What the fudge? Finally, impending doom!

IMPENDING DOOM

Recipient: Anna Kronzer

1. Boys Next Door - "Shivers" -- The very first line of this song says it all. I've loved this song since I first heard it played in the movie "Dogs In Space" (starring a young [and alive] Michael Hutchence)

2. Cat Stevens - "Trouble" -- Another song that hit me when I heard it played in a movie, this time "Harold and Maude"

3. The Awkward Stage - "Dandelion" -- This is a very beautiful song written and performed by my friend Shane. Dandelions seem very apocalyptic to me, kind of like cockroaches. “Feet that have trampled you, and the bees that have sampled you” is my favourite couplet in this song.

4. Bauhaus - "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything" -- I just really wanted to include a Bauhaus song on this mix, but I thought it would be too easy to just include one of their darker songs. I've always loved this song...it sounds so happy, but... Eat jelly, sandwich bars and barbed wire!

5. Curtis Mayfield - "Pusherman" -- Hmmmm...I think I put this on here just because I've been buying Curtis Mayfield vinyl lately and he deserves to be heard! Plus, everyone should watch Superfly!

6. Echo & The Bunnymen - "The Killing Moon" -- Heartbreaking song I've always loved...

7. Firebug - "Influenza Tropical" -- Needed something not so dark, so how about a cozy little Brazilian ska song to break things up. The name of the song still invokes apocalypsus!

8. Dinosaur Jr. - "Freak Scene" -- I don't think J. Mascis has ever written a happy song, not that he ever should...just sayin'.

9. Joy Division - "Dead Souls" -- This has been my favourite Joy Division song since I first heard it when I was 16 years old (that's a looooong time!).

10. The Pogues - "Haunted" -- I was actually looking for Shane Macgowan's solo version of this song, but I couldn't find it. Still, one of the few later Pogues songs I really like.

11. Portastatic - "Through With People" -- I'm through with people. Sometimes I totally agree...

12. Sonic Youth - "Expressway To Yr. Skull (Madonna, Sean And Me)" -- Cheeky title for one of my fave Sonic Youth songs.

13. Minutemen - "This Ain't No Picnic" -- Was talking about this song with my friend and how much we love it, and how we were going to play a cover of it next time our band plays.

14. Van Halen - "Runnin' With The Devil" -- This song reminds me of living in California in the 70s and 80s; my friend's brother had a Datsun pickup truck that he would park in his driveway and blast this album out of the truck. I hated it back then, but have come to love it!

15. Claw Hammer - "The People in my Peephole" -- I couldn't make a mix tape without putting a song from my favorite band, and this song is very dark. "Can you trust a preacher with a boner under his book? Can you trust a doctor with a smile under his mask?"

16. The Sundays - “Here’s Where The Story Ends” -- walked into a cafe a couple of weeks ago and this song was playing. Was very significant for me. I hope to have a little souvenir of this terrible year...

17. Fruit Bats - "Beautiful Morning Light" -- My current obsession...just love listening to this song and playing it. I wanted to end this compilation on a positive note!

For Those Facing Impending Doom

129 Meters Volume 1
Title: For Those Facing Impending Doom: The End, In Three Phases

Recipient: Jacob McMurray

Track List:

1. Ty Segall - Die Tonight
2. Pulp - The Fear
3. Graham Coxon - People of the Earth
4. Kurt Bloch - Oh Maaan
5. Jonathan Fire Eater - When The Curtain Calls For You
6. Tame Impala - Apocalypse Dreams
7. Adele - J'ai Peur Parfois
8. Morrissey - Everyday is Like Sunday
9. Erik Blood - Today's Lover
10. Blur - To The End
11. Dirty Beaches - Lord Knows Best
12. Ash - Lose Control
13. Angry Samoans - Lights Out
14. Thee Oh Sees - The Dream
15. The Nightgowns - Big Bang
16. Elastica - Nothing Stays the Same
17. The Clash - City of the Dead
18. The Growlers - Graveyard's Full
19. Spindrift - The New West
20. Graham Coxon - All Has Gone
21. Gene Austin - Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone

*secret track (embedded in track 21 is a lullabye cover of this song)


Liner notes:I wanted the mix to feel like three distinct phases, before, during, and after the end of the world.

