I’ve been a Frank Zappa fan for a decade, and I’m incredibly glad to find his music is being given a comprehensive remastering and re-release job for a current generation. Like any artist with a long discography, and various remasters, there’s debates over the “superior version” of various albums. We’re talking stuff that puts the Beatles’s “Mono versus Stereo” debates to shame. [1] This is especially difficult in the world of Zappa recordings. Not only are there multiple remasters, but Zappa also developed an odd fetish for re-recording parts of various old recordings with modern technology such the bass and drums as on Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, his pastiche of 50s Doo-Wop music. [2]
Hot Rats, Zappa’s 1969 album of mostly instrumental Jazz-Rock fusion, is considered by many as his most accessible album, and regularly touted as a good entry point for Zappa neophytes. I, respectfully, disagree. I think 1974’s Apostrophe(’) is a better introduction. Still, I love Hot Rats, and I’ve listened to it countless times over the years. The drum fill at the start of “Peaches en Regalia” never fails to get my heart racing. As part of the reissue campaign, The Zappa Family Trust has released on CD and digital download, the original vinyl mix of the album. All previous CD versions come from a 1987 remastering job by Zappa, which added a huge layer of reverb and other crap on the top—while also adding four extra minutes to “The Gumbo Variations”
Putting the new remaster on, I didn’t know what to expect. What happened was almost like a religious experience. There were melodies that I never knew were playing. There were instruments I heard that I never knew were playing. This is a revelation, as Hot Rats was as much a study in the power of multi-track recording as it was in combining Jazz and Rock music. The ’87 remaster muddied everything so much that whole melody lines got lost in the mix. The worst part is that, since every official version of the album that’s come out since 1987 is based on Zappa’s own remastering job, I had no clue what I was missing. It’s a testament to Zappa’s skills as a composer and the musicianship of his band at the time that even with the remixing, reverb and brickwalling of the previous, canonical version, that Hot Rats stands up as a classic album.
I didn’t even finish listening to the 2012 remaster before tossing my previous version of Hot Rats aside, permanently. I’ll give up an extra four minutes of “The Gumbo Variations” for hearing all of Ian Underwood’s keyboard parts, [3] cleanly, and having all the panning percussion. In recent years, the Zappa Family Trust has put out a few original mixes, such as the mono version of Freak Out! and the original mix of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (as Greasy Love Songs). Hearing those versions changed my impression of the records, but neither was as transformative an experience as listening to the original vinyl mix of Hot Rats. It was truly like listening for the first time all over again.
For what it’s worth, I go with mono for all albums up to Sgt. Pepper, and stereo for the rest. The mono White Album is an interesting curiosity, but not essential. ↩
Or, his “lost” 1984 remastering of the epic Lumpy Gravy that came out on the recent Lumpy Money box set. It should have stayed lost. ↩
For Pete’s sake, I heard an acoustic piano part on “Peaches en Regalia” that I’d never heard before. I only thought there was organ and Rhodes for keyboard parts. ↩
Thanks in part to Crush On Radio, 2012 was probably the first year I tried to keep up with what was happening in the music world. I listened to over forty albums and EPs that came out this year, and have settled upon these top ten albums (and one EP that deserves mention) as the best of what 2012 has to offer. Naturally, they skew towards my own idiosyncratic taste in music. However, I stepped out of my comfort zone on a few of these picks, a testament to the power of a good record to challenge expectations.
Honorable Mention – Dum Dum Girls – End of Daze
If this were a full-length album, I’d have this in the top ten, but at five tracks, it has to be its own thing. Dum Dum Girls combine girl group pop and Ramones style punk with enough melancholy to add gravitas. The music on this disc is earnest and serious—and from my understanding, the melancholy is well earned. A must hear.
You probably don’t own an album that sounds anything like this. A sparse, but lush portal into a stranger’s mind and life. Eskimeaux know how to use studio effects to drive home a lyric, and it’s done well all over the record. To say more, I’d end up repeating my review of the record for Kittysneezes.
I’m only just starting to develop the vocabulary to appreciate Rap. Therefore, I approached this album with trepidation only to be won over by a stunning production and brilliant concept—a story of redemption from violence into the arms of something larger and better. The lyrics and their delivery are amazing too, as they must to make it a compelling listen. Even if you’re not a fan of Rap, this album is worth your time.
For their sophomore effort, Japandroids strip down the conventions of classic rock to fit their minimalist aesthetic of guitar and drum kit. They fill their songs with heavy power chords, pounding beats, and lyrics about drinking, smoking, and fucking. Somehow, Japandroids make adolescent angst and disaffection cool again, while being aware of the futility and transience of those adolescent things. In the meantime, “we yell like hell to the heavens.”
