#0070 – Ska

ska

This mix has been sitting in my iTunes library for well over eight months.  There just hasn’t been the right time to release it.  Jim’s oldest son, Damian, asked about ska and as a big fan, I wanted to help address this ska need — because everyone needs ska.  Everyone.

Then, this last weekend, with the Aquabats playing at the Metro in Chicago, I was committed to getting this mix out — and then I messed up my ankle, which kept me from getting to see the Aquabats and made me a very sad panda.  Hours of Guitar Hero later, I was comfortable with keeping my quantum of solace in check enough to produce this mix.

So I share with you, future lovers of 2 Tone just the lowest hanging fruit on the interwoven branches of ska, punk, rocksteady, new wave, reggae, rock and pop.

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Everyone loves ska.  Just remember that, and you’ll be aiight.

  • Monkey Man – The Specials
  • Everything Sucks – Reel Big Fish
  • Beat Surrender – The Jam
  • Simmer Down – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
  • Roots Radicals – Rancid
  • Freedom of Choice – Devo
  • Canary in a Coalmine – The Police
  • Dub 56 – The Toasters
  • Turning Japanese – Skankin’ Pickle
  • Come On Eileen – Save Ferris
  • One Step Beyond – Madness
  • Ska Boss – The Aquabats
  • Rudy, A Message To You – Dandy Livingstone
  • Shame and Scandal – Peter Tosh
  • Pressure Drop – The Specials
  • Rudie Can’t Fail – The Clash
  • Pick It Up – Alex Desert (Hepcat)
  • Banana – The Aggrolites
  • Kong – MU330
  • Into Action – Tim Armstrong

#0056 – IRON DJ – Herbalism

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Iron Deejay

…in which I take you on a trip… through the mind, inner space and time itself.  In the past few weeks, I’ve had the good fortune of recovering some first blog entries going back to 2003 where Suzy and I took a long-delayed honeymoon to Amsterdam for two glorious weeks.  I could regale you with my writings forever, but instead, let us take the quest to enlightenment, self-discovery as we travel through giddiness, joy, peace, love, bemusement, reflection, questioning, anxiety, paranoia, panic, anger, badassery and ultimately resolution — the kind that generally leads to three grand slam breakfast skillets at Denny’s around 2am and about 13 boxes of Nerds.

This extra-special mix includes:

  1. Electric Light Orchestra – I’m Alive
  2. Elmore James – Hawaiian Boogie
  3. Poi Dog Pondering – Living With the Dreaming Body
  4. VHS or Beta – Heaven
  5. Duran Duran – New Moon on Monday
  6. The Verve – Sonnet
  7. The High Llamas – Painters Paint
  8. The Clash – Lost in the Supermarket
  9. Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind
  10. Lou Reed – How Do You Think It Feels
  11. The Police – Does Everyone Stare?
  12. Soul Coughing – True Dreams of Witchita
  13. Super Furry Animals – Run! Christian, Run!
  14. Grandaddy – A.M. 180
  15. Godspeed You Black Emperor! – Kicking Horse on Broken Hill
  16. Shriekback – The Reptiles and I
  17. System of a Down – X
  18. Cypress Hill – Cock the Hammer
  19. Danger Mouse – What More Can I Say? (Jay Z / Beatles Mashup)
  20. The White Stripes – Your Southern Can Is Mine
  21. Queen – All Dead, All Dead

#0055 – IRON DJ – No, let’s just be enemies

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Iron Deejay

gen1us profile image…in which I take you on a sonic adventure through the beginning, end, and aftermath of a trainwreck relationship. No one relationship in particular, I’ve been married so long I don’t remember any others, really. 🙂 But this is a mix that not only progresses through a series of moods but which also purports to tell a story. I hope you enjoy it.

I’ll be out of town for the weekend with little or no internet access. Hopefully when I get back I will have a whole bunch of Iron DJ entries to listen to!

  1. ELO – I’m Alive
  2. Pulp – Disco 2000
  3. Matthew Sweet – I’ve Been Waiting
  4. Stevie Wonder – I Believe
  5. Iggy Pop – Some Weird Sin
  6. Bill Withers – Who Is He And What Is He To You?
  7. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Relative Ways
  8. Beach Boys – God Only Knows
  9. The Slackers – So This Is The Night
  10. Ben Folds Five – Song For The Dumped
  11. The Police – So Lonely
  12. Aretha Franklin – Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)
  13. Unbunny – X
  14. David Bowie – Quicksand
  15. Queen – All Dead, All Dead

#0054 – Last of the V8 Interceptors

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Gen1us iconNow that the world has ended, what happens next? Thanks to the miracle of MTV, we now have some answers.

