Tag: mixtape

Old mix: We have no heads

Sometimes my early mixes are what might charitably be described as “all over the place.” (Heck, sometimes my late mixes are too.) This one, which was assembled sometime around May of 1993, definitely fits that description.

There comes a time in every young music head’s life when they discover Tom Waits. For me, that was clearly happening right about the time this mix was made. It was fortuitous that Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants had come out about six months previously, as the frenetic energy of the opening track plays nicely with “Goin’ Out West.” (Side note: because I bought a lot of my CDs through music clubs at this stage in my life, I was almost always late to the party when a new album was released. If I recall correctly, it could be a few months before a new release was available in the mail order catalog. —And yes, mail order catalog, because this was right before the Internet began to eat that business model.)

Between those two tracks is “Frelon Brun,” from Filles de Kilimanjaro. I had just picked up this CD, having fallen in love with the title track, which appeared on Miles’ The Columbia Years anthology (another box set I snagged at a discount). “Frelon Brun” is probably the most rock-oriented of the performances on that album; for one, it’s the only track that is under 6 minutes long. It’s funky and powerful and fun. On this album it punctuates the ferocious energy of the tracks on either side.

Side 2 opens with Ayub Ogada’s “Obiero,” a track that appears in slightly different forms on both his own En Mana Kuoyo and Peter Gabriel’s Plus from Us anthology; it’s the latter that appears here (and coincidentally helps to date the mix, since Plus from Us was released on May 16, 1993). That’s followed by “Rain” by An Emotional Fish, which was on the Spew 2 promotional compilation (which I’ve since lost), alongside King Missile’s dryly hilarious “Detachable Penis” (which also appears on this mixtape). And then comes “Traditional Irish Folk Song,” from Denis Leary’s comedy album No Cure for Cancer. Like I said, charitably described as all over the place.

This mixtape also memorializes the beginning of my interest in PJ Harvey, having picked up Dry based on word of mouth from the crew in the basement of Peabody Hall, i.e. the publications staffs of the Declaration and The Yellow Journal. I was still digesting the Talking Heads, having picked up the Sand in the Vaseline compilation earlier that year. And, having bought Neneh Cherry’s great Homebrew on a whim earlier that spring, I discovered the seductive pleasures of “Peace in Mind” by blasting the album out my Monroe Hill window one Sunday afternoon as we played an impromptu volleyball game.

  1. Dig My Grave – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
  2. Frelon Brun (Brown Hornet) – Miles Davis (Filles De Kilimanjaro)
  3. Goin’ Out West – Tom Waits (Bone Machine)
  4. Ten Percenter – Frank Black (Frank Black)
  5. The Unbreakable Chain – Daniel Lanois (For The Beauty Of Wynona)
  6. Cain & Abel – Branford Marsalis Trio (The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born)
  7. I Want To Live – Talking Heads (Sand In The Vaseline Popular Favorites 1976-1992)
  8. Plants And Rags – PJ Harvey (Dry)
  9. Summertime Rolls – Jane’s Addiction (Nothing’s Shocking)
  10. Don’t Worry About the Government – Talking Heads (Talking Heads: 77)
  11. Heavy Cloud No Rain – Sting (Ten Summoner’s Tales)
  12. Trout – Neneh Cherry (Homebrew)
  13. Obiero – Ayub Ogada (Plus From Us)
  14. Butterflies – Toad the Wet Sprocket (Fear)
  15. Traditional Irish Folk Song – Denis Leary (No Cure For Cancer)
  16. Rain – An Emotional Fish (Junk Puppets)
  17. I Wish You Wouldn’t Say That – Talking Heads (Talking Heads: 77)
  18. Who Are You – Tom Waits (Bone Machine)
  19. Pets – Porno For Pyros (Porno for Pyros)
  20. Detachable Penis – King Missile (Happy Hour)
  21. Brackish Boy – Frank Black (Frank Black)
  22. Happy And Bleeding – PJ Harvey (Dry)
  23. I Don’t Wanna Grow Up – Tom Waits (Bone Machine)
  24. Peace In Mind – Neneh Cherry (Homebrew)
  25. Epilogue (Nothing ‘Bout Me) – Sting (Ten Summoner’s Tales)

You can listen to (most of) the mix via Apple Music here:

Old mix: faith and blues

When I got to the University of Virginia, I started buying much more music. Plan 9 (the original one on the Corner) was within walking distance, I had the mail order music clubs, I had neighbors with their own CD collections, and I started checking out different musical directions.

One of the directions that was new to me at the time was the blues. There had started to be some serious efforts to reissue and preserve old delta blues recordings, starting with the complete works of Robert Johnson and a series of box sets of artists on Chess Records. I found both available on the various CD clubs (probably Columbia, in this case) for a fraction of the list price, and started digesting the music by putting it alongside other blues that I understood better, namely jazz, the Rolling Stones, and folk music.

