cascading catastrophes inflicted by the Russian Asset and his quislings (the GOP), the resistance needs a soundtrack. Here’s my offering for 2019. And here’s last year’s mix, which is also featured in a post that includes “75 better names for 45,” since there are so many more apt…
With the 2016 presidential election slightly less than 6 weeks away, it’s time to get up and dance. Or run around flailing and hollering. Likely, a bit of both. To aid you in this necessary activity, I have assembled two mixes – one for each of the two major presidential candidates. Â Actually, I’ve assembled three….
This is the introductory text of this mix, which, before listing the songs (below), offers a few facts about them, such as the sad truth that the Free Design (track 3) had only one moderate hit, “Kites are Fun” (#33 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary charts, and #114 on the pop charts), or the happy fact that there are…
We’ve had a lot of luck with records. Some of the songs that have made our names a household word – like “slop-bucket” – are the little series of animal songs that we’ve been writing. – Michael Flanders, introduction to “The Gnu,” At the Drop of a Hat (1960) As Michael Flanders says, the animal songs made…
To me, making a tape is like writing a letter –Â there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again […] A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick it off with a corker, to hold the attention […], and then you’ve got to up it a notch,…
This mix goes out to fans of the National. Influences cited are mostly sourced, but partly speculative. That is, most of the selections here come from bands identified by National members (usually Matt Berninger) as an influence, but some simply sound to me like influences. So, of course, feel free to disagree with my choices in…
Because every revolution needs a soundtrack, I assembled a couple of CDs of songs for the drive to and from Topeka, for yesterday’s Kansas Board of Regents meeting. True, the drive is not in fact that long (only an hour each way), but creating playlists is a form of thinking. It’s something I do for fun. Really….
Looking for a mix that has one song for each of the 50 U.S. states? This isn’t it. Nor are any of these official state songs. (Or, at least, I don’t think they are.) Instead, this mix has 24 songs (one each for 23 states, plus one for DC), and some of them refer to…
Boston is the U.S. city that feels most like home to me. I grew up north of the city, in Lynnfield. Some of my family still live in the Boston area, though most are spread out around the globe. Indeed, I haven’t lived in Massachusetts in nearly three decades. But it’s still where I’m from….
Here are the best covers of 2012! Â Well, they might be. Â I haven’t kept up with music as well as I’d like to this year, and so I’m sure I’ve missed some good ones. Â (I’m sure I can trust you to tell what I’ve missed, in the comments below.) Â Though I recognize that there is…
