I previously posted about the sister mix to this one, Duckin’ and Dodgin’, and so a lot of the context for this mix tape can be found there. But there are a few other things I didn’t talk about.
Starting in 1997, I had begun making double-length mix tapes, with parts 1 and 2. It was fun to explore that much music, and great for long car trips, but it was also exhausting, and I had the idea that I should try to reduce the sprawl just a little bit. I couldn’t fully let the double tape format go, though, and there were a number of touchpoints that connect this tape to the prior one.
Most notable, of course, is the title track. I remember when I first listened to the Moby Play album, how impressed I was with the depth of the gospel and blues material he had tapped and how fresh sounding (at the time) he had made it. Then I found a copy of There Will Be No Sweeter Sound: The Columbia Okeh Post War Gospel Story, a really fantastic 2-CD compilation that came out in February 1998, and listened to the original that he had drawn “Run On” from, Bill Landford and the Landfordaires’ “Run On for a Long Time.” I was considerably less impressed with his work after that. As opposed to a transformative composition, “Run On” proves itself to be a more or less straight remix of the Landfordaires original, and going back to the 1949 recording you find all the charming irregularities and brilliant vocal performances that are flattened out in Moby’s version. (I find myself wondering whether Moby dug up the 78 of “Run On For a Long Time” or if he just nicked the song from the compilation, but that’s a different story.)
There were other things of note on this mix. Morphine’s “The Night” was a somber opener but I was feeling somber about the death of Mark Sandman on an Italian concert stage the prior year. The Night, the band’s posthumous final album, was a bittersweet gift, a nearly perfect summation of their “low rock” sound. Pairing it with my college friend Justin Rosolino’s “Legacy,” an again near perfect combination of acoustic guitar brilliance and vocal excitement (that “everything and everything” part gets me every time), puts some hope back into the atmosphere after “The Night.”
A lot of my playlist construction could be traced to the CDs I had bought in the preceding months. Pulp’s This is Hardcore, the R.E.M. odds and sods collection Dead Letter Office, and the latest Sleater-Kinney all play a pretty big role in this compilation, as did the Flaming Lips and Beck’s Midnite Vultures (many of which already appeared on the prior compilation). I also had picked up my first Elliott Smith album, Figure 8, a few months prior when it came out, and the uncharacteristically simple “Somebody That I Used to Know” made it on here. A few other songs owed their inclusion to my finding them on long car trips. Such was the case with Willie Nelson’s “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces” off his Daniel Lanois produced album Teatro, which is for some reason controversial (I loved it), which I listened to a lot on a drive down to the Outer Banks.
And such was the case with Nat “King” Cole’s “Save the Bones for Henry Jones,” which Lisa and I listened to for the first time disbelievingly on WKCR in what must have been hour 7 of a normally five hour drive up to see her parents in Lakewood, on a night that turned into a blizzard. Released in 1947, this was a duet with Johnny Mercer that inevitably cracks both of us up when we hear it today, and we’ve passed it on to our kids as well.
The end of the mix has one of the most emotional one-two punches I’ve put on a mix tape, the part where our impending move to Boston was really kicking in: the Flaming Lips’ “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” and Sleater-Kinney’s “Leave You Behind.” Due to the limitations of the tape format, I only managed to capture part of the last song; it cuts off partway into the bridge as the band sings “There’s nothing left for you to lose,” leaving the song tantalizingly unfinished, which is appropriate for how I felt about my departure from Virginia.
- The Night – Morphine (The Night)
- Legacy – Justin Rosolino (Music: The Live Recordings)
- Wolves, Lower – R.E.M. (Dead Letter Office)
- Ballad of a Ladyman – Sleater-Kinney (All Hands on the Bad One)
- Dishes – Pulp (This is Hardcore)
- Get Real Paid – Beck (Midnite Vultures)
- A Spoonful Weighs a Ton – The Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin)
- Somebody That I Used to Know – Elliott Smith (Figure 8)
- Fight Against Drug Abuse (Public Service Announcement) – James Brown (Funk Power 1970: Brand New Thing)
- Save the Bones for Henry Jones – Nat “King” Cole (Jazz Encounters)
- Somebody Pick Up My Pieces – Willie Nelson (Teatro)
- Cursed Male – Porno for Pyros (Porno for Pyros)
- The First Time (Reprise) – Daniel Lanois & MDH (Million Dollar Hotel (Soundtrack))
- I Know It’s Over – The Smiths (The Queen Is Dead)
- The Big Fellah – Black 47 (Home of the Brave)
- I Will Follow – U2 (Boy)
- Run On For a Long Time – Bill Landford and the Landfordaires (There Will Be No Sweeter Sound)
- Pony – Tom Waits (Mule Variations)
- Hollywood Freaks – Beck (Midnite Vultures)
- Couldn’t Cause Me Harm – Beth Orton (Central Reservation)
- Jealous Guy – John Lennon (Imagine)
- Gigantic – The Pixies (Surfer Rosa)
- Nevermind (What Was It Anyway) – Sonic Youth (NYC Ghosts & Flowers)
- Feeling Yourself Disintegrate – Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin)
- Leave You Behind – Sleater-Kinney (All Hands on the Bad One)
You can listen to (most of) this playlist in Apple Music (inexplicably not including “Run On For a Long Time”):