My mixes are all numbered, and I’ve never posted one out of order before. But here it is Inauguration Day, and slated for today was #44, a wintry indie-rock mix about monsters that felt at odds with all the exuberance people close to me are shining onto the internet. Then I realized that, on top of that, I had a party mix which began with a guy shouting “Welcome to the new administration!” and later on has a track titled “Requiem For A Neo-Con”. I know, right?

So it’s time for GEARBOXO! presents A FLAGRANT DISPLAY. Pop, hip-hop, genre revivals, remixes, AutoTune. Guest appearances by Neneh Cherry and Mary Baker Eddy. Torrent here. Tracks:

01 THE CAB Take My Hand (Machine Shop Production) (Welcome to the New Administration (Fall Out Boy mixtape))
02 BRAZILIAN GIRLS Good Time (New York City)
03 edIT The Game Is Not Over (f. J-Dilla, Phat Kat & Dabrye) (single)
04 WHITE PONY Shimmy Shimmy Ya (f. Josephine Philip) (myspace.com)
05 ROOTS MANUVA Well Alright (Slime And Reason)
06 ALPHABEAT Fascination (This Is Alphabeat)
07 LATE OF THE PIER Heartbeat, Flicker, Line (Space and The Woods single)
08 BLACK KIDS Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo) (Partie Traumatic)
09 VAST AIRE The Man With Out Fear (Dueces Wild)
10 CHRISTINE FELLOWS Saturday Night On Utopia Parkway (Nevertheless)
11 WHY? Fatalist Palmistry (Alopecia)
12 DAVID E. SUGAR To Yourself (12″)
13 THE DO Tammie (A Mouthful)
14 SSION Street Jizz (Fool’s Gold)
15 MYSTERY JETS Young Love (The Shoes remix) (Hideaway single)
16 MR. LIF Requiem For A Neo-Con (p. General Elektriks) (Sleepyheads 3)
17 HOT CHIP One Pure Thought (Made In The Dark)
18 KANO These MC’s (f. Skepta) (140 Grime St.)
19 KLEERUP Forever (f. Neneh Cherry) (Kleerup)
20 CAGE Stargate (The Best & Worst Of Cage)
21 THE FAINT Fulcrum And Lever (Fasciinatiion)

Observations: Emma never said “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution” (but she was right); Erlend definitely said “Every party has a winner and a loser” (and he was right too). In dance clubs, as in Vegas, the house always wins– but nobody on the floor seems to mind.

Small print: The Cab’s remix is from a mixtape distributed free on the net to promote a Fall Out Boy album; the original version is on their album Whisper War. Late Of The Pier’s song also appears, rerecorded, on their album Fantasy Black Channel. The Mystery Jets’ remix is of a song originally found on their album Twenty One. Parents, be warned of the language on 3, 9, 16 and 20, plus possibly 4 (if you don’t want your toddler singing “I like it raw”) and 14 (if you don’t want your toddler to learn the word “jizz”).

* This is the sixth of eight mixes for 2008, posted second.
* Concept by M. Holloway.
* Celebratory spirit thanks to Polar Star, Juno First and Peter Segg.

* Mix by
* your favorite real horrowshow,
* JJ Rackjobber.

It’s that time of year. THAT time.

The eight mixes I made for New Year’s will be posted here on eight consecutive Tuesdays. This is the first: P. HOOAUEGL presents A GOOD START. The torrent to download it is here. Track listing:

01 JAY BRENNAN Bowlegged & Starving (Goddamned)
02 BEN FOLDS Free Coffee (Way to Normal)
03 GONZALES Working Together (Soft Power)
04 THE HOLLOWAYS Sinners & Winners (Sinners & Winners)
05 LA CASA AZUL La Nueva Yma Sumac (La Revolucion Sexual)
06 GIOVANNI MARKS Who Wonders If (Trunk Bomb01)
07 STATUESQUE Finished As People (The Grape & The Grain)
08 STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS Gardenia (Real Emotional Trash)
09 AIMEE MANN Borrowing Time (@#%&*! Smilers)
10 THE FUTUREHEADS The Beginning Of The Twist (This Is Not The World)
11 BONO MUST DIE! TOO YOUNG (myspace.com)
12 MYSTERY JETS Hideaway (Twenty One)
13 MAX TUNDRA Will Get Fooled Again (Parallax Error Beheads You)
14 SOUTH Better Things (You Are Here)
15 WHAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS To Each His Own (What Doesn’t Kill Us)
16 THE AVETT BROTHERS Will You Return (Emotionalism)
17 PONI HOAX The Bird Is On Fire (Images Of Sigrid)
18 KYLIE MINOGUE Wow (X)
19 TRASH80 At Teh Disko (Icarus)
20 SWAY Taxi (The Signature LP)
21 THE MAGNETIC FIELDS The Nun’s Litany (Distortion)
22 SUBTLE The No (Exiting Arm)
23 SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS Silent Grips (7″)
24 PASSION PIT Sleepy Head (Chunk of Change EP)

