MUSIC: Mixed Bag 2 Track List

Even though I haven't sent the discs yet, because I just realized there was something I wanted to add, here's the track list for my entry in Lefty Brown's Mixed Bag 2 blogger CD exchange project. I just wanted to have some kind of entry today; I've been lazy about updating recently.

There are a couple of changes on Fred's disc, substitutions for music I'd sent him on a previous CD. Also, Logan and Greg both get replacement copies of my entry for Mixed Bag 1, because they were the two most agitated by the staticy recording quality on some of the tunes, and also because they were the only two who actually wanted a clean copy! (That's a joke. I think.) I changed up the track lists slightly for each of them, according to the likes & dislikes they had expressed in their respective reviews of the disc.

Without further ado:

You'll Play It and You'll Like It, Vol. 2

1. Ash from Army of Darkness says hello.

2. The Who, Long Live Rock
My favorite band of all time, and a really rockin' but funny tune. ("We were the first band to vomit in the bar/And find the distance to the stage too far.")

Next is the Trilogy of the Kids and Their Varying Degrees of Rectitude:
3. The Queers, The Kids Are Alright
4. The Offspring, The Kids Aren't Alright
5. Local H, All the Kids Are Right

Yes, a Who cover immediately following a Who original. Is this because Dorian knocked the Who song on my previous disc? No, I just really, really love the Who. (Annoying Dorian is just a perk!) The other two songs just followed naturally; similar titles but very different songs. (On his first glimpse of the track list when I handed him the CD at the comic shop Wednesday, Dorian, horrified: "You put three covers of the same Who song???")

6. Statler and Waldorf give their review of the disc so far.

7. Moxy Fruvous, Green Eggs and Ham
The song I'm most proud of on the mix, in that in all likelihood none of the participants have ever heard it before, and they all should enjoy it greatly. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you don't dig this song, you have a heart of coal.

8. Barenaked Ladies, Ballad of Gordon
A quick little ditty, from a PSA starring BNL that used to play during the afternoon cartoons on Fox, about ten years ago. It was a very funny 90-second video (teaching kids to get along or some such malarkey, with singer Ed Robertson playing a green-skinned alien creature with no arms) which I wish had been included on BNL's video-compilation DVD.

9. Ash again.

10. The Refreshments, Banditos
Another of the more obscure songs on this mix. The Refreshments are probably best known as the guys who do the theme song for King of the Hill; they're really quite excellent. This is my favorite of their songs. "Give your ID card to the border guard/Your alias says you're Captain Jean-Luc Picard/From the United Federation of Planets, cause he won't speak English anyway."

11. Bing Crosby, Swinging on a Star
Der Bingle! "And by the way, if you hate to go to school/You may grow up to be a mule."

12. Ben Folds Five, Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head
I love the intro to this song, by Burt Bacharach (it's from a Bacharach tribute concert): "Exploding on the music scene right now is a very hot group." You can tell he has no clue who these guys are.

13. Patsy Cline, Never No More
I love me some Patsy. I first heard this song, of all places, on a great sci-fi show that got cancelled too soon, Space: Above and Beyond. (Looking back on it, you can tell it was a very direct influence on the new Battlestar Galactica. Man, where's my DVD set of that show?) Even in the future, Patsy Cline is good drinkin' music.

14. Hoyt Axton, Jealous Man
Hoyt Axton (along with Patsy Cline) is one of the very few country artists I care for (Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson will pretty much round out that list). My mom was a huge fan, which meant I became one, too. Hoyt was also an actor; you probably will recall him as Zach Galligan's father in Gremlins. This song is from a classic episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, in which Hoyt, who is in love with Jennifer, sings the tune to Johnny Fever as a warning to stay away from her: "You got the knife, I got the gun/Come on boy, we're gonna have a little fun."

15. Ash again.

16. Josie and the Pussycats, 3 Small Words
One of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is the soundtrack to this movie. But you know what? It ROCKS. So there. And I love the numerically clever wordplay in the chorus:

It took 6 whole hours
And 5 long days
4 all your lies to come undone.
And those 3 small words
Were way 2 late
'Cause you can't see that I'm the 1.

17. Green Day, Stuart and the Ave.
There are Green Day songs I like better, but this one is significant because it's a reminder of my college days at Berkeley. Stuart isn't a person's name, it's a street, and the Ave. is Telegraph, which ends at the Berkeley campus. In fact, here's the intersection right here.

18. Amy Ray, Driver Education
I love the Indigo Girls, of which Amy Ray is one half; as a solo artist, she puts down the folk guitar and rocks out, which is also very cool. This is from her great solo album Prom; it's not super-rockin', but damn is it catchy.

19. Tenacious D, Tribute
This is not the greatest song in the world, no: this is just a tribute.

20. Dolemite calls you a very unpleasant name, for no reason whatsoever.

21. Tool, Aenema
A fantastic hard-rocker, ticking off all the crappy things about California (but I still love it here!). "Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and fuck all his clones/Fuck all these gun-toting hip gangsta wannabes."

22. Therapy?, Hey Satan -- You Rock
Not my favorite song by these lunatics from Belfast -- it's still great, just not my favorite -- but it's absolutely my favorite song title ever.

23. Queens of the Stone Age, Go With the Flow
I'm not a big fan of these guys, but this song is awesome, and the video is mind-bending.

24. Rowdy Roddy Piper lays down the law (from They Live).

25. Pegboy, Surrender
A punked-out cover of a Cheap Trick classic.

26. Public Enemy, By the Time I Get to Arizona
My one rap song. (Unless you count Green Eggs as rap, which you kind of could.) I cut out the intro, in which Sista Souljah sets up the fact that Arizona had recently voted not to observe the holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. As you might imagine, this made Chuck D angry.

27. The Pogues, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
From the classic Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, their best album by far, this is a heartbreaking lament for a wounded soldier, forgotten after the war is over.

28. Ta ta! (A snippet from the Offspring album, Smash.)

29. Special bonus song inside! Sure to make someone think I am a very bad man.