GETTING MORE TALE #787: Mix CD 19 – “The Green Album”

As we’ve done in the past, let’s have a look at a mix CD I dug up, from about a decade ago.  It’s an interesting mix, made mostly of stuff I found online.  Any time I’d gather at least 80 minutes worth of downloads, I’d burn them to a CD.  I considered that to be a much more permanent format.  This disc is really just an archive of things I downloaded during a certain period of time in 2008.  The title 19 suggests that it’s the 19th such archive CD that I burned.  More than that though, I made it a good listen.  As usual there are surprises and a few attempts at buffoonery.  Let’s dive in.

The first thing to notice:  There are 23 tracks on the CD, but 19 listed on the front sleeve.  That means I hid four comedic bits somewhere between the songs, to be discovered by surprise.  That’s why I left off the track numbers.

The opener “Big Yellow Joint” is a jingle from the TV show Arrested Development.  Remember the Banana Stand?  In the 60s it was a popular place to meet to buy and sell weed!  But that’s out of the way quickly and it’s “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago from a very poor quality mp3.  “25 or 6 to 4” is the definitive rock song with a horn section.  Find me a better one.

Then, seamlessly, it’s an old childhood favourite:  “Bad to the Bone”!  When you make a mix CD, the software generally defaults to a three second gap between songs.  I liked a tighter flow than that, so I always used one second or even no gap.  This disc is almost 80 minutes long so I used every second I could find.  The transitions on my mix CDs are always top notch.  After George Thorogood, it’s Pat Travers with “Snortin’ Whiskey”.  I was probably hearing these tracks on the radio a lot at the time, so I downloaded ’em and burned ’em.

A really terrible sounding mp3 of “Sonic Reducer” by the Dead Boys reflects my love of the movie Hard Core Logo.  It started with the H.C.L. version of “Sonic Reducer”, and then Pearl Jam’s cover.  If I liked those, I figured I should download the original.  But all this proves to me is why you need to buy the CD.  Downloaded versions suck.  This is sonically not up to par and I’m surprised I was satisfied by this 10 years ago.

The first audio hoodwink follows the Dead Boys.  It’s a 30 second clip from the movie Walk Hard, starring John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox.  This clip features Jack Black as Paul McCartney, Paul Rudd as John Lennon, Justin Long as George Harrison, and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr.

Having a chuckle at the Dewey Cox clip is a perfect way to transition over to a couple good reggae songs by Inner Circle: “Sweat” and (of course) “Bad Boys”! Have a laugh, then get down and dance. I like what I did here, if I do say so myself! Going from that back to rock and roll is tricky, but I think I pulled it off with the very poppy “Fire, Ice & Dynamite” by Deep Purple (Mk V). It’s an oddball rarity, only ever appearing on a Deep Purple DVD as a video slideshow.

One of my favourite 80s songs, the Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey” still pleases today. I can only handle the Dead in small doses, but this is my favourite of their songs. It’s probably 50% pop and 50% nostalgia. In keeping with the 80s, it’s Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, a live version with the 1999 lineup supposedly intended for the Sandler flick Big Daddy.  Immediately following is a live version of “Dead Flowers” from an earlier time.  Ah, Limewire!  I remember regularly typing in searches like “Guns N’ Roses rare” or “Guns N’ Roses live” and downloading anything I could get my digital digits on.  It was also hit and miss in terms of quality.  These are bootleggy but not excessively so.

I remember watching Napoleon Dynamite a fuck of a lot back then.  I used the presentation Napoleon gave about the Loch Ness monster for the next unlisted comedy bit.  Then it’s another rarity, also only available as a bonus track on a DVD:  “Nobody Knows What It’s Like to Be Lonely” by Motley Crue.  The track is 7:05 long, and every fan of Too Fast For Love needs to hear it and have it.  “Song to Slit Your Wrist By”, which I used to think was by Motley Crue but is actually by Nikki Sixx’s 58, is a waste of time that I shouldn’t have included.  I thought I had downloaded a rare Japanese bonus track.  In a cruel twist, Motley included a 58 song on the Japanese edition of Generation Swine, forcing me to seek it out, not realizing it wasn’t actually Motley Crue.

In the very first instalment of Getting More Tale called That Crush on Avril, my not-so-secret affection for Avril Lavigne was revealed.  Let’s be honest, folks — her second album rocked.  I still like it.  She’s never rocked heavy like that since, and I’ve long since gotten off the train.  This CD has a rare acoustic version of “Complicated”, but far better then that is Weird Al’s parody “A Complicated Song”.

“Why’d you have to go and make me so constipated?
‘Cause right now I’d do anything to just get my bowels evacuated,
In the bathroom I sit and I wait and I strain,
And I sweat and I clench and I feel the pain,
Oh, should I take laxatives or have my colon irrigated?”

Keeping the comedy going, it’s a clip from Arrested Development with Jason Bateman and Michael Cera.  It’s a good show; you should watch it.

In 2008, Harem Scarem released a free official download:  a recent live version of “Hard To Love”.  This was intended as a final gift to fans, since the band were breaking up.  Temporarily, thank you very much!  The live version shows off the band’s impressive singing abilities, and of course being an official download, the sound quality is all but perfect.  I followed that with a live radio performance by ex-Tesla guitarist Tommy Skeoch, a song called “I Left the Circus”.  Well, I think technically he was kicked out of the circus.  It’s a jokey song about Tesla.  According to Skeoch in the intro, one of the guys from Tesla heard it and took it well.  “Although he’s kind of a pompous fuck and I don’t really like him.”  I’m glad I downloaded this; I don’t know how you’d find it today.  Who knows what radio show I downloaded it from.  The LeBrain Library™ is a storehouse for things like this.  I keep things that the record companies lose in massive fires.

Too soon?

In the late 80s, Robbie Robertson had a popular single called “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”, from his solo debut.  Some like it, some hate it, but it’s a remarkable song.  It sounds both retro and futuristic.  It featured a weird electronic instrument called the Omnichord, and an explosive chorus accompanied by Sammy BoDean.  A lot of this CD, scattershot as it is, features songs I enjoyed in my youth, but don’t own the albums.  I should fix that.

After a final sketch from the movie Superbad (“I’m gonna cry myself to sleep every night.  When I’m out partying”) it’s the ultimate rock comedy of all time.  Can you guess what that might be?  No, not Spinal Tap.  No, not Bad News either.  It’s Van Halen’s isolated vocal track of “Runnin With the Devil”!

Weird CD indeed, random but with a lot of effort to make it cohesive and listenable.  I’ll give myself:

4/5 stars