Observations: Not into sleeping - when I was broke - - the boss is happy - always quicker - you do incredible things - a new impostor - how shallow - a Ponzi scaminar - get up - get it started - show you the door - we gotta talk - the seder table - days seem to last - one more of these - I’m doing fine - parking lot - way that you dance - * - the DJ sound - have more fun - artificial light - a trick on myself - crowd your bedroom - wait up half the night…

Small print: The Giovanni Marks and Bono Must Die! tracks were posted furtively on the web at unknown times by their creators, but probably it was in 2008. The Trash80 EP, like all 8bitpeoples releases, is free to download on the web. La Casa Azul’s song is not well-served by its placement here, so if you can’t stand listening to things in order, skip to that one.

* This is the first of eight mixes for 2008.
* Concept by M. Holloway.
* Motivation by K. New, R. Shanks and A. Details.

* Mix by
* your favorite trapper-keeper,
* JJ Rackjobber.

It turns out the bug that has kept me from posting is a nasty interaction between libxml2 and PHP, and nothing to do with WordPress at all. Hopefully I will have a workaround soon so that I can share some music with you. You haven’t missed much in the past few months other than a lot of fiction updates, the better of which are

88 | 89 | 97 | 102 | 100

I like working from the keyboard as much as possible on my Mac, and once I
started using iTunes’ ratings more, it bothered me that I couldn’t set
them without using the mouse. Now I can! This is kind of fiddly, but
doesn’t require any special mastery of your Mac.p

The solution mostly came from a
href=”http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/automation/use_keyboard_shortcuts_to_rate_songs_in_itunes”here/a,
but that’s structured in an unhelpful way, so here’s my attempt at
complete instructions:p
lj-cut text=”Seriously, this makes me unreasonably pleased.”
1. In your home folder, go into codeLibrary/iTunes/code and see if
there’s a folder called codeScripts/code. If there isn’t, create
one.p

2. Open the Script Editor (probably in
code/Applications/AppleScript/code) and type one of the following:p

To have your keyboard command rate the song bplaying/b, type
pre
tell application “iTunes”
try
set the rating of current track to 20
end try
end tell
/pre
To have your keyboard command rate the bcurrently selected/b song or
songs, type
pre
tell application “iTunes”
repeat with theTrack in (get selection)
set the rating of theTrack to 20
end repeat
end tell
/pre
Now hit apple-S and navigate over to save this in that
codeLibrary/iTunes/Scripts/code folder that you either discovered or
created earlier. Name it “Rate 1″.p

3. You need to create four other near-identical scripts for the other four
ratings. Fortunately, you can do this fast. Change the ‘20′ to ‘40′ and
press apple-SHIFT-S for ‘Save As’. When it asks for a name, call it “Rate
2″. (iTunes is secretly turning your star ratings into percentages, so 5
stars is ‘100′ and so forth on down.) Repeat this step with ‘60′, ‘80′ and
‘100′ and the corresponding names.p

4. Open System Preferences (probably in your Dock, but if not, look for it
in code/Applications/Utilities/code) and choose “Keyboard Mouse”,
then click the “Keyboard Shortcuts” mini-tab.p

5. Within “Keyboard Shortcuts”, click the plus sign at the lower-left of
the big scrolly list. For “Application” choose iTunes. For “Menu Title”,
enter “Rate 1″. Then enter whatever key combo you want as the shortcut.
Click ‘Add’, then repeat for the four other ratings. I just used apple-1
through apple-5, and it doesn’t seem to conflict with anything else iTunes
defines.p

6. Open code/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor/code and scroll
down to an item called “SystemUIServer”. Select it and click the stop sign
in the upper left and tell OSX that yes, you want it to quit. It should
come back immediately.p

7. iTunes should now have “Rate 1″ through “Rate 5″ in its script menu on
the top bar (the scroll icon between Window and Help), with the
appropriate keyboard shortcuts printed and functioning.p

Yay! You can also do something similar to check or uncheck tracks; instead
of “set the rating of … to 20″ you want, for example, “set the enabled
of … to false”. Before this, I didn’t even know you could attach
arbitrary keyboard shortcuts to whatever menu items you wanted, regardless
of whether they had shortcuts before. Seems like it could be a godsend for
someone that needs to often change character encodings in their browser,
for example. And I can make the ‘Send’ command in Mail be something other
than the mysterious apple-shift-D.

