The other day I began to describe the origins of the Sunday Mix Tape feature. Today, I’ll describe the end of an era.
The second fifty mix tapes, which commenced on January 28th, 2007, saw an increased amount of attention paid to marginalized artists. It was almost as if the first few dozen installments were my way of convincing people to come along for the ride, and the second fifty mix tapes were my way of introducing people to the really good shit. Three years ago, before the reissue and the recent Pitchfork review, you’d never see an artist like Bob Desper given the time of day on a mainstream blog or e-‘zine. Marc Munday still isn’t given the time of day years after the Compendium reissue. Like I said the other day, reviewing these 200 mix tapes and patting myself on the back is likely the most self-aggrandizing thing I’ve done in the five years since I started this page. Let me have my moment! Let me know what it is to be a Baby Boomer for five goddamn minutes!
Since I can’t post 200 MP3s this week, I’m going to list what is — in my opinion — the standout track from each installment of the series. About half the tracks I’ve chosen will be represented in MP3 form, and I’ll highlight what cool themes I thought of when I first started doing this. I guess, really, this will only be new and exciting for you if you’re a reader who started visiting this website at any point after January 29th, 2006. That’s most of you. Actually, it’s probably all of you. Except MikeM, Sam, and maybe Z. I don’t even think Z reads this page anymore.
The Best Of Sunday Mix Tapes: Volumes 51 – 100
51 – More Dogs – Overeater Under Water
52 – Bark Psychosis – A Street Scene – The first time I actively sabotaged a mix tape. I mention in the description of this one that I was building up a really nice vibe around Bark Psychosis, Hotel Alexis, Benoit Pioulard and Regins, but then I wanted to “break” a bunch of new albums from Hella and LCD Soundsystem (yikes, what was I thinking there?) and Electrelane. Bad idea. No vibe, man. No vibe.
53 – Ignatz – I Was Not There
54 – Roaring Lion – Bananas – This is one of the best mix tapes of 2007. From Tuvan throat singing to Italian prog to Calypso and Space Rock, it was a really solid effort from me. Luv Machine, Extradition, White Hills, Nick Garrie, Lord Kitchener, Camberwell Now, Arkansas Man and the Monks of the Dip Tse Chok Ling Monastery? Awesome.
55 – J.P. Shilo – High Inner Tree
56 – Mirza – Nostalgia
57 – Marc Mundy – How Can I Marry This Language?
58 – Darediablo – Feeding Frenzy
59 – H. Jon Benjamin – XTC – The theme for this mix was combining typical SMT music with recordings laid to tape by otherwise useless celebrities (except for Jodie Foster, who was magnificent in Taxi Driver, Silence Of The Lambs, Panic Room, and Panic Room At 30,000 Feet). There’s songs by Crispin Hellion Glover, Arnold Schwarenegger, L. Ron Hubbard, and Bruce Willis to go along with this ode to club drugs by voice-over talent H. Jon Benjamin.
60 – Ghana Funeral Field Recordings – Akom (Drums Of Death)
61 – The Aerovons – World Of You
62 – Es – Twenty-Five Twenty-Fie
63 – Eric Dolphy – Something Sweet, Something Tender
64 – F/i – Space Mantra – This was a very exciting day (April 29th, 2007) because the mix tape was posted from Covington, Kentucky. I had just started my drive to Los Angeles. I would arrive here on May 5th, 2007 and I’ve been here ever since. Call it a relocation mix tape. Another important date in the history of Swan Fungus.
65 – Sandoz – Scientific Exploitation
66 – K.M. Krebs – Small Golden Chains Extending To The Heavens – This blog entry featured the quote, “In all honesty, it was the most fun I’ve had here yet. Also, in accordance with the laws of full-disclosure, I’m obligated to inform you that I had to choke back a lot of vomit at 3am this morning. That part wasn’t so good. But hey, I’m only one man. Sure, I’m an attractive, well-built funny man with a horse cock, but I’m still only one man.” Ha! I used to be so witty.
67 – The Eyesores – Nausea
68 – Selda Bagcan – Dam Ustune Cul Serer
69 – Bob Desper – Lonely Man
70 – Fushitsusha – Just As I Told You
71 – Mike Cooper – Start Of A Journey – That track capped the exciting “Satanist” mix tape, which featured songs about several of the nine circles of Hell, praising and living in fear of Satan, and then one song that had nothing to do with the other seventeen songs on the compilation.