Occupying a nebulous space somewhere between house music and ambient, this album secured a spot in my top ten before I even finished listening to it. It clicked once I realized that the stop/start transitions between tracks were intentional, that each cut was as it was meant to be, alone, disconnected, its own little electronic world to fall into. I need more albums like that.
Kevin Parker sounds a hell of a lot like John Lennon. This is a neat trick, considering he’s Australian and not Liverpudlian. Lonerism sounds a lot like the psychedelic bits of Sgt. Pepper and Revolver, redone with modern technology. It’s an album that, with a pair of headphones, lets you sink in and feel at home. And, let’s be fair, if you don’t like Sgt. Pepper or Revolver, there’s something wrong with you. Beatle-based pop never died.
Deconstructed country music for the 21st Century. Daughn’s deep bass croon sounds like a man who’s seen enough heartbreak and horror that nothing else could faze him, but still has trouble sleeping at night, and he’s not afraid to tell you what he’s seen. And he does it over music made of samples of country music, modified to crank up the inherent darkness. Turn the lights down, pour some whiskey and listen. Fire optional.
This is the most consistent and listenable release by Crystal Castles. Previous albums have had high notes, among tracks of difficult noise. Here, the off-putting veneer is pulled back, and the noise turned to punctuation around soulful songs of cold electronics and cold vocals. Even “Sad Eyes,” the closest Crystal Castles come to pop music on an album, is stark and cold. Yet I’ve warmed up to their odd blend of synthesized harshness.
At this point in his career, it may be that David Byrne can do no wrong. Certainly, teaming up with St. Vincent, who is the only contemporary musician matching Byrne’s brilliance, was a smart idea. Together they created an album of surprising pop brilliance. The decision to base the songs around an eight piece brass band is simply icing on the cake. Some reviews put Love This Giant down because it was exactly as they expected from its parts. And that is a bad thing why?
“Oblivion” is my favorite song of the year, without any doubt. It’s a sublime nugget of avant-pop. Its odd, throbbing baseline and helium vocals that will be on repeat in the little jukebox inside your head. The rest of the record doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Oblivion”—“Genesis” comes closest—it’s still a wild, textured ride showcasing the range of what electronic pop can be and become. It will stick with you. I can’t wait to see what else Grimes comes up with in the future.
The first album I listened to by Hot Chip, 2010’s One Life Stand, showed a lot of promise, but failed to capitalize. Its followup, however, fulfills that promise and goes above and beyond. Hot Chip managed to make an album that, in the span of just under an hour, can have the listener undergo a transformative, almost spiritual experience and shake their booty. There’s not a bad cut on this disc, not a note or a lyric that could be deemed unessential, even on the longest tracks. Easily one of my favorite albums, not of the year, but of all time.
An off-and-on hobby of mine has been making mix CDs. The magic of the Internet got me into some mix trading circles, and I assembled a good 30 or so mixes for people, or just myself. Some of my earlier experiments found their way to artofthemix.org. Few of those were distributed, but they do show how I developed my style. Now that I have some free time on my hands, I’ve decided to get in on the mix CD thing again. In putting together my latest batch of mixes, I’ve thought about what makes a good mix. I think I’ve hit on a few key ideas.
The key thing that unites all of these ideas is that the creation a curated experience—not just hitting shuffle on your MP3 player. Mix CDs needs to do more than just be a collection of songs, they need to provide an experience, on par with the best albums in your collection. They need to stand on their own as individual works, not just as collections of parts; works that show off more than what songs you have. The best mix CDs show something about their creator, too. What follows can help with that.
The Basics
Theme
Every good mix CD has, at its core, a theme, which will let you define the songs you put on your mix. If you’re just throwing songs on a CD willy-nilly, you’re not really making a mix. A theme doesn’t have to be anything complex or fancy. “Songs that make me happy” is a good, basic theme. “Songs about travel,” or “songs with funny lyrics,” might work as well. Some of my favorite mix CD themes have been “songs that have questions for titles,” “songs that are the first song on their album,” and “songs about food.”
It helps to have a theme that lets you cast a wide enough net to fill the majority of a CD, but is specific enough to tie things together. One of my most difficult mixes to make was a “days of the week” mix—with songs referring to each specific day of the week. I had to expand the concept slightly to songs that talked about yesterday, tomorrow, and the week as a whole, just to fill things up. In general, it’s better to err on the side of caution, and have a less specific theme that you can whittle down. It’s easier to remove songs from a mix than to add them if you’re out of ideas.
