Internet romance is a fleeting thing. At first, you’re so excited to finally connect with someone in the virtual sea. You think of them, of all the fish in the sea, I wanted her, she wanted me. Even though I met them on a site their parents paid for, in a weak attempt to get them a boyfriend, our bond felt strong. It felt great, we were connecting. Adding her various networking sites felt good, it felt right. We were happy sending random messages through vast distances.
Sometimes, you know, it doesn’t work out with people. The two of you might seem to have a lot in common. At an undefined moment in time, things change. Everything changes. Such a thing happened with this person. Without meeting, we had grown bored of each other. Other people appeared to me more interesting than little old me. Rapidly our AIM conversations dwindled to nearly nothing.
But one day, out of the blue, I got invited to her birthday party at a beer garden of high repute. Perhaps I’d be given another chance. Working throughout the week, I not only came up with my usual stellar mix, but I did something more. Look below to see. This is the unedited selection of descriptions for each song, sent as text to her Myspace account.
When I arrived at the party, we became friends, nothing more than that. Feeling rejected, I spent the rest of the night talking to her brother about some creative stuff he did for work. She made up a story about how we met at some concert. At the night of the night, we left as friends. We’re still friends on Facebook, but I never spoke to her again. My MIX had failed.
That doesn’t mean it’ll fail on you. All of the descriptions are perfect for the songs. I hope this helps you more than it helped me. Consider this the prehistoric ancestor of my current MIX CDs, like a fossil trapped in amber, waiting to be resurrected again.
1. Red Krayola - Hurricane Fighter Plane.
Once upon a time, Mayo Thompson had something in his pants. And with his snotty voice, he announced it to the world with the strangest backing band ever, complete with the most thoroughly incompetent bass player he could find in the great state of Texas. In a perfect world, this would’ve been a hit single. Most people lacked his clear vision of a world without logic, sense, or musical talent.
2. No Age - Cappo
These guys go surfing on the Southern California coast. Or at least it sounds that way. They also sound like they might exist in reality, unlike our previous guest.
3. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - Who needs the Peace Corps?
Frank Zappa sings scathingly about the false political awareness many of the “boomer generation” possessed. Singing about one young lad, who decides to wear non-traditional Western garb for the purpose of looking cool, he then enjoys marijuana and gets some police officers to kick the shit out of him on Hate Street. This intrepid cut summarized Zappa’s perfect satire with musical talent.
4. Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - Washington Wabble
A young bird goes and gets a bum’s rush from the local bull. Now he doesn’t care for this sort of thing, and calls the bull a wet blanket. Well, ha, you can see here why he’s a bird, can’t you? So off he goes, in a real huff, and sees a tomato. The real McCoy, but he can’t stop and make whoopee with her, get a few sinkers. No, he’s out on the lam, on account of that insult. Good thing he didn’t stay and chat with the cat’s meow either, she was a moll anyway.
5. British Sea Power - The Lonely
I listened to this constantly as I went back and forth on the train, from civilization and out of it. As this played, I’d see backyards of people both rich and poor. This is a truly enlightening experience of listening to a lonely former naval power sing about playing on a Casio, electric piano.
6. Crème Soda - Deep in a Dream
A bunch of hippies got together about 5 years too late and decided to make some hippie-ish jams. They were of high quality, as were the performers. Then they realized it was 1975 and got cynical, then employed.
7. Slint - Breadcrumb Trail
Slint existed in a certain moment of time, when a bunch of paranoid people moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to make uncomfortable, tense rock. Some called it Post-Rock, since it lacked any of the sort of things that made things rock, like happiness and girls. The members of Slint most likely did not have adoring women flocking towards them; they most likely had those record-store types with the beards and thick glasses, nodding their heads in approval. Despite their overwhelming ability to give almost anyone nightmares with their delusional, uneasy songs sung in uncertain voices, they broke up. Then, as paranoia and unease gained currency towards the latter half of the Bush administration, they gave it another go. Our song here discusses the joys and terror of being in a carnival.
8. Sun City Girls - Radar 1941
Sun City Girls knew the Norwegians could no longer defend them, so they made one last stand in Hammerfest, Norway. Using the only items nearby, booze and guitars, they coined this little ditty, a drunken surf song that loses interest in itself every now and then.
9. Flying Saucer Attack - Standing Stone
One fine afternoon, the singer realized his voice was shit. So he brought up a ton of distortion and feedback, and sang like someone on an acid trip. Then he got a three-year old to play the drums.
10. Gong - Witch’s Song/I am your Pussy
They dedicated this song to their mother, and some fleas. The 1970s were a strange time.
11. Optiganally Yours - Stop Touching Me
Originally written after a harrowing experience with a toaster oven, this song exudes positive feelings, also sexual harassment.
12. Sergio Mendes Trio - Vivo Sonhando
Back in the 1960s, Brazilians provided the world with perfect music to drink cocktails to. This particular band did it especially well. To improve the ease, they replaced the singer with a saxophone, just to be so cool and casual.
13. Stereolab - Tone Burst
It’s like a giant burst of distorted guitars, and then we get those socialist lyrics sung in French. Why French? So that way, it’ll sound sexy.
14. Deerhoof - Polly Bee
Originally starting off as a pop group, they didn’t realize how weird their singing was, or how inane the lyrics were. Here we listen to the singer ask such probing questions as “Why am I so happy all the time?”
15. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg - Jane B
A couple of French people, singing about French shit. They were so explicit that even France put its foot down on having their songs on the radio. Possibly perfect music for some kind of bad ass spy flick in the near future, which would involve a former KGB agent trying to kill the President of some total shit-hole Eastern European nation no one’s heard of, and the one CIA agent down on his luck trying to bring him to justice. Also hamsters would be involved.
16. Low - Caroline
Most rock bands start out playing fast and slowing down. When Low decides to slow down some more, their songs will last half an hour each, with eight notes played in total. Their beauty is to play those eight notes perfectly right, and at the right times. Too many bands figure if they play fast, perhaps they’d occasionally get the sound right. Low know better.
17. Nick Drake - From the Morning
Apparently his life revolved around sleeping late, smoking pot, not getting laid and playing the guitar. He spent his entire life on a college campus as a philosophy major.
18. June of 44 - Sink is Busted
Here is one of those greats from Louisville, the Post Rockers. Here they display their inability to cope with even the simplest of problems, a broken sink. Instead of doing anything about it, they wrote this meandering song that feels like it’s always moving away from you.
19. Penguin Café Orchestra - Hugebaby
As a couple of penguins sat drinking their coffees and reading the New York Times Magazine section, they noticed a baby flying out of a car. The car’s passengers had dissolved away, as had the car, and the baby slowly floated about, looking at the penguins below with dreamy amusement.
20. Beirut - Untitled
Apparently this musician lacks basic naming song skills. Perhaps he should’ve stayed in school, instead of hanging around the Balkans in seedy clubs, listening to their degenerate hobo music.