I didn’t re-explain this whole thing, did I?p - me!br - free custom improv fictionbr - manual typewriterbr - no correction paperbr - 5-10 words or phrases (from you)br - one hour (or a little more)br - one page (almost never more)br - quality not guaranteedp I ask for people to leave lots of blank space before their wordlist in an email request, so that I can keep it ’sealed’ until I’m ready to actually write it, which might be a while. The current crop are all for requests made over five years ago, so as much as I’d like to write a story for you, you should wait to ask until I’m caught up. Because being caught up is fun!p Two new stories, lumpy but cooked through:p a href=”http://www.pastemob.org/s/trap/087.html”#87/a | a href=”http://www.pastemob.org/s/trap/088.html”#88/a

Bloc Party’s first album was produced by the exceptional Paul Epworth, their second by middlebrow drama merchant Jacknife Lee. So for the third album, they brought in both producers, and the result plays very much like a battle for Bloc Party’s soul, except that really, this is one of those twisty caper movies where it turns out Bloc Party pawned their soul years ago in order to buy gear, and the whole thing was a setup to deliver Epworth into Lee’s hands for the ransom money, and then internet people argue for months over whether the final scene meant that singer Kele Okereke really was Debbie Harry or what.

Y’know?

Anyway: a few bangin’ tracks that I suspect are Epworth’s and a few definite snoozers I suspect are Lee’s. (We might learn the truth once it comes out for real; at the moment, it’s digital-only and lacking credits.) Then we have a baffling, intriguing handful like “Mercury” where the band spend the whole time pulling quarters out of each other’s ears– there’s a viable, handsome new style that lies in that direction, I think, but I don’t know whether they’ll make it there if they try to go on foot.

Bloc Party on MySpace
Epworth (as Epic Man) producing UK rapper Plan B | Epworth remixing Interpol

Fully explores the surprisingly tiny range of styles between old Dressy Bessy (dazed-brat indiepop) and old Breeders. I think I’ve always underestimated them a little because of their terrible name– like for example, their two tracks used in “But I’m A Cheerleader” were the ones a friend of mine was saddest about when it turned out the movie’s soundtrack wasn’t going to be released, and I just didn’t get it. Oh yeah, those songs are great, but don’t you know it’s DRESSY BESSY? Hmm.

Anyway, Pink Stars Yellow Moons was classic and this is mostly just okay, but the exceptions are better than the rest, not worse, so my heart is a little warm.

The other day, something reminded me of 12 Inches Of Snow, the first album by Canadian reggae vocalist Snow. Its title is a rare example of a triple-entendre in popular culture: “12 inches of snowfall”, “a 12-inch record (i.e. an LP) by Snow”, and “Snow’s penis is 12 inches long!”

At least, I think such things are rare. The only other one I can come up with, off the top of my head, is the name of Parappa’s master in Parappa The Rapper. Chop Chop Master Onion is an animated onion (something you chop up), an Asian stereotype (”chop chop!”), and a martial-arts master (who teaches Parappa to do a karate chop).

In both cases, I’m not totally confident all three meanings were intended by the creators, though it seems likely. (The fact that LPs are exactly a foot across might seem too obscure to refer to were it not for “twelve-inches”, i.e. non-LP singles of that size. But also, that was 15 years ago, and even if nobody was buying vinyl, it was still a pretty vivid cultural memory.)

Possibly I have idiosyncratic criteria for ‘real’ triple-entendres, but there must be more. At the very least, there must be a third one!

Two experiments, one of which worked out better than it had any right to (for whatever that’s worth).

#85 #86

Foil - Reviver Gene (mp3)

From 1998’s Spread It All Around. By 1998 anyone who listened to “alternative rock” had their bullshit detector wound tight to flash NO NO NO if they were offered a UK guitar band who were “sort of grunge, but not really”. But this Scottish single deserved better (if not the rest of the album–I couldn’t get into it). The guitars sound like shoegazer guitars to me, only with too many notes in the main riff to blend in on a My Bloody Valentine record; singer Hugh Duggie has an initial twinkle-eyed cool that gives way to moments of Eddie Vedder snarl on low notes and little-kid glee on high notes, all without actually sounding versatile or anything. He’s just this guy, and for four minutes he is WINNING AT LIFE.

Which is the real reason this song is not plausibly marketable as grunge: it screams and grinds a little, but it kind of makes me want to hit a home run and then eat ice cream.