72 – Red Favorite – Taken In
73 – Anna Black – Eleanor Rigby [The Beatles] – The second iteration of “Covers! Covers! Covers!” came about 17 months after the first one. The idea for this tape came entirely from the stunning rendition of a classic Beatles tune performed by Anna Black. I needed a way to showcase that song (this was long before I shared Meet Anna Black with the world, began interacting with Ms. Black and interviewed her for this website). I still love the starkness of it. I listen to it frequently. Her album and the Dandelions album are the two records I am most often contacted about by readers. And for good reason — they’re both great.
74 – Warhammer 48K – Haunted Castle
75 – Swans – God Damn The Sun
76 – Friends Of Dean Martinez – Somewhere Over The Waves
77 – Subterraneans – Everybody Will Need KJ
78 – Conway Twitty – I’d Just Love To Lay You Down – From the collection of the creepiest songs I could find. Includes cuts from the Butthole Surfers, Double Leopards, Suicide, Whitehouse and The Loop Orchestra. None are creepier than the Conway Twitty tune, which isn’t even the man’s creepiest song. “You’ve Never Been This Far Before” is the man’s grossest number, talking about how his hands tremble when he touches “forbidden places” knowing that his much younger (how young? who knows!) partner is totally inexperienced when it comes to sex. Creepy, creepy, creepy.
79 – Sibylle Baier – Colour Green – If I’ve said it fifteen times, I’ve said it a million times. The Colour Green is simply the best female singer-songwriter album ever recorded.
80 – Steven Bernstein – Chant – From the first “guilty pleasures” mix. Awesome. Depeche Mode, late-period Smashing Pumpkins, ODB and Chris Isaak. Need I say more? “Chant” is recognizable to anyone who was a fan of the early Stella sketches. David, Michael and Michael used to describe it as “fuck music”.
81 – Satori – 1000 Micrograms Of Love
82 – 1 Mile North – Man Rounds Corner
83 – ESG – Come Away – This was mix tape number 83, which I used to highlight some of the best albums to be released in 1983 — the year I was born. The best part of this entry was the story about how I fell asleep trying to write a short story and somehow kept writing. Even though the story was about a couple who became lost while driving it somehow ended with the sentence, “Holy spirits in overcoats and gallant ladies on horseback struggle to read minds contained in heads turned backwards, and I am the only man in this entire army who recognizes there is a sneak attack approaching.” Talk about a weird closing sentence!
84 – Brainbombs – Die You Fuck – A soft ballad about a child and his stuffed animal.
85 – Abilene – Fellini
86 – Jack Rose – Hide The Whisky (Blues For The Colonel)
87 – Holger Czukay – Boat-Woman-Song
88 – Chorchazade – Aah, You Are, As Light As A Feather – It was around this time, I think, that I received a parcel from Noel Lane with a free copy of Made To Be Devoured, one of the best UK Post Punk records of the ’80s. I was on a severe Chorchazade kick at the time, and I still consider this to be the best song they recorded.
89 – Les Joyaux De LA Princesse – Le Petit Gargon
90 – Chavez – You Must Be Stopped – Hey, remember the ’90s? I sure do. This mix tape featured some of my favorite tunes from the “lost” decade (not to be confused with the “LOST” decade, which the ’00s will be known as a few generations from now). There was Fugazi. There was Flying Saucer Attack. There was Mogwai. All your favorites were there. Some of mine were there too.
91 – GHQ – Invitation In
92 – The Narrows – The Sasquatch
93 – Teenage Filmstars – Jeepers Creepers
94 – Traffic – The Low Spark Of The High-Heeled Boys
95 – Die! Die! Die! – Shyness Will Get You Nowhere
96 – Gram Parsons – A Song For You – Sari used to make me play this song for her a lot when we lived together. She’s one of the only people I’ve met in my adult life who doesn’t have great disdain for Gram Parsons’ music. Most people laugh at me when I say the first Byrds album I fell in love with was Sweetheart of The Rodeo. Everybody has to start somewhere…
97 – Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run The Game
98 – Einsturzende Neubauten- Sand
99 – The Dicks – Kill From The Heart
100 – Entrance – Lookout! – And with that, I officially killed off the Sunday Mix Tape feature. After posting a new one almost every week for nearly two years (23 and 1/2 months to be exact), I gave up. I didn’t want to do this anymore. It took time, it took patience, it took scouring the Internet and doing lots of research. This was all easy and fine and fun until I got a job. Then my free time became much more valuable and I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Also, I started dating someone, and I much preferred being in the company of a girl than I did sitting in the dark staring at my computer screen. I posted sporadic mix tapes over the course of the next several months, but I never planned to restart weekly Sunday Mix Tapes.
Until…