I might have been on to something. The Child Ballads that Dylan rifled for “Seven Curses” have a straight through-line to the blues. So does every single Leonard Cohen song. And the themes of death, guilt, and murder that snake through most of the rest of the tracks are all steeped in the blues. The outlier might be David Byrne’s “Make Believe Mambo,” but it works well melodically with the songs that surround it, and some blues are for dancing.

I note in passing that I made this mix in the late spring of 1992, long before Jeff Buckley covered the version of “Hallelujah” that appears on this mix as performed by John Cale and made it immortal. I always liked Cale.

Special shouts out in this mix to my upstairs neighbor in Harrison Portal at Monroe Hill for lending me the Rolling Stones compilation; to Greg for introducing me to Reckoning and Camper Van Beethoven in our first year; and to now-Bishop Poulson Reed for suggesting that we visit Preservation Hall on our visit to New Orleans while on the Tour of the South in 1992, where I heard the band play and picked up New Orleans – Vol. 4.

  1. “Sweet Home Chicago” – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  2. “Sympathy for the Devil” – The Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet)
  3. “Seven Curses” – Bob Dylan (The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1–3: Rare and Unreleased)
  4. “Carolyn’s Fingers” – Cocteau Twins (Blue Bell Knoll)
  5. “Suzanne” – Geoffrey Oryema (I’m Your Fan — The Songs of Leonard Cohen)
  6. “Nigh Eve” – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
  7. “Peace Like a River” – Paul Simon (Paul Simon)
  8. “St. James Infirmary” – Preservation Hall Jazz Band (New Orleans – Vol. IV)
  9. “So. Central Rain” – R.E.M. (Reckoning)
  10. “Eye of Fatima, Pt. 1 & 2” – Camper Van Beethoven (Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart)
  11. “Halo” – Depeche Mode (Violator)
  12. “Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  13. “Hallelujah” – John Cale (I’m Your Fan — The Songs of Leonard Cohen)
  14. “Kindhearted Woman Blues” – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  15. “Make Believe Mambo” – David Byrne (Rei Momo)
  16. “Creole Blues” – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
  17. “Gimme Shelter” – The Rolling Stones (Let It Bleed)
  18. “She Divines Water” – Camper Van Beethoven (Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart)
  19. “Blues in the Evening” – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
  20. “From Four Till Late” – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  21. “7 Chinese Bros.” – R.E.M. (Reckoning)
  22. “Who By Fire” – The House of Love (I’m Your Fan — The Songs of Leonard Cohen)
  23. “Death’s Door” – Depeche Mode (Until the End of the World Soundtrack)
  24. “Armistice Day” –Paul Simon (Paul Simon)
  25. “Come On In My Kitchen” – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  26. “Walkin’ After Midnight” – Cowboy Junkies (The Trinity Session)

You can listen to (most of) the mix on Apple Music:

Old mix: the blue groove of twilight

One of the things that happened when I got to the University of Virginia was that I began to branch out in my musical tastes—or, maybe more precisely, I began to explore each of the branches I had already grown to like. In this case, it was jazz, and while I had made mix tapes containing jazz music before, this was the first to be (almost) entirely devoted to jazz.

I found my way into jazz from Sting, whose band in the mid to late 1980s was made up of jazz musicians; from summer concerts at Fort Monroe; and from my mom’s record collection. She had some Ahmad Jamal and Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis—nothing too outré but enough to convince me that I wanted to listen to more. I also knew, from U2, that I ought to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. I didn’t really know anyone else who listened to jazz, so I had to find my own way in.

Because I liked to read liner notes, I found myself drawn to the Original Jazz Classics reissue series of classic jazz albums on CD when I was at UVA. There was so much context on the back of those albums! You could see who the players were, read reviews, and more without even opening the album. That’s how I started to dig back into some of the great ’50s and ’60s recordings. I also picked up the threads of Sting’s band, listening to Branford, then Wynton, then Wynton’s band and Kenny Kirkland.

Because I have never been able to focus exclusively, a couple of jazz-adjacent tracks snuck onto this mix. Most notably, “Escalay” from the Kronos Quartet Pieces of Africa appears. While this is nominally a classical or world music track, it has enough in common with the works around it—a strong rhythmic foundation, a modal scale, an improvised solo—to fit in nicely. The other, Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain,” was added to provide an anchor point for some of the other explorations of blues through the jazz idiom on Side 2. And I couldn’t figure out how to end the mix, so I dropped some Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo in; it fits better than you’d think because of the vocal improvisation and the general mood.

For the actual jazz tracks, there’s a pretty good range of stuff. Of course we touch on Kind of Blue, but there’s also Coltrane’s Sound and Ellington Indigos. I really like the tracks from Marcus Roberts, the pianist and composer who was the nucleus of Wynton Marsalis’s late-1980s/early-1990s band. And there are a couple of nice sets on the second side, with the early jazz workouts of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins contrasting with the more abstract work of Branford Marsalis, Ornette Coleman and Kenny Kirkland.