I have been wanting to do an 80s mix for a while, and as I thought about those songs and that time in my life, I found that the music and the videos for the music were pretty much inseparable in my head. I don’t watch MTV anymore (and from what I hear they don’t play too many music videos anymore either) but in the 80s I did, nearly constantly. With current music, I don’t really have that video frame of reference and the music is simply music. With 80s music though, I could discuss the (sometimes questionable) merits of the music alone but it is difficult to have that discussion without the mental images associated with the music video.

Well I got to thinking about all those great videos, and the ones that kept coming back to me were videos like Duran Duran’s Wild Boys, or The Police’s Synchronicity II, with their strange post-apocalyptic Mad Max type of aesthetic. So I’ve been watching a lot of those videos on youtube and I’ve collected some of the songs for you here.

This is still only an audio podcast, but I discuss the video for each song I play and I’ll put youtube links below.

  1. Fishbone – Party at Ground Zero
  2. Duran Duran – Wild Boys
  3. Rick Springfield – Bop ‘Til You Drop
  4. The Hooters – All You Zombies
  5. Queen – Radio Gaga
  6. Styx – Mr. Roboto
  7. Art of Noise with Max Headroom – Paranoimia
  8. Billy Ocean – Loverboy
  9. King – Love and Pride
  10. Scandal featuring Patty Smyth – The Warrior
  11. Taco – Puttin’ on the Ritz
  12. The Police – Synchronicity II
  13. Peter Schilling – Major Tom
  14. Tina Turner – We Don’t Need Another Hero
  15. World Party – Ship of Fools

PS Look for my Iron DJ entry later this week!

#0045 – File under: remash

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UPDATE: I neglected to give you a bunch of links where you can download the mashups here and others I found. Those links are now included so you can give the artists, DJs and the geeks who support them some love.

This is an hour-long mashup of mashups. What is a mashup? Direct from Wikipedia…

is a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another (also mash up and mash-up). These songs may be considered part of the bastard pop musical genre. “A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another…Mash-ups are incredible fun and a fascinating way to reexperience some of your favorite tunes.” [2]

In full swing at the start of the 21st century, mash ups have been described positively are “ultimate post-modern pop song[s]” or “‘culture jamming in its purest form'”[3] and “display an analytical impulse…we actually hear how these songs resonate with one another, comment upon and affect one another…in a way, the music speaks for itself” [4]. They have also been described negatively as “the logical extension of the sampling fever of the ’80s taken to its dumbest extreme”. Due to the questionable legal status of mash ups and little chance of profits “there’s a real punk rock attitude attached to the movement” [3].

So there you have it 🙂

  1. Battle Funktastic – Hotei vs. Rip Slyme (you’ll have to search for it, because it took me forever to find it after hearing it in 2006 when I was in Tokyo, which is the only place I’ve ever heard it other than my iPod)
  2. Funky Kommissar
  3. In Da Black (AC/DC vs. 50 Cent vs. Scissor Sisters)
  4. Thunder Busters (AC/DC vs. Ray Parker Jr.)
  5. Say No Go – De La Soul (using a sample off of “I Can’t Go For That” by Hall & Oates)
  6. Missin Kittin (Rolling Stones vs. Miss Kittin)
  7. The Way It Is – Prodigy (using the riff from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”)
  8. Britney – Dead or Alive? (Britney Spears vs. Dead or Alive vs. Daft Punk)
  9. Every Car You Chase (The Snow Police (The Police vs. Snow Patrol)
  10. The Way to Dirty Fame (David Bowie vs. Queen vs. Don Henley vs. Sly Fox)
  11. Warning, Rush Where It’s At (Big Audio Dynamite II vs. Beck vs. Green Day)
  12. Break Through Love (The Doors vs. Led Zeppelin)
  13. Cry Little Sister (I Need You Now) – The Lost Brothers
  14. Daft Prayer (Bon Jovi vs. Daft Punk)

#0028 – File under: Guitar Heroics

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I’ve put in almost 24 hours of solid playing time in the past couple of weeks between Guitar Hero III and Rockband.  Songs here include awesome tracks by Poison, Social Distortion, Mountain, Blue Oyster Cult, Bon Jovi, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, The Killers, The Who, Kaiser Chiefs, The Stone Roses, The Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dead Kennedys, Pixies, Guns N’ Roses, The Police and Slipknot.

Oh, and if you make it through to the end, you’ll unlock Dragonforce, too 🙂