Dead For the Dead-Damaged: conversations involving the Grateful Dead tend to go one of two ways. Folks are either turbo-fans gushing on about the transcendence of Wembley ‘72, the fluid magic of Cornell ‘77, or about how the band’s telepathic musical interconnectedness was like, a manifestation of like, cosmic consciousness - or whatever - but more often than not it's 'I've tried, man...just can't do it'. There’s not a lot of middle-ground. I feel like the Dead (and Steely Dan to a lesser degree) tend to illuminate a disproportionate amount of people’s personal baggage.

I won’t claim to be a Deadhead. I grew up skateboarding and never strayed too far from skate culture's inherent punk rock orthodoxy. The Dead were just an unspoken no-go. We were all familiar with the motifs; the skulls, the roses, the dancing bears, what a 'long strange trip' it had been, but in all honesty, my 18 year-old self would not have been able to describe what they sounded like. I imagined it was some impenetrable hybrid of Frank Zappa and Iron Butterfly, you know, real far-out ‘acid rock’. The only thing I knew for sure was that it sucked. Everyone said so. At least everything I thought was cool.

This mixtape is for the naysayers, my former-self included, curated around the idea of alleviating a certain amount of Dead-anxiety. For a band that built much of their reputation on the live show, to my mind, the songwriting is the true gold, and it always seems to shine brightest in the studio, although in their case, proper studio albums feel more like snapshots of where the songs existed at that moment in time, everything being subject to change.

Here, we sidestep just about all of the extended jammy, noodling live stuff and bluesy Bob Weir-fronted dad-rock shuffles in favor of some of the more Jerry-centric studio staples from Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty and Aoxomoxoa, prog-rock sequences (Help/Slip/Franklin) and more esoteric corners of their catalog as well as some solo Jerry cuts. You’ll notice one exception in the live version of ‘Wharf Rat’ which was a longtime setlist staple but never appeared on any of their proper studio releases.

** ‘Casey Jones’? Really? Isn’t that a bit on-the-nose? Ordinarily I would have left this one out, but the mix on the 2020 remaster is extra saucy and pushes it into an entirely new space. Definitely worth a listen.

The Lovely Universe: the Ancestral Sunshine of Elephant 6: call it a collective, a record label, a magical realm, a conceptual community, an extended musical family with its own eco-village...and it would all be sort of right. From a distance, the Elephant 6 Recording Company was more of a concept than it was a particular sonic signature or location; a loose affiliation of highly prolific and sometimes enigmatic songwriters, artists, musicians, experimental recordists and bands aligned by a shared fascination with creative recording culture, sophisticated west coast 'Sunshine Pop' and psychedelic art rock of the 1960's. Founded in 1991 by childhood friends from Louisiana by way of Denver, Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, Will Cullen Hart and Jeff Mangum (of Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel respectively), the Elephant 6 umbrella would eventually extend to upwards of 50 individual bands and projects, many of which are still currently active. 

So like, what's with the Beatles, Beach Boys and Syd Barrett stuff? Well...because so much of the E6 material was deeply informed by classic 60's psych and Sunshine Pop, I felt the juxtaposition would provide a compelling illustration of the connective tissue between the two worlds.

Enjoy responsibly.

POST-WHATEVERISM: the golden age of Washington DC art-punk: of the many regional micro-cultures (Seattle, Olympia, Chicago, Louisville, Chapel Hill, Athens etc.) that came into focus in the early/mid-90’s, Washington DC’s activist-punk community was arguably one of the most iconic, enduring and fiercely independent. Defined by a lean, wiry no-frills aesthetic espoused by Dischord and engineered in large part by Don Zientara, the tight-knit DC underground played ideological counterpoint to the major market ‘grunge’ gold rush of the era. From the visceral energy of the Dischord universe to the minimalist-experimental pop orbits of Arlington, this particular mix sidesteps the classic punk and hardcore eras (Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Void, Scream, Youth Brigade etc.) in favor of the more angular art/post-punk and indie rock generations that followed.

**The most glaring blind spot here is that the music of GOLDEN is not on Spotify. (see Golden Summer, Super Golden Original Movement and Golden + the Rhythm Beat Jazz via Slowdime Records).

