The Electric Church
A whole week of nothing but political comments. Wow. I suck.
In the interest of pushing this weblog back in the general direction of its usual frivolity, here's a mix tape post. I actually typed the song list and comments up months ago, but it languished on Blogger as a draft, waiting for a time when I needed something frivolous to post, but didn't have time to type up a post.
Now is that time. (Parents coming to visit, floors needing vacuuming, papers needing grading, lectures needing writing...) Enjoy the weekend.
This tape is from my grad school days, and is another of the favored few tapes to reside in the handy built-in holder in my car. It takes its name from a little speech Jimi Hendrix makes at the start of the first track ("I'd like to welcome you all to the Electric Church..."), which ended up being more apt than I knew when I started the tape-- these are almost all guitar-driven songs.
Side One:
- "Electric Church Red House," Jimi Hendrix. Off the Blues compilation, this is a studio outtake. It's not even the entire song (the band gets into the wrong key, and it falls apart), but the guitar work is simply amazing.
- "Yellow Ledbetter," Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam, trying their damnedest to sound like Hendrix, and not doing too bad a job of it.
- "Einstein on the Beach," Counting Crows. Off an odds-and-ends collection Geffen Records released, and one of the rare Counting Crows songs that's not mopey at all.
- "Feel the Pain," Dinosaur Jr.. It opens with a champagne-cork pop, and then a chugging, repetitive guitar riff that just worms its way into your head. It seems to go on forever, but ends too soon.
- "Your Favorite Thing," Sugar. Off the oddly well-adjusted File Under: Easy Listening. Not really a happy song, but disturbingly close for Bob Mould.
- "Headache," Frank Black. I heard this on the radio, and liked it, and I knew that he was reputed to be the creative force behind the Pixies. There are 22 songs on this album, and this is the only one that's any damn good.
- "Basket Case," Green Day. Insert obligatory disclaimer about liking them before every suburban skate punk in the nation bought the album.
- "Don't Fuck Me Up (With Peace and Love)," Cracker. It's not the best song off the album, but how could I pass up that title?
- "Begin the Begin," REM. I had somebody try to explain to me once how the Miles Standish thing actually makes perfect sense. He smoked an awful lot of dope.
- "1000 Miles," Ride. Ride alternated between guitar skronk and dreamy... "psychedelia" isn't the word, but I'm not sure what is. They did both things very well. This is the latter.
- "I Am a Scientist," Guided by Voices. Well, I am. It's a great song, too.
- "Exit Flagger," Guided by Voices. Violates the rule against back-to-back songs by the same band, but I needed to fill out a blank spot at the end of the tape, and it's short. Were I ever to learn how to play guitar, and join a band, I'd want this in the set list.
Side Two:
- "Eurotrash Girl," Cracker. Buried in the middle of eighty-odd three-second silent tracks, there's one very good tune. David Lowery is a wiseass.
- "American Music," the Violent Femmes. Catchier than "Blister in the Sun," but no less bratty.
- "If You Don't Love Me (I'll Kill Myself)," Pete Droge. You've just got to love a song with a positive message.
- "Stranger Than Fiction," Bad Religion. My AP English and Latin teacher from high school thought Look Homeward, Angel was the best book ever, and loathed Hemingway. As a result, I'm inordinately amused by the references to them in this song.
- "When I Come Around," Green Day. OK, fine, I'm not all that highbrow, OK?
- "Explode and Make Up," Sugar. Also off File Under: Easy Listening, and this is more like what I expected. The anguished wail in the middle is just brilliant.
- "Strange Currencies," REM. This year's prom theme.
- "Mockingbirds," Grant Lee Buffalo. This sounds to me sort of like "Bono sings Supertramp." The verses have a U2 sort of sound, but the choruses have the ridiculous falsetto quality I associate with Breakfast in America.
- "Skull," Sebadoh. One of a very few good tracks off Bakesale. As with most of their records, it was fatally crippled by Lou Barlow letting the other guys write songs, too.
- "Life, in a Nutshell," Barenaked Ladies. The best tune off Maybe You Should Drive, by a good margin.
- "Slow Dog," Belly. The verses aren't that great, but the choruses are catchy. And the abrupt ending is a great lead-in to:
- "Miserlou," Dick Dale. Another song that Quentin Tarantino changed forever-- this will always be associated with "Ezekiel 25:17" and Frank Whaley getting his brains blown out. It's a blazing, in-your-face guitar display that makes a nice bookend with the opening Hendrix tune.
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