  1. Brother Veal – Wynton Marsalis Septet (Blue Interlude)
  2. Nebuchadnezzar – Marcus Roberts (Deep In The Shed)
  3. Central Park West – John Coltrane (Coltrane’s Sound)
  4. Escalay – Kronos Quartet (Pieces of Africa)
  5. All Blues – Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)
  6. All the Things You Are – Duke Ellington (Ellington Indigos)
  7. As Serenity Approaches – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
  8. The Jitterbug Waltz – Marcus Roberts (As Serenity Approaches)
  9. Love In Vain Blues (Alternate Take) – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  10. Perdido Street Blues – Louis Armstrong (Louis Armstrong Of New Orleans)
  11. My Melancholy Baby [Alternate Take] – Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker (Bird And Diz (+3))
  12. Paradox – Sonny Rollins (Worktime)
  13. Willow Weep For Me – Duke Ellington (Ellington Indigos)
  14. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born – Branford Marsalis Trio (The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born)
  15. Simpatico – Misterioso – Howard Shore/Ornette Coleman (Naked Lunch)
  16. Chance – Kenny Kirkland (Kenny Kirkland)
  17. Big Trouble In the Easy (Pedro Pops Up) – Wynton Marsalis (Tune In Tomorrow… The Original Soundtrack)
  18. Crepuscule With Nellie (Take 6) – Thelonious Monk (Monk’s Music)
  19. Amazing Grace – Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Paul Simon (Journey Of Dreams)

If you are an Apple Music subscriber, you can listen to (most of) the mix here:

Old mix: An angel being blown backwards into the future

Prodded by yesterday’s post about Pieces of Africa and the mixes it inspired, I was inspired to post about a few of them. These were mix tapes—made well before the advent of Rip.Mix.Burn—and they reflected whatever was going through my brain at the time.

This mix was made early in the summer of 1993. I had just finished my third year at the University of Virginia and was interning in a physics lab, and slowly coming to the painful conclusion that I would not be going on to graduate study in my field. But it was sunny, and I was reasonably happy! So this was made to play in my car with the top down.

Like so many of the mixes I made (and still make), this was a way for me to digest all the CDs I had bought and listened to, whether from Plan 9 or in the BMG music club, which sold classical and other CDs at a substantial discount if you didn’t mind the occasionally blurry reproductions of album art and liner notes they suspiciously sported…

But summer of 1993 was still a pretty good time. Frank Black had just changed his name and released his first solo album; Sting’s latest showed he still had songwriting chops. I had met a singer from a woman’s chorus on a Glee Club tour who moved me deeply, to the tune of a Suzanne Vega song. Peter Gabriel’s Real World was still introducing me to new voices like Sheila Chandra. My friends in the New Dominions had just recorded their first CD, for which I did the jacket and disc design, working around a brilliant illustration by Deepak Raghu. I had heard Tori Amos for the first time in concert at Old Cabell Hall, being lucky enough to score tickets after a Glee Club rehearsal. I was starting to explore jazz beyond Coltrane and Miles and Wynton and Branford. Good times indeed.

  1. Fu Manchu – Frank Black (Frank Black)
  2. 99.9 F° – Suzanne Vega (99.9 F°)
  3. Love Is Stronger Than Justice (The Munificent Seven) – Sting (Ten Summoner’s Tales)
  4. Before You Were Born – Toad the Wet Sprocket (Fear)
  5. Ever So Lonely/Eyes/The Ocean – Sheila Chandra (Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices)
  6. Ava – David Byrne (The Forest)
  7. Tin Man – New Dominions (Salamander!)
  8. Tilliboyo – Kronos Quartet (Pieces of Africa)
  9. Road To Nowhere – Talking Heads (Sand In The Vaseline Popular Favorites 1976-1992)
  10. Precious Things – Tori Amos (Little Earthquakes)
  11. The Dream Before – Laurie Anderson (Strange Angels)
  12. Seven Days – Sting (Ten Summoner’s Tales)
  13. Drawing Room Blues – Joe Henderson (Lush Life – The Music of Billy Strayhorn)
  14. Sassy – Neneh Cherry (Homebrew)
  15. Ed Is Dead – The Pixies (Come On Pilgrim)
  16. Warning Sign – Talking Heads (More Songs About Buildings And Food)
  17. As Girls Go – Suzanne Vega (99.9 F°)
  18. Dirt In The Ground – Tom Waits (Bone Machine)
  19. Death Of A Train – Daniel Lanois (For The Beauty Of Wynona)
  20. Washing Of The Water – Peter Gabriel (Us)
  21. Motorway To Roswell – The Pixies (Trompe Le Monde)

If you have Apple Music, you can listen to the mix here, though it doesn’t include all the tracks… 🙁

Errata: Although “Upside Down” is in the track listing on the j-card for the tape, it wouldn’t fit on the end of Side 1. So I saved it for another mix.