A Few Words on the mix:

• "You're gonna die tonight." -Ty Segall

• "Here comes the fear again, the end is near again." -Pulp

• "People of the earth, are you hearing me? I'm dropping you a line from the cosmic sea. There's nothing on the telly and the radio's shite, so I'm gonna blow you up with my meteorite." -Graham Coxon

• "Everything is changing, and there's nothing that I can do." -Tame Impala

• "Your blonde hair that I love is slipping through my fingers. How much longer will it be mine? I am afraid sometimes." -Adele (not the modern british singer... but the 60s french one.)

• "Come Armageddon, come." -Morrissey

• It looks like we might have made it, yes, it looks like we made it to the end." -Blur

• "Here comes the night, it is coming on. The lights are low and our records on." -Ash

• "Don't you hear the blast of what's become so massive? Larger than Alaska, come on let me ask you. Louder than the black train, do you hear the big bang? Taking over the town, taking every sound." -The Nightgowns

• "The streets are filled with dread" - The Clash

• "The graveyard's full, we're running out of Earth. But we can use the bones to build another church." -The Growlers

• "Skies black and blue, ill treated. Even the moon feels cheated." -Graham Coxon

• The last song was included for this reason: Many decades after our civilization has faded from memory, World Wars 3 and 4 have devastated our planetary resources and disease has decimated our population, alien life forms will arrive to explore the vast wasteland once known as Earth. Along with paperback copies of Twilight, Bic lighters and canyons filled with Safeway bags… one group will discover an ancient battery-powered record player that has been kept in near-mint condition sealed in a WWII-era bomb shelter just outside of what was once known as Akron, Ohio. These foreign beings would, after some trial and error, successfully operate the device, and proceed to listen to this song in its entirety before looting the shelter for fire extinguishers and scissors (which have become wildly popular in their solar system for interior decoration.) In short, though we fucked our planet up hardcore, please don't talk bad about our species after we're gone.

Personal note:The two hardest things about this project were keeping the track list within the 80 minutes of a CD-R and trying to find music that Jacob might not already have. Jacob- I hope I succeeded in that a little bit, and I hope you like it! Sorry to include the lullaby Aerosmith cover... I just couldn't help myself. I tried to include songs that fit lyrically with the theme, or just sounded like what I might imagine imminent doom to might sound like. I tried to steer the mix into a "Jacob-y" direction based on his answers to the questionnaire and what I know about his taste in music.

I created the packaging and album art almost 100% by hand (with the exception of the lettering, which I bought from the scrap booking section of a craft store.) The artistic renditions of the apocalyptic came from an old text book called "Our Universe". I used a lot of superglue, rubber cement and exacto kniving to create the "eco-wallet" from poster board and various thick papers that I had around the house.


"Our Universe" images included:

• Post-apocalyptic wastleland in red

• Post-apocalyptic wasteland in grey

• Category 5 hurricane (as seen from space)

• Volcanic eruption

• Forest fire

I forgot to take pictures of the album, except for one on my phone. Sorry! Jacob... if you have any shots of it feel free to add them.

The End Is Nigh

Mix recipient: Liam
Mix Title: The End Is Nigh

1. Neil Young  "Angry World"
2. The Black Heart Procession  "Broken World"
3. Bill Callahan  "America!"
4. Deer Tick  "Hell On Earth"
5. The Greenhornes  "Left the World Behind"
6. Parts & Labor  "Solemn Show World"
7. Le Loup  "Outside of This Car, The End of The World!"
8. Earth a Killya  "King Midas Sound"
9. Deerhunter  "Earthquake"
10. The Young Evils  "Darker Blue Bayou"
11. Mazzy Star  "Mary of Silence"

This mix tells the story of a world no more. The painstaking process and years of research to find the most fitting songs that reflect a post-lived Earth are here now for your listening pleasure. May the words speak volumes of our imminent doom, and may we one day find solace in our afterlife. Let's go forth knowing that we are mere mortals, we are beings of a higher power, and we are not above laughing when old people fall down. Like, totes. 