Flow
In this fancy-pants digital age, making sure your mix CD has “flow” is far easier than it was in the cassette tape days. ((Admittedly, those days were before my time, but when you recorded to a cassette tape, it was a damned time consuming process. The digital music revolution makes the process much easier, but also encourages laziness. The point of this essay is to encourage the art to go back into it.)) What is “flow”? It’s making sure your mix transitions from one song to the other in a way that isn’t jarring or disjointed. ((Of course, jarring and disjointed may be something you want to use for effect. It depends on the theme and structure of your mix. A quiet, slow tune leading into a high-energy, loud song can serve a mix well, when done right.)) If you’re putting your mix together in iTunes or whatever media player you use, you can easily rearrange tracks to make sure things match up nicely. While assembling a mix, I often play the last 20 seconds or so of a song just to make sure it matches up well with what follows.
Protip: Be conscientious of silence at the beginning and end of tracks. A song with 4 seconds of silence at the end can wreck flow. Some media players let you adjust the start and endpoint of a song. If yours doesn’t, you might need to actually edit the file. I recommend Audacity for this task. This is also useful for incorporating live tracks which may have commentary and other non-musical stuff that breaks things up.
“Flow” isn’t just on a track-by-track scale, either. It also can modulate the disc as a whole. Your mix can start quiet, slowly building in intensity and speed along the tracks, or it can be up-and-down, or anywhere along the spectrum. The flow has to be there, however, so it doesn’t just sound like you put an iPod on shuffle. Mix CDs require attention to detail. Of course, the flow of a disc as a whole is largely dictated by…
Structure
Structure is actually more of an intermediate tip, but if you’ve gotten good with themes and flow, you should be ready to tackle a slightly structured mix. Structure is intrinsically related to flow, and a mix with good structure has to balance the flow of the songs with the overall mode of the mix. A good example of a mix that would require serious structure is a Narrative mix. Here is a self-created example. Each song has its place in the overall story, and are structured to provide a narrative, while still providing flow.
On a less rigid scale, a structure for a Mix CD can help to reinforce the theme of the mix. Often, I like to start off mix CDs with a song that epitomizes the theme of the mix. A mix I created for a convention happening in my hometown of Philadelphia began with the theme to “American Bandstand” which tied together both the theme of songs by Philadelphians, or about the city, with the historical connection to Bandstand and the long tradition of rock and soul music in Philadelphia. ((This mix then switched into the sardonic “Philadelphia” by Atom and his Package, which pokes fun at this city in the way that only a local can.)) Another good way to add structure to a mix is to group related songs together, relating by subject matter, tone, artist, or any other criteria—making sure to pay attention, of course, to flow.
Advanced Tricks
Filler Tracks
For lack of a better term, “filler” tracks can help strengthen a mix CD. They can reinforce a theme, provide flow between disparate tracks, or break a disc up into sections for structure. One of my favorite mixes, “Come On and Buy It”, themed around commercialism and business, used a selection of short advertising clips I had by Raymond Scott. Another mix, themed on science fiction, included quotes from the show “Futurama” to break up songs. Filler can be almost anything: comedy clips, audio commercials, very short songs from a CD. As long as it fits the theme, go for it.
Introductions and Conclusions
As a variant of filler tracks, it can help to start and end a Mix with unique and distinctive tracks. A mix CD themed around New York City, for example, may begin and end with different versions of “New York, New York”. ((I’m actually using this trick on a mix CD for an older friend who wants a disc of his favorite songs. As he asked for the two different versions of “New York, New York,” it made sense to do it this way.)) Short instrumentals, clips from movies, any sort of sound that matches the theme of the disk can help bring the listener into what your mix is trying to do.
Manually Editing Songs
Though alluded to in the section on Flow, actually editing songs can be a great tool to really take your Mix CDs over the top. You can utilize this trick to do all sorts of neat effects, ranging from simple crossfading, to creating medleys of songs. Manipulating the audio of your mix CD tracks is an absolute power tool. Use it wisely. I tend not to bother, but I know it has its place.
Don’ts
Please, please, please do not do any of the following:
Ignore your audience. If your buddy Bob is getting into Japanese Noise Rock, then go hook them up with it. Your mom might not be so into it.
Crossfade every song into each other, especially if they don’t crossfade right.
Forget to include CD Text, or at the very least a printed track list for people to put into their media player.
Putting it over the top
If you follow all of the basics, you’ll have a great mix. If you do some of the advanced tricks, you can have an amazing mix. If you give it cover art, package it nicely, and deliver it, you’ll have an spectacular mix. ((If you’re making a Mix CD for your significant other, or would-be-significant-other, you darn well better at least package it nicely.)) A clever title helps too: I like to use lyrics from songs that fit the theme. Don’t just hand over a bare CD, either: get a jewel case or make your own packaging. If the effort shows, the impact will be there.
