5.9.11

On The Road Mix (Part 2)

The second of my three part travel album:

Track listing:
1. Wild Night, Van Morrison - Tupelo Honey
2. Flathead, The Fratellis - Costello Music
3. General, Dispatch - Bang Bang
4. Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison
5. Gallows Pole, Led Zeppelin - III
6. Graceland, Paul Simon - Graceland
7. The King of Carrot Flowers pt. One, Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
8. Dashboard, Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
9. The Great Escape, We Are Scientists - With Love and Squalor
10. Fireworks, yOya - Nothing to Die
11. California Sun, Ramones - Leave Home
12. Power of Moonlite, Tiger Army - II:Power of Moonlite
13. Blue Orchid, The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
14. Way Out, Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
15. Shotglass, Caitlin and the Shotglasses - Caitlin and the Shotglasses
16. Homelands, Brad and Ethan - Live Recordings, Etc.
17. Barton Hollow, The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow
18. The Queen's Rebuke / The Crossing, The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love


Annotations:

7. The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One, by Neutral Milk Hotel on the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Quite a pleasant little band, their music is really best experienced over the breadth of their album. They're great for lazy weekends and singing along to in the Sun. They're probably the only band that manages to have the lyric "I love you Jesus Christ" be catchy instead of preachy. So there's something. Also, I associate this band with the Redwall books (the ones about the Martin the Warrior mouse and all of the funny hare commandos) because I was re-reading a bunch of those books when I discovered this band. Funny how that works.

8. Dashboard by Modest Mouse on the album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Marking a change in the album toward more energetic music. If Dispatch carried me through freshman year of college, then Modest Mouse carried me through most of high school. Great band. It was a bit difficult picking out just one song to represent them entirely. Black Cadillacs on the album Good News For People Who Love Bad News was my first great love with that band. There were several others, but in the end I decided to pick out something more recent for you to listen to.

9. The Great Escape by We Are Scientists on their album With Love and Squalor. Picking it up with a nice little guitar and stick-symbol opener, We Are Scientists are a fun little band that I picked up during a misguided attempt to find more punk. I'm thinking some time junior year in college - so about 2007. Sadly, the guy I got the music from was more a fan of Emo. Fortunately, they were one of the points of agreement. Still not really punk, but they've got some great guitar and a fun attitude.

10. Fireworks by yOya, on their album Nothing to Die. The first of three local bands on this mix, the two singers were actually buddies of mine from CHS and my children's choir. They were both in my vocal section for years, so I got to know them quite well. They now live in Los Angeles and are putting out their unique blend of folk-electronica.They seem to be doing pretty well with it - they do tours up and down the West Coast regularly. Fun band.

11. California Sun by the Ramones, on their Leave Home album. Never mind the bollocks! It's the Ramones. Well actually that should be the Sex Pistols, but I was having a tricky time putting punk music onto an album that also had Johnny Cash. The Clash would perhaps have been a safer bet in retrospect, but whatever. The Ramones are totally awesome punk, a band that came into the scene early enough to still be more rock than "pump it up to 11" noise. Not that I have anything against that kind of punk - there's another fun local punk band, Rock N Roll Hearts, that I rather wanted to put on - but I eventually decided they were too "Sex, Drugs and Rock n'Roll" for this mix. Maybe the next one?

12. Power of Moonlite by Tiger Army on their album II:Power of Moonlite. Tiger Army was one of several bands that I picked up my sophomore year while living in the Jasper house. A big bach house with lots of girls and homebrewed alcohol (occasionally awful) seemed well-suited with noisy and poppy rock. Similar bands were the brightly electronic Death From Above and LCD Soundsystem - and lots of lots of Irish punk. Fun times

See part one here and part three here.

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