Also noting: I added a page to the blog to track all the articles about mixes.

Exfiltration Radio: All Possibilities

It’s been quite a rollercoaster of a year, for all sorts of reasons, and there were times when it felt like we were hunkering down and waiting for a beating to end. But people are getting vaccinated now and it’s spring, and suddenly it seems reasonable to start hoping once more.

Musically, the period I associate most with “hope,” as opposed to “nihilism” or “despair” or “80s hair,” is the time from the late 1990s through about 2003 or so, which produced some of the loveliest songs of hope and happiness I can remember. Part of it was the rise of indie rock, part probably the sustained recovery of the world economy. Maybe it was just that I got married at the beginning of the period, who knows? For whatever reason, it feels like a good time to dust off some of these tracks and start hoping again.

Do not attempt to adjust your set…

  1. Untitled 4 (“Njósnavélin”) – Sigur Rós (( ))
  2. Scratch – Morphine (Yes)
  3. The Laws Have Changed – The New Pornographers (Electric Version)
  4. When You’re Falling – Afro Celt Sound System (Volume 3: Further in Time)
  5. The Way That He Sings – My Morning Jacket (At Dawn)
  6. Diamond In Your Mind – Solomon Burke (Don’t Give Up On Me)
  7. Brief & Boundless – Richard Buckner (Since)
  8. All Possibilities – Badly Drawn Boy (Have You Fed The Fish?)
  9. Time Travel is Lonely – John Vanderslice (Time Travel Is Lonely)
  10. Shine – Mark Eitzel (The Invisible Man)
  11. Why Not Smile – R.E.M. (Up)
  12. You Are Invited – The Dismemberment Plan (Emergency & I)
  13. Where Do I Begin – The Chemical Brothers (Dig Your Own Hole)
  14. I’m Still Here – Tom Waits (Alice)

Exfiltration Radio: Shorter story

Lee Morgan’s “Search for The New Land” session, Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 15, 1964. This is the cover shot for Shorter’s “The All Seeing Eye.”

I’ve been going down a rabbit hole in my listening lately, as I grow increasingly conscious that great artists live among us… but perhaps not for too much longer. One I’m thinking about right now is the great saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.

I started listening to Shorter over 30 years ago, thanks to a CD copy of The Best of Wayne Shorter: The Blue Note Years that I found in Plan 9. Like all single-disc anthologies (and like this mix!), it’s a sparse summary of an astonishing period of creativity and excellent performances. But it hooked me… especially the opening track, the title from Shorter’s sixth album, which manages to be both relaxed and full of tension at the same time thanks to his unshowy use of modal scales.

I think I heard this album before I came across the Second Great Quintet recordings he did with Miles, which included many of Shorter’s compositions (especially the great “Footprints,” heard here) in very different arrangements. Miles’s version of “Footprints,” on Miles Smiles, ups the anxiety in the modal scale through tempo and urgency, especially in Tony Williams’ polyrhythmic drumming. I also looked backwards in time, finding some of the great recordings that he did with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (and recently uncovering some of the sideman work he did for some of his colleagues, including Lee Morgan here).

Thanks to early-90s bias against fusion (which, in fairness, had fallen pretty low by the late 1980s), it took me years to discover Weather Report, particularly the first album, and I only recently began to listen to some of Shorter’s mid-1970s output, which featured a more accessible side of the great composer on songs like “Ana Maria.” And his late-period works with Danilo Perez, John Pattituci and Brian Blade continue to blow my head off with the genius of the collective improvisation, even as they document Shorter’s declining physical stamina. (He retired from performance in 2019 due to mounting health issues.)

Like that first Blue Note compilation, this sixty minute set is necessarily scanty, but hopefully will convince you to seek out more of Shorter’s work as well—and to utter a silent word of thanks that we walk the earth at the same time he does.

Enjoy…

  1. Speak No Evil – Wayne Shorter ( Speak No Evil )
  2. Ping Pong (No. 1) – Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers ( Complete Studio Recordings (with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter…) )
  3. Edda – Lee Morgan ( The Rumproller )
  4. Yes or No – Wayne Shorter ( JuJu )
  5. Footprints – Miles Davis Quintet ( Miles Smiles )
  6. Tears – Weather Report ( Weather Report )
  7. Ana Maria – Wayne Shorter ( Native Dancer )
  8. Aung San Suu Kyi – Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock ( 1+1 )
  9. Adventures Aboard The Golden Mean (live) – Wayne Shorter Quartet ( Emanon )
  10. Pinocchio – Herbie Hancock Quintet ( A Tribute To Miles )

Exfiltration Radio: I feel no shame

I was a sixth grader in 1983 from a very white part of town. I went from going to school less than two miles from my home to getting on a bus and riding 40 minutes every day to my middle school, one of two sitting next to each other on the edge of downtown. (Kind of reverse-busing.) The bus was loud, the older kids were scary. But… someone always had a radio.