In Conclusion
What makes a mix CD great is a combination of thought, style, and content. The entire point of the above is to force you, the mix CD creator, to think and to put effort into your creation—make it something of value. The ultimate mix CD is a statement, not just of musical tastes, but of creativity and mindset. The easier it is to do something, the easier it is to half-ass it, and such is the inevitable consequence of the otherwise awesome digital music revolution. ((“Digital music revolution” used here purely for lack of a better descriptor.)) If this screed convinces just one person to put some effort into a mix, then so much the better. Give it a try. Make a mix CD. Share it with someone. Enjoy the reaction.
The weekend of November 19th, I had the unique experience of engaging in time travel—twice—while on a trip to New York City. Apparently, at times, the auditorium at Irving Plaza ((Well, I suppose it’s now the Fillmore East at Irving Plaza, but nobody calls it that any more.)) serves as a portal to another time, though the same place. In this case, one trip, that of November 19th, took me back to 1978. The next night, I ended up two years later in 1980. What brought these strange phenomena to the fore? What force brought me into that mystic chamber to send me into the distant past, before I was even born, before I was even a speck, before my very concept had even formed in the minds of my parents? Only one force could be so powerful: [DEVO](http://www.clubdevo.com).
In celebration of the long overdue remastering and re-release of their most famous albums, 1978’s _Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!_, and 1980’s _Freedom of Choice_, DEVO went on a too-brief tour of two-night stands. Each night featured the full performance of one album, and a brief encore set. Far from just being simple concert performances/museum pieces, they took the opportunity to use these shows as an excuse to relive the past fully, replicating the costumes, stage sets and choreography of the respective album’s tour, though with a dose of modern technology to make the job easier. When combined with tight performing, and a band more enthusiastic than I’ve ever seen them ((My previous DEVO shows are 2004 in Central Park, 2005 in Atlantic City, and 2008 in my home town of Philadelphia.)), it may as well had been time travel to the days when DEVO’s live show was at its peak.
On the first night, the show began with a required viewing of the short film [_In the Beginning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evolution_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_De-Evolution), ending with the video screen rising to show DEVO in their yellow radiation suits and 3-D glasses, bursting into “Uncontrollable Urge”. The stage was covered in black plastic sheeting, and the lighting was suitably low-tech and retro. Dominant colors of orange, yellow, and green bathed the band in sickly shades as they ripped through the album with more ferocity than I’ve seen in most younger bands. Even the crowd was intense: from the first note they pushed forward like a wave. My sternum, pressed against the barrier in front of the stage, came close to snapping from the pressure. By the time the band reached the final song of the record, “Shrivel Up,” the time travel was complete. You can see for yourself.
Note: I’m the guy with the Energy Dome in the front row.
The next night, the process repeated with the band showing three music videos: “Girl U Want,” “Whip It,” and “Freedom of Choice” before the screen rose for a modernized recreation of DEVO’s 1980 tour set, and the band themselves in gray jumpsuits with red duct tape details—and the requisite Energy Domes. Bob 1 even brought out the [once lost custom, blue potato shaped guitar from the 1980 tour](http://boojiboysbasement.com/bobguitar.html). After a brief moment for a man in a doctor’s outfit to indicate the song’s track number, ((This was one of the few new elements to the show.)) the band launched straight into “Girl U Want,” and did not relent. By far, the most amazing part of this show was seeing DEVO perform songs that they’d never performed live. Half the album had never left the studio, including the remarkable “Ton O Luv” which I gained a new appreciation for in concert.
Each night showed a different side of DEVO. Night one showed the punky, raw, dirty DEVO from the post-industrial wasteland of Akron, Ohio, relying on distorted guitar, thudding percussion, and manic energy to drive the music. Night two showed the smooth, futuristic, synthesizer and bass driven DEVO most people know. All of this served as a wonderful appetizer and summary of what makes DEVO great, as they prepare for their first new album in twenty years. ((Supposedly to drop on April 1st, 2010, but that could have been a gag. It is confirmed that DEVO is playing Coachella, which is mid-April, so the album should be out by then.)) From the perspective of a hardcore fan, it’s also a great exercise in revisiting these albums that I’ve listened to so many times. Side two of _Freedom of Choice_ always stuck me as slightly weaker than side one, but not any more. Check out the performance of “Cold War,” which was my least favorite tune on the album until this show.
The entire weekend was something amazing and special: a once in a lifetime experience that I will not soon forget. To watch your favorite band relive their glory days in such a remarkable fashion is something out of a dream. Ten years ago, if I told my adolescent self of what I got to experience, it would meet a look of pure disbelief. I leave you with a few links to photographic evidence of these amazing concerts. Just look for the heavyset guy with the energy dome and goatee: that would be me.
* [My photos on Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanspoint/sets/72157623225997780/)
* [Metromix](http://newyork.metromix.com/music/essay_photo_gallery/devo-irving-plaza/1622477/content)
* [Brooklyn Vegan](http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2009/11/devo_played_fre.html)
