Halloween 2016 – The Good Goo of Random Gum

It’s that time again – Halloween mix time. As I wrote in the letter that accompanied the physical Halloween mailer, so many things have shifted in life of late and decisions all feel like they hinge on so many contingencies that I feel this mix reflects the uncertainty (“feel the sense of the ground constantly shifting if you listen to this CD. All of these mixes are quite random, but somehow I manage to string them together in a way that has some meaning or flow for me – this one feels as disjointed as everything in life feels. Not necessarily even in a bad way – just that things are uneasy”.)

As usual there are things here that I really love, some things that just remind me, nostalgically, of something else (even if the song sucks) and everything in between. The whole playlist can be found on Spotify here (my Spotify ID is comraderadmila; the list of my entire compendium of soundtracks can be found here. This has been going on since 2008 after all…).

1. U2 – “Salomé”
From those last days before U2 lost the plot.

2. Vorderhaus – “My Situation”
3. Guided by Voices – “Motor Away” …When you motor away beyond the once-red lips/When you free yourself from the chance of a lifetime…
Speed on, Naomi, Bethany; why don’t you just drive away, JKL?

4. Brasstronaut – “Bounce”
“An iceberg slowly melting in the gulf-stream/sends a letter to its lover/I’ll soon return a hurricane/and blow away your doubtful reservations”

5. Magazine – “A Song from Under the Floorboards”
“I am angry I am ill and I’m as ugly as sin/My irritability keeps me alive and kicking/I know the meaning of life, it doesn’t help me a bit”

6. Kristin Hersh – “Fly”
“I’ve fallen so far for the people you are/I just need your star for a day”
7. Yo La Tengo – “You Can Have It All” …Take it baby, you can have it all…
For R.

8. Tei Shi – “Bassically” …Baby, I’ll behave/If you let me stay/Please don’t think/That I’m begging you for love…
For R.

9. Agnes Obel – “Riverside” …I walk to the borders on my own/To fall in the water just like a stone/Chilled to the marrow in them bones/Why do I go here all alone…
That brief Danish interlude in life. “Oh my God I see how everything is torn in the river deep”

10. The Julie Ruin – “I Decide”

11. Gruff Rhys – “American Interior” …Your dreams will carry me/To a new world…

12. The Stone Roses – “Sugar Spun Sister”
The fulfillment of massive adolescent dreams; seeing the Roses live in Manchester so many years after falling in love with them. Powerful floods of memory and emotion, particularly around my best then-friend, wondering where she is, how she is, what she is doing, and wishing I could have shared this with her, even if I know it would not have lived up to the nostalgic scenes my mind created. I’ve been blasting this ever since.

13. The Shamen – “Ebeneezer Goode”
A memory of a different kind. When I used to hang out with my brother and his friend Matt, Matt used to try to play The Shamen, which annoyed me (I hated The Shamen). It wasn’t until recently that I realized they were Scottish. Listened for a bit during the summer (reviving the old memories in general).

14. Public Enemy – “Between Hard in a Rock Place”
Another bit of the Stone Roses’ experience: Public Enemy as openers.
15. The Tallest Man on Earth – “Time of the Blue”
With love for, work-related commiseration with and thanks to Andreas

16. Waldeck – “Memories”

17. Mirah – “Jerusalem”
And on to Israel

18. Rupa & the April Fishes – “Maintenant”

19. Soko, Cornershop – “Something Makes You Feel Like” …something makes you feel like/life was better once upon a time…

20. The Horrors – “So Now You Know”
Now you know… better. S. ☺

21. The Coral – “Dreaming of You”
Another Stone Roses opener; crowd went wild for this song – I didn’t know it before, but apparently it was even used in an episode of Scrubs… go figure

22. Jim Diamond – “Should Have Known Better”
Even the plumber’s in on it. For S, who knows better: 3 songs here serve as reminder of knowing better

23. The Sugarcubes – “Cold Sweat”
First intro to The Sugarcubes – seeing this video on 120 Minutes and immediately wanting to move to Iceland, although that was not my first inclination toward moving there (nor was it, obviously, the last)

24. Stone Roses – “Shoot You Down” …I never wanted the love that you showed me/it started to choke me…
Loud Stone Roses everywhere, at all hours, taking me right back to the experience of being surrounded by people who could faithfully sing along to every song, to the strange Manchester experience with my brother, the weird Indian/Thai restaurant, meeting up with Hayley and Gareth and turning the grand old age of 41

25. Angel Olsen – “Intern” …doesn’t matter who you are or what you do/something in the world will make a fool of you…

26. Lanakila’s Polynesia – “Tupa`ipa`I Tau Ma Fatu”
The Tahitian portion of my childhood Polynesian dance lessons

27. The Magnetic Fields – “A Chicken with its Head Cut Off”
For R.

28. The La’s – “Timeless Melody”
Another of those adolescent connections – mix tapes from Peter in Durham, England, feeling insulated and isolated from everyone in American suburbia

29. The Radio Dept. – “Heaven’s on Fire”

30. Julia Holter – “Have You in My Wilderness” …You would fit beautifully in my wilderness/Oh, in your waters I’ve dropped anchor…
For and thanks to a disappearing Stavros and the small blue world we inhabit

31. Sufjan Stevens – “Should Have Known Better”

32. Billy Bragg, Wilco – “California Stars” …I like to dream all my troubles away…

33. Margo Guryan – “Love Songs” …I knew/All the love songs/Once upon a time he sang them/To me…

34. Detox Twins – “Paradox” …my life is a paradox/fuck your box – fuck your box…
35. Night Beats – “Sunday Mourning”

36. Alison Krauss – “Oh Atlanta”
Oddly this, of all things, came to mind when watching the show Atlanta. Could anything be less related?

37. Elvis Costello – “Beyond Belief” …Charged with insults and flattery/Her body moves with malice/Do you have to be so cruel to be callous…

38. Annette Peacock – “Love Me Tender”
Thanks to Mark B for the introduction; sitting in Nürnberg airport, waiting, waiting…

39. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps”

40. Al Green – “For the Good Times”
“Don’t look so sad, I know it’s over/But life goes on and this old world will keep on turning/Let’s be glad we had some time to spend together/There’s no need to watch the bridges that we’re burning”

41. Angel Olsen – “Not Gonna Kill You” …A love that never seems to curse or to confine/Will be forever never lost or too defined/To lose the feeling of an endless searching through/How to have made what is never about me or you/That is the kind of love I’d always dreamed to be/However painful, let it break down all of me/’Til I am nothing else but the feeling…
Riding trains around western Sweden on a quest for a new car, coming up empty-handed, feeling the melancholy chill of autumn and being torn between decisions I can’t make – too many unresolved contingencies. “Oh, let the light shine in…”