Technically, they had a boom box. But no one ever seemed to be playing a cassette; it was almost always tuned to one of the local stations, often Z-104. I had grown up in a house that played classical radio, and when not that, easy listening (WFOG!), so the top-40 stuff that was being played was new to me.

So was the other stuff that was sometimes played. I don’t remember the station identifications, but a fair amount of what I remember wouldn’t have been played on Top-40 radio — think “Roxanne, Roxanne” or “Electric Kingdom.” So part of my memory from this time comes with no liner notes and I’m still finding some of the songs.

But the stuff that stuck the longest, earwormed the most thoroughly, was probably the adult contemporary balladry of the time. Many of them aren’t great songs! But they’re really easy to get into, even for a pop music neophyte — the “quiet storm” jazz crossover stuff like Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo” flavored some of what was going on (there’s a common thread between this stuff and Sting’s Dream of the Blue Turtles that also touched the Pointer Sisters; listen to “Automatic”).

And then there were the really goopy ballads. Anita Baker need have felt no shame for “Sweet Love,” but oh man, “On My Own.” And “All Cried Out.” I banished them so far from my memory, I never even touched them when going through 1980s music in a series of ten mixes starting in 2003. But they’re there, and some of them might be worth more than you think.

Just maybe not Gregory Abbott. (Oh well well.)

One last note: I was reminded about more than a few of these songs courtesy of Stereogum’s The Number Ones column, which is essential reading. I’ve linked a few articles below for further reading on some of the tracks, but you should really read the whole thing.

  1. Rumors – Timex Social Club – Timex Social Club (Un, Dos, Tres…Playa Del Sol (12 Magic Summer Hits))
  2. Radio People – Zapp (The New Zapp IV U)
  3. Fresh – Kool & The Gang (The Very Best of Kool & The Gang)
  4. In My House – Mary Jane Girls (20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: The Best of Mary Jane Girls)
  5. Juicy Fruit – Mtume (Juicy Fruit)
  6. Mr. Wrong – Sade (Promise)
  7. Automatic – The Pointer Sisters (Break Out)
  8. Sweet Love – Anita Baker (Rapture)
  9. Love Zone – Billy Ocean (The Very Best of Billy Ocean)
  10. Stop to Love – Luther Vandross (80’s Pop Hits)
  11. On My Own – Patti LaBelle (’80s Pop Number 1’s)
  12. Shake You Down (Single Version) – Gregory Abbott (80’s Pop Hits)
  13. All Cried Out (with Full Force) – Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam (80’s Pop Hits)
  14. Human Beat Box – Fat Boys (Fat Boys)

Exfiltration Radio: new faces, new sounds

I’ve been listening to a lot of classic Blue Note recordings recently—thanks to a bad HDTracks habit—and what struck me the other day is how the composition of the recordings changes the further back you go. What had become a jazz-funk fusion label by the 1970s was principally a hard-bop label in the 1960s with an incredible stable of performers (even if you could expect to find some of them, like Bobby Hutcherson or Grant Green, on recording after recording during the period). But if you look even further back, the label was unearthing and recording new artists in the early to mid-1950s, like Jutta Hipp, Horace Silver, Gil Mellé, Kenny Drew, and others, on albums that bore the common title New Faces, New Sounds.

So this session of Exfiltration Radio digs into our current crop of new faces and new sounds, with a setlist that is heavy on the current crop of London jazz geniuses (Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, Sarah Tandy), a few new faces from around the edges of Bandcamp (Joe Fiedler’s nutso take on Sesame Street, Chip Wickham’s meditative cuts from Qatar, the absolutely intense Damon Locks, the Lewis Express), the intense hard bop of Connie Han, the stretch music of Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah—and a few old souls, including the drum-led trio of Jerry Granelli playing the music of his colleague Mose Allison, and the Afrofuturist spiritual excursions of Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids.

Do not attempt to adjust your set!

  1. X. Adjuah [I Own the Night] – Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (Axiom)
  2. For the O.G. – Connie Han (Iron Starlet)
  3. The Colors That You Bring – Damon Locks – Black Monument Ensemble (Where Future Unfolds)
  4. Activate – Theon Cross (Fyah)
  5. Tico Tico – The Lewis Express (Clap Your Hands)
  6. People In Your Neighborhood – Joe Fiedler (Open Sesame)
  7. Baby Please Don’t Go – The Jerry Granelli Trio (The Jerry Granelli Trio Plays Vince Guaraldi and Mose Allison)
  8. Timelord – Sarah Tandy (Infection In The Sentence)
  9. Dogon Mysteries – Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids (Shaman!)
  10. La cumbia me está llamando (featuring La Perla) – Nubya Garcia (SOURCE)
  11. Blue to Red – Chip Wickham (Blue to Red)

Exfiltration Radio: your transfer, your hand, your answer

There have been such a lot of mixes this year! It’s almost as if we’ve doubled down on music making to compensate for the otherwise almost complete lack of normalcy.

