Lucky Dog Audio Post

It's been awhile since I've cooked up a book mixtape so let's let this national poetry month playlist I worked up for my biweekly radio show on KABF stand in for my usual book music. The relation between the poems and song selection is fairly arbitrary. In some cases there is an obvious connection, in others, not. Overall, I like the juxtapositions.

Playlist:

The Plague - Mountain Goats Loud Prayer - Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lust for Life - Girls Alien vs Predator - Michael Robbins Doctor (Five Discs Cover) - Atlas Sound On the Subject of Doctors - James Tate Tragedy - Shoes My Shoe - Charles Simic Paralyzed - Gang of Four Poem about People - Robert Pinsky The Crow - Dessa Felix the Crow - Kay Ryan Basic Space (diskJokke remix) - The xx Space Station - Tom Sleigh Behind the Bank - Oneohtrix Point Never My Life at Home During Banking Hours - David Berman Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso) - Sonic Youth Poem Rocket - Allen Ginsberg Sea Bells on Sunday - connect_icut/Sunday Morning - Wallace Stevens (mashup)

Allen Tate Hole - a recording of Allen Tate's Oct. 12, 1971 poetry reading at Boylston Hall, Harvard University rerecorded through the soundhole of a 1961 D28 Martin "Dreadnaught" Acoustic Guitar (tuned to open G).

The Anthologist mixtape

Image by Will Amato

"By the time I found myself delivered to the lobby of Le Parker Meridien, I felt bullied, bruited about by staff and handlers, like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, an incomprehensible film Perkus had weeks before insisted I watch, a treatise on luxuriant self-pity that now felt terrifically relevant" (page 188).

Here's another book-mixtape, this one with songs culled from Jonathan Lethem's incredible new novel Chronic City. Lethem himself has posted a couple of playlists pertaining to the book but none feature Sandy Bull or Captain Beefheart or Crispy Ambulance or Souled America or any of the more obscure songs that made it into these pages. Oh well, that task is for obsessive music geeks. Music geek admission: I spent a couple of days trying to track down a song from Zeroville. Fred Mills ended up helping me out with that search. Thanks Fred!

With these book mixes, I always try to bring another audio theme into the track listing. This book is chock full of cultural references both real and imagined - the Criterion Collection, Gnuppets, Marlon Brando, Morrison Groom, Florian Ib, etc. I made a couple of inside jokes with SFX - I introduce the Richard Hell track with a cell phone ring (Richard Abneg's ringtone is "Blank Generation") and end-tagged the Sandy Bull track with this marvelous modem sample from freesound (Perkus Tooth is on dial up). But primarily I used audio snippets from The Man Who Fell To Earth for my song transitions. Yeah, it's quite a reach. The movie is mentioned just once in passing but it seems like blowing up a reference like that for its audio goodies is just the thing Lethem's artist/critic/stoner character Perkus Tooth would enjoy. So here ya go Perkus. Merry Christmas, wherever you are.

TRACKLIST:

1. ROLLING STONES - Miss You
2. RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS - Blank Generation
3. PETER BLEGVAD - (Something Else Is) Working Harder
4. SANDY BULL - Carmina Burana Fantasy
5. CRISPY AMBULANCE - Chill
6. VAN MORRISON - Who Was That Masked Man
7. SOULED AMERICA - Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends
8. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND - I Love You, Big Dummy
9. WARREN ZEVON - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
10. ROLLING STONES - Shattered

TRACKLIST:

1. COLDPLAY - Viva La Vida
2. LUDACRIS - Money Maker
3. RAY LAMONTAGNE - Saved By A Woman
4. iiO - Rapture (Armin Van Buuren Remix)
5. HARRY NILSSON - Zombie Jamboree (Back to Back)
6. RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Dani California
7. ROOT BOY SLIM - Boogie 'Til You Puke
8. SLAID CLEAVES - Sinner's Prayer
9. SINEAD O'CONNOR - She Moved Through The Fair
10. THE DAMNWELLS - I Will Keep The Bad Things From You

So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain... We like to visit the parallel sound-studio universe with all these mixing boards and XLR patch cables going here and there, independent of the other part of our head, which is the conscious part that has spent a long time sweating the books and trying to make sense of objects and ideas and meanings. Trying to be a responsible citizen. Rhyme taught us to talk (111-112).

Though Paul Chowder, the narrator of Nicholson Baker's new novel The Anthologist, spends most of his time thinking about poems and poets, he references a handfull of surprising songs within the pages of this beguiling novel. The music mentioned comes to the forefront of Chowder's mind primarily through rhymes he likes. On page 164 Chowder scans Ludacris lyrics along with poems by A.A. Milne, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Vachel Lindsay, T. S. Eliot, and Edgar Allen Poe. Elsewhere songs by Coldplay and the Red Hot Chili Peppers appear after ruminations on Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's a postmodern poetry feast with pop culture references served on the side.

From a mixing standpoint, I dropped some samples of poets reading their own work to use for transitions between songs. And since "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop figures so prominently in this book I cracked open MAX/MSP and tried mashing up a recording of Bishop with the iiO song Chowder mentions on page 82. There are some other audio surprises in this mix as well. For instance, who would have thought Edna St. Vincent Millay had such rocking inflections in her voice? Enjoy.