Armagideon Yago

Mix Title: Armagideon Yago
Recepient: Troy Nelson

Tracklist

1. Startup Chime - LADYTRON
2. Plaster Casts of Everything - LIARS
3. Bipolar - BLONDE REDHEAD
4. River Styx - BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
5. Between Me and the Ground - DEAD MEADOW
6. The New West - SPINDRIFT
7. Cannon - THE WHITE STRIPES
8. On Your Own Again - SCOTT WALKER
9. Golden Hours - BRIAN ENO
10. Hearing Damage - THOM YORKE
11. Strange News From Another Star - BLUR
12. Die Tonight - TY SEGALL
13. Shot By Both Sides - MAGAZINE
14. Ice Age - JOY DIVISION
15. Everyday Is Like Sunday - MORRISSEY
16. When the Curtain Calls for You - JONATHAN FIRE EATER
17. Born Again - SUPERGRASS

Liner Notes?
The asteroid aptly named Armagideon Yago approacheth. Earth knows it is doomed. Yago crashes into a nuclear power plant in Russia. Chaos reigns and turns cities into desolate wild wastelands. Survivors are few and far between.You're in it alone. Suddenly, you bump into love while banning together to fight whatever horrible beast has taken over. But alas, aliens have landed to pillage the earth and its remaining inhabitants...so, you're effed.


--I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. The mix features a detachable asteroid magnet with Gideon Yago's face on it. There's also some La Brea Tarpit-ean dino bones on the inside of the case, for that lovely sense of forbode.  I can't take credit for the absolutely bitchin title though - that was all Jessi. Really enjoyed painting the hell out of this. I am nerdy and used a globe for accuracy. Hope it's to your liking Troy!!


Personal Note:
Admittedly horrible at remembering the names of songs, or even people for that matter, I found it difficult to find songs directly related to apocalypse. Instead, I went for songs that make me feel extremely uncomfortable, but I absolutely love. In my apocalyptic vision, it would start out with chaos and then turn into a spaghetti western apparently, where one wonders aimlessly searching for signs of life. You'd run across other folks eventually, and then it'd likely still be shitty, so I added the aliens in there too. With apocalypse comes rebirth, whether it be a personal, or actual apocalypse, so the last track got slapped on at the end.

I find it fascinating that a lot of us are picked Brian Eno songs!

Your Mongrel Mind

Recipient: Jessi Reed

Track Listing: 

I'm a bit ashamed to be posting this after seeing the complexity and packaging of Jacob's mix for Brady. Ah well, next time. 

Personal note on the execution of this mix:

Once I began brainstorming, a deluge of apocalypse appropriate songs filled my brain. I tried to widdle them down to the best songs and into the most cohesive mix I could. I'm a lyric person, so many of my choices were based on on relevance and/or intensity of lyrics. I also included a few songs about wolves since Jessi seemed a bit fixated on her fictional wolf friend. The mix is primarily focused on the experience of the apocalypse, from start to (maybe) end. Many of these songs can be thought of as representing one or multiple emotions, ranging from urgency, fear, humor, trepidation, despair, paranoia, sadness, resignation, and peace. I don't think there is one song on here that I don't love or that doesn't totally slay me. Although I'd already given them my own prescribed meaning, this project added a different layer and let me see them in a new way. In other words, I really enjoyed it. 

Terminus Est

 

Mix Title: Terminus Est
Recipient: Brady Harvey (skythecoloroforangeade)
Track Listing: 

Disc 1: I Just Want to Start a Flame in Your Heart
The Breakup - 1. Heavy Vegetable – Doesn’t Mean Shit (1993) - 2. T. Rex – Broken Hearted Blues (1973) - 3. The Beatles – She Said She Said (1966) - 4. The Smiths – Ask (1986) - INTERLUDE - 5. Jacob McMurray – Steerpike (2008) - The Breakdown - 6. The Zombies – Care of Cell 44 (1968) - 7. Faust – Jennifer (1973) - 8. Bauhaus – Crowds (1980) - 9. White Fence – Your Last Friend Alive (2011) - 10. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – I See a Darkness (1999) - 11. Sonic Youth – Superstar (1994) - INTERLUDE - 12. Ástor Piazzolla – Tanguedia III (1986) - The Breaking - 13. Donovan – Season of the Witch (1966) - 14. Brian Eno – Blank Frank (1974) - 15. Freddie King – Going Down (1971) - 16. The Fall – Leave the Capitol (1981) - 17. Wire – Three Girl Rhumba (1977) - 18. The Ink Spots – I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire (1941)
 