This time I revisited an old mix in progress that had been kicking around my iTunes—er, Apple Music—library for at least seven or eight years. Originally titled “Unrepentant Throwbacks,” this one went after a certain strain of college rock that emphasized guitars, odd lyrics, borderline competent vocals, and weird band names. You know, like R.E.M..

Only there were probably hundreds of bands that mined the same lode that they did, who never looked beyond their original sound and never got the major league deal. I asked some friends on Facebook and got over 100 great suggestions, which I couldn’t fit into this sixty-minute slot. I’ll post the full list later; it was awesome.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this sixty minute blast of nostalgia, which for some of you will take you back to before you were born. And see you again, sooner than you think.

  1. Fun & Games – The Connells (Fun & Games)
  2. Do It Clean – Echo & The Bunnymen (Songs To Learn & Sing)
  3. I Want You Back – Hoodoo Gurus (Stoneage Romeo)
  4. Watusi Rodeo – Guadalcanal Diary (Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man)
  5. Talking In My Sleep – The Rain Parade (Emergency Third Rail Power Trip: Explosions In The Glass Palace)
  6. With Cantaloupe Girlfriend – Three O’Clock (Sixteen Tambourines/Baroque Hoedown)
  7. Kiss Me On The Bus – The Replacements (Tim [Expanded Edition])
  8. I Held Her In My Arms – Violent Femmes (Add It Up (1981-1993))
  9. Voice Of Harold – R.E.M. (Dead Letter Office)
  10. Writing the Book of Last Pages – Let’s Active (Big Plans for Everybody)
  11. Think Too Hard – The dB’s (The Sound of Music)
  12. Spark – The Church (Starfish)
  13. My Favorite Dress – The Wedding Present (George Best Plus)
  14. Muscoviet Musquito – Clan of Xymox – Clan of Xymox (Lonely Is an Eyesore)
  15. Tripped Over My Boot – Storm Orphans (Promise No Parade)
  16. Baby Jane – Waxing Poetics (Manakin Moon)
  17. Untitled – R.E.M. (Green)
  18. Embodiment Of Evil – Meat Puppets (Up On The Sun)

Exfiltration Radio: jazz in inner space

It’s that time again… time for the Godfather to grace you with an hour of weird music. Today’s playlist comes from the cusp of jazz’s transition into fusion and dives into the music that came around In a Silent Way, still one of the most revolutionary recordings in jazz.

In this 1969 record, Miles had reached the end of standards, the end of modal changes, the end of the post-bop revolution he had led with his second great quintet. He was listening to other innovators, working beyond jazz, especially Jimi Hendrix. And most importantly, he was continuing to surround himself with musicians who innovated, listen to them, and push them to take their performances beyond where they could on their own. (He also sometimes claimed authorship of those songs, but that’s a different story.)

The sound at the back of this new direction in jazz was the electric piano (usually a Fender Rhodes) fed into the echoplex and joined by musicians who were playing, as Miles said on the back cover of Zawinul, “cliché-free,” not relying on changes or modes but on rhythm and vamping and atmosphere and sometimes incredibly gorgeous scraps of melody that come and go in the middle of the track like smoke.

One of the things that’s hard to appreciate just by looking at the track titles is how much of this music was made by the same handful of musicians. Let’s take a look:

Herbie Hancock (electric and acoustic piano) plays on “Doctor Honoris Causa” (which Zawinul dedicated to him for his honorary doctorate from Grinnell), “Mountain in the Clouds,” “Opus One Point Five,” “Filles de Kilimajaro,” his own “You’ll Know When You Get There,” and “In a Silent Way.” Miroslav Vitouš (bass) is on “Causa,” “Mountain,” “Orange Lady,” and “Water Babies.” John McLaughlin (electric guitar) is on “Mountain” and “In a Silent Way.”

Billy Hart is on “Causa” (percussion) and “You’ll Know” (drums). Joe Henderson (tenor sax) is on “Mountain” and his own “Opus One Point Five.” Jack DeJohnette (drums) is on “Mountain,” “Opus One Point Five,” and “Water Babies.” Chick Corea plays electric piano on “In a Silent Way” and drums and vibes on “Water Babies.”

The great Wayne Shorter (tenor sax) is on “Orange Lady,” “Filles De Kilimanjaro,” his own “Water Babies,” and “In a Silent Way.” Airto Moreira plays percussion on “Orange Lady” and “Water Babies.” Ron Carter is on “Opus One Point Five” and “Filles.” Tony Williams plays drums on “Filles” and “In a Silent Way.” And Joe Zawinul plays on “Causa,” “Orange Lady,” and his composition “In a Silent Way.”