UPDATE:

I've been fascinated by the idea of annotated audio ever since I read about this BBC project back in 2005. It's cool to see that Soundcloud has set up a way to do this via their comments tool. Basically you can tag audio segments with footnotes. It's for other listeners to point out things they like in your mix. Here I have used it to tag the poet samples I've used for my transitions. Check it out:

The Anthologist by redchuck

I compiled another book mixtape this week, this time from John Wray's amazing new novel Lowboy. The majority of the tracks on this mix come directly from the book. Lowboy loves the Dixieland cornetist Bix Beiderbecke so there are four Bix tracks here. But Lowboy also name drops Clarence Williams, Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, and Jelly Roll Morton within the book so I either sought out the exact song mentioned or chose something close. For instance, the Jelly Roll Morton reference comes by way of a rhyme dancing around in Lowboy's head - "Get Up and Get Courtin' by Jelly Roll Morton" (page 167). I thought about dropping "Courthouse Bump" into the mix for this reference but chose "Buddy Bolden's Blues" instead, a cut from the Library of Congress Recordings that features Mr Morton playing the piano and telling a story about a famous New Orleans trumpeter (not a cornetist like Bix but you get the idea). Also I added "Joliet Bound" to this mix as a stand in for "Leavenworth Strut" (page 232) and Bo Carter's "Don't Mash My Digger So Deep" for the mention of "Mashed Tapatoes" by Bootsie White (page 169).

Since much of the action in this novel takes place in the NYC Subway system I used snippets from NYC subway field recordings for all of my song transitions. These samples came from thefreesoundproject. My downloads for this project can be found here.

Also, if it wasn't for Patrick Houston I wouldn't have been able to pull off the book cover remix for this post. Patrick did the vector rendering of Bix Beiderbecke and placed it in the cover for me. Make sure to check out his website (name link) if you have freelancer designer needs.

TRACKLIST:

1. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Toddlin' Blues
2. NAT KING COLE - You Don't Learn That In School
3. CLARENCE WILLIAM'S BLUE FIVE - I'm A Little Blackbird
4. BLUE SKY BOYS - Down On The Banks Of The Ohio
5. JELLY ROLL MORTON - Buddy Bolden's Blues
6. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Fidgety Feet
7. BO CARTER - Don't Mash My Digger So Deep
8. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Goose Pimples
9. BILLIE HOLIDAY - Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me
10. LOUIS ARMSTRONG - You'll Wish You'd Never Been Born
11. ETHEL WATERS - Black And Blue
12. MEMPHIS MINNIE - Joliet Bound
13. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Sunny Disposish

Let the record show that my black T-shirt was in fact a Bauhaus T-shirt, purchased the previous fall down in the Village on the very first of my weekly trips to scavenge for new albums, generally vinyl dispatches from the world of the pale and winnowed... I didn't buy rap—I heard it all the time... Rap was a natural resource, might as well pay for sunlight or the very breeze or an early-morning car alarm going off. No, I spent my money on music for moping. Perfect for drifting off on the divan with a damp towel on your forehead, a minor-chord soundtrack as you moaned into reflecting pools about your elaborate miserableness. The singers were faint, androgynous ghosts, dragging their too heavy chains across the plains of misery, the gloomy moors of discontent, in search of relief. Let's just put it out there: I liked the Smiths. (page 63)

It's difficult for me to accurately summarize a book as mind-blowing well-written as Colson Whitehead's new novel Sag Harbor. It's both an unflinching and, at times, humorous look at adolescence, race, class, and identity set smack dab in the middle of the summer of '85. Whitehead has called it an "archeology of the 80s" and in that he's referring to all the pop culture detritus that surfaces within the narrative. These pages revel in references to movies, television shows, and advertising campaigns, all of which Whitehead deftly infixes to his storyline. As an author, he's undoubtedly a master of his craft.

As far as cultural excavation goes, one can't help but note the amount of music unearthed in this book. From the Carpenters to Run DMC, Whitehead dusts off a wide range of artists and songs for inspection. So, when I got finished reading the novel, I decided to compile a playlist.

As for the tracklist, I included all of the main songs Whitehead references in his narrative but I also took some liberties. Whitehead's protagonist admits to loving the Smiths and the Bauhaus but never names particular songs. Therefore I picked two that I thought would help keep things moving along in my mix. Also, I added some sound bites here and there to help with the song transitions. These samples also come from the book and are sort of inside jokes for anyone who has read the novel.

Sag Harbor opens on Memorial Day weekend so this seems like an opportune moment to post a mixtape. Check it, here's the soundtrack to the scribe, jams from Sag Harbor and the summer of '85 (compiled with some liberties):

TRACKLIST (for Dummy):

1. THE CARPENTERS - Top of the World
2. AFRICA BAMBAATAA & THE SOULSONIC FORCE - Planet Rock
3. BAUHAUS - Dark Entries
4. RUN DMC - Here We Go (Love Connection)
5. ICE CUBE - Now I Gotta Wet 'Cha
6. THE SMITHS - Handsome Devil
7. GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE - The Message (Road Warrior)
8. PRINCE - Raspberry Beret (Six Million Dollar Man)
9. BLONDIE - Rapture
10. DONNA SUMMERS - Bad Girls
11. UTFO - Roxanne Roxanne (Bill Cosby for New Coke)
12. LISA LISA & THE CULT JAM - I Wonder If I Take You Home
13. MCFADDEN & WHITEHEAD - Ain't No Stopping Us Now
14. HURRICANE SMITH - Oh, Babe, What Would You Say (WLNG end of broadcast)

See also Colson Whitehead's AMAZON PLAYLIST: Sag Harbor: Selected Cuts 1982-1985, With Liner Notes