Disc 2: This is the Line of Division
The Party - 1. Arthur Brown – Fire (1968) - 2. Big Black – Kerosene (1986) - 3. Gang of Four – I Found that Essence Rare (1979) - 4. The Hives – Declare Guerre Nucleaire (2000) - 5. Love – Seven & Seven Is (1966) - INTERLUDE - 6. Earth – Hung From the Moon (2008) - The Shit - 7. Justice – Genesis (2007) - 8. The Fall-Outs – Zombie (1994) - 9. The Elastik Band – Spazz (1967) - 10. Roy Brown – Butcher Pete, Part One (1949) - 11. Steven Jesse Bernstein – Come Out Tonight (1988) - 12. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat (1988) - INTERLUDE - 13. Suicide – Girl (1977) - The Glimmering - 14. Jeremy Enigk – Carnival (1996) - 15. The U-Men – Dig It a Hole (1987) - 16. Blondie – Atomic (1979) - 17. Max Frost & the Troopers – Shape of Things to Come (1968)
 
Disc 3: Lux Sit and Dance
The Dawning - 1. Brave New World – It’s Tomorrow (1967) - 2. Red Cross – Annette’s Got the Hits (1980) - 3. Danny Kaye & The Andrews Sisters – Civilization (1947) - 4. Miles Davis – Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X (1972) - 5. Nick Drake – Black Eyed Dog (1974) - INTERLUDE - 6. Brian Eno – In Dark Trees (1977) - The Horizon - 7. The Go! Team – Phantom Broadcast (2007) - 8. Os Mutantes – El Justiciero (1971) - 9. Ennio Morricone – Una Pistola Per Ringo (1965) - 10. Syd Barrett – Octopus (1969) - 11. Gilberto Gil – Coragem pra Suportar (1968) - INTERLUDE - 12. James Blackshaw – White Goddess (2005) - The Redemption - 13. Lali Puna – Don’t Think (2001) - 14. Magnet – Gently Johnny (1973) - 15. Donald Byrd – Cristo Redentor (1963) - 16. Violent Green – Beautiful Child (1996) - 17. Tenniscoats – Lutie Lutie (2008) - 18. Karen O and the Kids – All is Love (2009)

 Liner Notes: 

 The Breakup

There’s a string that hangs from the sky – The air on that night was tempered like a knife – She’s making me feel like I’ve never been born – And if it’s not love, then it’s the Bomb that will bring us together

The Breakdown

You can tell me about your prison stay – Your red hair’s burning. Yellow jokes come out of your mind – A slim pixie, thin and forlorn – Your last friend alive – Can save me from this darkness – I love you. I really do

The Breaking

When I look out my window, what do you think I see? – The messenger of your doom and your destruction – I got my feet in the window, got my head on the ground – Exit this Roman shell! – Something is nothing. Nothing is Nothing – I don’t want to set the world on fire, I just want to start a flame in your heart

The Party

Fire, to destroy all that you’ve done – I was born in this town, lived here my whole life – See the girl on the TV dressed in a Bikini? She doesn’t think so, but she’s dressed for the H-Bomb – Declare guerre nucleaire – If I don’t start cryin’, it’s because that I have got no eyes

The Shit

Her pale face, it shakes my bones – People gonna think, yes they’re gonna think you’re a spazz – He’s hackin’ and wackin’ and smackin’, he just hacks, wacks, chopping that meat – The clock hurries like a terrified animal and stops, dribbling saliva – They are sick breath gathering at my hind

The Glimmer

The Lines made me perfect and came then. The light gave me dark – Wrapped in burlap, soaked in sweat, it’s ready to Grow! – Make it magnificent. Tonight, make me tonight – Let the old world make believe it’s blind and deaf and dumb, but nothing can change the shape of things to come

The Dawning

I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know who I am – Muscle Beach party, California sun – Don’t want no bright lights, false teeth, doorbells, landlords, I make it clear – The black eyed dog, he called at my door. The black eyed dog, he called for more

The Wasteland

The shadow of a strong man, with a gun in his hand, raised to protect the poor people of the hacienda – Meant even less to me than I thought, with a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds, clover honey pots and mystic, shining feed – Even those who have no courage to resist, have to find the courage to resist

The Redemption

I’m too slow for your talking, so quick your mouth moves – I put my hand on her belly, and she said, do you want to fill me? – Come back to me, beautiful child – Lutie, Lutie – Holes in history is where you’ll find me

Personal Note: I had a great time creating this for Brady. The mix came together pretty quickly, over a single evening under the influence of a lot of liquor. The packaging took a lot longer, but once I had the idea, it came together fairly rapidly. Part of me wishes I would have made two of them, so I could keep one!

Brady, I hope you like it.

I put many pics and too much information about the process of creating this here.