It’s not surprising that some of the tracks seem to blend seamlessly into each other. It’s more surprising how distinctive the musical identity of each track is. Definitely worth an hour, and then many more checking out the albums these came from.

Do not adjust your set; there is nothing wrong.

  1. Doctor Honoris Causa – Joe Zawinul (Zawinul)
  2. Mountain In the Clouds – Miroslav Vitous (Infinite Search)
  3. Orange Lady – Weather Report (Weather Report)
  4. Opus One Point Five – Joe Henderson (Power To The People [Keepnews Collection] [ Remastered ])
  5. Filles De Kilimanjaro (Girls Of Kilimanjaro) – Miles Davis (Filles De Kilimanjaro)
  6. Water Babies – Wayne Shorter (Super Nova)
  7. You’ll Know When You Get There – Herbie Hancock (Warner Archives)
  8. In A Silent Way – Miles Davis (The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions)

Exfiltration Radio: ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

Feels like a good time to go to outer space! Here’s an hour of space-themed tunes for this Friday that veers from funk to jazz to whatever the heck that Flying Lotus track is. Enjoy!

  1. Also Sprach Zarathustra – Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm (2001: A Space Odyssey (Soundtrack))
  2. P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up) – Parliament (Mothership Connection)
  3. Space – Prince (Come)
  4. Leave the Planet – Galaxie 500 (On Fire)
  5. Space – M.I.A. (MAYA)
  6. Space Is the Place – Sun Ra (Space Is The Place (Original Soundtrack))
  7. The Planets – Gary Bartz NTU Troop (Harlem Bush Music – Uhuru)
  8. Innerstellar Love – Thundercat (It Is What It Is)
  9. Boom Boom Satellite – Sigue Sigue Sputnik (Dress for Excess)
  10. See The Constellation – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
  11. Space Station #5 – Montrose (Historia de la Musica Rock: Locas)
  12. Hallo Spaceboy – David Bowie (Outside)
  13. Satelllliiiiiiiteee – Flying Lotus (Cosmogramma)
  14. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space – Spiritualized (Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space)
  15. Space Suit – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
  16. Drift – Brian Eno (Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks)

New mix: Exfiltration radio 12, Musical Piracy

Next week would have been Veracode’s Hackathon, during which we do a lot of crazy things, including run a volunteer company Internet radio station. I’ve made a bunch of one-hour-long mixes over the last few years for this effort, and was looking forward to playing along loosely with the Hackathon theme (pirates!) this time, starting with an unusual (for me) mix of covers.

Of course, the pandemic intervened. So it goes.

But I had already completed one of my two planned mixes (the next one is, as they say, Coming Soon), so I figured, why not post it anyway?

A few notes about the mix: it is a covers mix, because what is the act of taking someone else’s song and making it yours but musical piracy? And the covers are all reggae or reggae-adjacent (except for a bit near the end of reggae and ska originals of more famous cover versions by English and American bands), because (a) there’s a long tradition of reggae covers of popular songs that is a fun rabbit hole to go down, and (b) reggae is a music of the islands where the Caribbean pirates once sailed, and (c) one of the members of our pick-up band absolutely hates reggae. Also, (d) Dread Zeppelin. Enjoy!

  1. Black Dog – Dread Zeppelin ( Un-Led-Ed )
  2. Sugar Sugar – Bob Marley ( Randy’s Cover Versions )
  3. Mother & Child Reunion – Horace Andy ( Mr. Bassie )
  4. The Song Remains the Same – Dread Zeppelin ( 5,000,000 )
  5. Don’t Let Me Down – Marcia Griffiths ( Reggae Anthology: Melody Life )
  6. Here Comes the Sun – Peter Tosh ( 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of Peter Tosh )
  7. Heartbreaker (At the End of Lonely Street) – Dread Zeppelin ( Un-Led-Ed )
  8. Bridge over Trouble Waters – Jimmy London ( A Little Love )
  9. High and Dry (feat. Morgan Heritage) – Easy Star All-Stars ( Radiodread (Special Edition) )
  10. Your Time Is Gonna Come – Dread Zeppelin ( Un-Led-Ed )
  11. Lithium – Little Roy ( Battle for Seattle )
  12. The Tide Is High – The Paragons ( On the Beach With the Paragons )
  13. Rudy, a Message to You – Dandy Livingstone ( Copasetic! The Mod Ska Sound )
  14. Wrong’em Boyo – The Rulers ( Copasetic! The Mod Ska Sound )
  15. Immigrant Song – Dread Zeppelin ( Un-Led-Ed )
  16. Dub Will Tear Us Apart – Jah Division ( Rough Mix From Their TBA 12″ | www.thesocialregistry.com )

Exfiltration Radio: Off Kilter Christmas

It’s still Christmas, technically, until the Feast of Epiphany on January 6. That’s what I keep telling Lisa when she asks when I’m taking down the Christmas tree, and that’s what I’m telling you when I post this new Exfiltration Radio playlist of slightly askew Christmas (and Hanukkah) tunes and a few spoken word bits. Hope you find something in it to help ease back into the daily routine.