PoWeRpOpSuGaRrUsH: In our efforts to infuse a scant glimmer of hope into your lockdown, we humbly submit this as the highest quality representation of power-pop that has perhaps ever existed. Squint…SQUINT against the grandeur…behold the magnetism of Robin Zander… the charisma of Rick Nielson…the hooks of Robyn Hitchcock…the unsettling vibrato of Dwight Twilley…the dulcet Strat tones of Alex Chilton. May thine ears be blessed to bear witness to the best hour and thirty-nine minutes of your quarantine! HARK…JOY APPROACHETH!

You’re welcome.

Try to imagine a world without Roxy Music or Eno. Looks pretty bleak doesn't it? It is fair to say that punk rock, new wave, glam rock, heady art-pop, ambient and electronic music would probably still have existed but would likely have looked and felt entirely different. Formed in London in 1970 by seductive crooner Bryan Ferry and bassist Graham Simpson, Roxy Music is arguably the second most influential English rock band behind the Beatles. 

Imagine the Stones' 'Miss You' or Duran Duran's 'Girls on Film' without 'Love is the Drug'...

Right. You can't. 

Imagine Kranky Records, Stars of the Lid or Aphex Twin's ambient catalog without 'Music for Airports' or 'Discreet Music'. Again...others may have eventually landed in similar territory, but things would have taken a very different road to get there. Informing everything from the Sex Pistols to Nick Cave to U2 to Sadé to the Cars and Talking Heads on down the line to indie art rock like Brainiac, the Dismemberment Plan and Franz Ferdinand, Roxy Music cast a ridiculously long shadow for a band prone to oboe solos, oblique cinephile references and formal eveningwear. 

For our purposes here, we’ve culled it down to a cross-section of the band’s essentials as well as solo works by Ferry and Eno, reining in the latter to his art-pop era…Eno’s body of ambient work is a playlist for another day.

The elegant jank of the Rolling Stones: the Stones can be kind of polarizing. I get it. Comfort music for some, the epitome of bloated boomer entitlement to others. Here is how I see it. I was never a Stones fan. Always landed on the Beatles side of the divide. Pop over blues. Discipline over swagger. Production over performance. Particularly in the early years, if we’re talking beat boom and artsy English garage stuff, I tended toward Steve Marriott’s Small Faces, Rod the Mod and Ray Davies’ cheeky turns of phrase and chunky rhythm sections to the Stones’ awkward peacocking, corny psychedelia and threadbare blues strut. It always felt precariously glued together, always one beat shy of falling apart.

But somehow they never did.

And that was just the point. They were loose in all the right places, locked in when needed, risqué and sultry exactly where it mattered and were not afraid to stumble their way through the disco era. If we had to narrow it down to ten…well, here they are, in very particular order.

…

Staring into a slow-motion collapse: you are sitting alone in the middle of a lush grassy clearing. Spring is in bloom, trees sway in a light breeze. You are inexplicably charged with describing the happiness, beauty and joy in the world as you’ve experienced it thus far, in 20 songs or less. Then you are told all that happiness, beauty and joy is all about to go away.

This is how I would have encapsulated it, at least as of Wed, March 18th around midday. It would probably be different today. March 18th seems so long ago.

OMTM: Holy Mountain: Æventyri Psychédélique: undertaken in observance of the autumnal equinox, The Holy Mountain was a sacred geometric symposium, a psychic innervision, a shamanistic spirit-walk, a closing of the proverbial circle to align our collective energy centres. This harmonic convergence was prepared to serve as palette cleanser, a means of meditative focus and energy purification for the participants on their journey.

Did it work?

Not sure.

ØMTM // Møsier Mayhem Skullcrusher: blacker than the Sigil of the Cløven Hoof, bleaker than the tormented soul of Bård 'Faust' Eithun, darker than the basement of Helvete on a moonless winter's night, ØMTM'S Mosier Mayhem Skullcrusher is but a taste of the infernal misery and ceaseless torment of Mosier Mayhem's first 30 miles of climbing. There will be lamentation, weeping, gnashing of teeth and aquavit from the drinking horn.  

OMTM // Backcountry Rambling: A Vibe Guide: ramblin’ roads, dusty trails, freak flags, mellow mountains, shady lanes, backcountry boogie and maybe just a little effin & jeffin as our way of putting a little extra cush in your push. 

>> Take it easy.

<< If it's easy, We'll take it.