  1. Did You Spend Christmas Day In Jail? (excerpt) – Rev. J.M. Gates (Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree – A Vintage Holiday Mixtape)
  2. The Toy Trumpet – Arthur Fiedler;Al Hirt – Boston Pops/Arthur Fiedler (Pops Christmas Party)
  3. Ring Those Christmas Bells – Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians (The Sounds of Christmas)
  4. Good Morning Blues (feat. Cécile Mclorin Salvant) – Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Big Band Holidays)
  5. Please Come Home For Christmas – Little Johnny Taylor (It’s Christmas Time Again)
  6. I’m Your Christmas Friend, Don’t Be Hungry – James Brown (Hey America)
  7. Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas – The Staple Singers (It’s Christmas Time Again)
  8. Deck the Halls – R.E.M. (Gift Wrapped – 20 Songs That Keep On Giving!)
  9. I Hate Christmas – Oscar (Sesame Street: Merry Christmas from Sesame Street)
  10. The Little Drum Machine Boy – Beck (Just Say Noel)
  11. Come on! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance! – Sufjan Stevens (Songs For Christmas)
  12. Do You Hear What I Hear? – Chaka Khan (Do You Hear What I Hear? – Single)
  13. Nutmeg – Stephen Colbert & John Legend (A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!)
  14. Sleigh Ride – Dread Zeppelin (Presents)
  15. Big Bulbs – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (It’s a Holiday Soul Party)
  16. Silent Night – Bootsy Collins (Christmas Is 4 Ever)
  17. Don’t Shoot Me Santa – The Killers (Don’t Shoot Me Santa – Single)
  18. Christmas Island – Bob Dylan (Christmas In the Heart)
  19. Fan Club Christmas Record – 1964 (excerpt) – The Beatles (Fan Club Christmas Records)
  20. Christmas Greeting – Orson Welles (Vintage Christmas)

New mix: The Low End Theory

(No, it’s not a Tribe Called Quest mix.)

Last Hackathon I made an hour long mix of Hammond organ centered jazz. In retrospect, while the listening was great, it felt like it didn’t go far enough into the different types of performance techniques on the organ, or different styles. So this time, I decided to do something a little more subtle, and focus on the bass.

It can be hard to appreciate what a bass player brings to your typical small group performance. But you can start to dig in just by considering the different choices available to the bassist: acoustic or electric? Pizzicato (plucked) or arco (bowed)? Holding down the root of the chord, or playing a counter-melody? There are a bunch of different bass players on this mix, and each of them approaches their role very differently. Enjoy!

  1. Re: Person I Knew – Bill Evans Trio (Chuck Israels, bass) (Moon Beams [Original Jazz Classics Remasters])
  2. Tale of the Fingers – Paul Chambers (Whims Of Chambers)
  3. Caravan – Duke Ellington With Charles Mingus (bass) & Max Roach (Money Jungle)
  4. Moment’s Notice – John Coltrane (Paul Chambers, bass) (Blue Train)
  5. Eurydice – Weather Report (Miroslav Vitouš, bass) (Weather Report)
  6. Jimmy´s Mode – John Coltrane (Jimmy Garrison, bass) (Stellar Regions)
  7. Red Clay – Freddie Hubbard (Ron Carter, bass) (Red Clay)
  8. Epilogue – Miroslav Vitouš (Infinite Search)
  9. Little Sunflower – Christian McBride (Number Two Express)

New Mix: How I feel on the inside

It’s that time again… time for a new Hackathon radio mix. The latest entry in the Exfiltration Radio series deals in spookiness and mystery, and lots and lots of black. It’s a gothic and goth-adjacent postpunk sort of set, and it’s a lot of fun even if you don’t wear black on the outside. Another one is coming soon, so stay tuned!

  1. 10:15 Saturday Night – The Cure (Three Imaginary Boys)
  2. Bela Lugosi’s Dead (Official Version) – Bauhaus (The Bela Session)
  3. Pink Flag (2006 Digital Remaster) – Wire (Pink Flag)
  4. Not Great Men – Gang Of Four (Entertainment!)
  5. Shadowplay – Joy Division (Unknown Pleasures)
  6. Gathering Dust – Modern English (Mesh & Lace)
  7. In the Flat Field – Bauhaus (Swing the Heartache: The BBC Sessions)
  8. Halloween – Siouxsie & The Banshees (Ju Ju (Remastered))
  9. Somewhere – The Danse Society (The Indie Years : 1983)
  10. Love Like Blood – Killing Joke (Night Time)
  11. Lucretia My Reflection – The Sisters of Mercy (Floodland (Deluxe Version))
  12. A Short Term Effect – The Cure (Pornography)
  13. Song to the Siren – This Mortal Coil (It’ll End in Tears)