I Despise Mixed Tapes

(and I've been sitting on a longer spew about the subject, as if I care anymore, although I obviously do, referring to it here as I have). I think it is because I have no facility with the medium.

But who can resist mucking in on the contest referred to here and devised by this writer here (I think, I don't know, I'm not researching this). As a prologue let me state you will not find novelty songs here, no cover versions of "Valley Girl" by Tony Danza, anything by any former cast members of Star Trek- none of that necessarily implies or expresses mixed-tape badness. A bad mixed tape must not only be bad in its individual components, but its totality must be execrable, unlistenable. I think the Hot 5 below may just meet that standard.



1. Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music

I had a hard time deciding between Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Then I realised it's the same noise! Here is a preview of Part 1, which is in fact an accurate representation of album, although some 63 minutes shorter than the album. Enjoy at your peril.










2. King Crimson: In the Wake of Poseidon

I think it best to follow up the 16 fast-paced minutes of fedback guitar, looped back on itself, by Lou Reed at home with over 11 minutes of KC at one of its recorded nadirs. I recommend track 7, known by the following snappy title ""The Devil's Triangle", including: "Merday Morn", "Hand of Sceiron", "Garden of Worm" aqll running at a brisk 11:39. Again, this is only a sample, but you can multiply it by 24 times, imagine a couple of quiet, relatively mellotron-free passages, and you have the entire song. If this doesn't lead you to pierce your tympanic membrane with an icepick, I don't know what will.





3. Soft Machine: Third

Here is a preview from the album which rhymes with "turd". As with 2 above, I own this album. I have listened to this album. I like Robert Wyatt who pioneered the 'disbled drummer' thing way before the one-armed guy in that hair-band (and I will point out here that I am tempted to nominate any top 10 record from the 1980's from any of these fucking hair farming ass lint eating bunghole bands like Poison, or Ratt, or Motley Crue, or Dokken [and don't even get me started on Trevor Rabin, that on-man antithesis to refinement and discretion] but I won't because as truly horrible as they are, as puerile and predictable as their music and lyrics may be, these tunes might work together on a mixed tape, and maybe you are all at home dressed like this and remember Iron Maiden fondly, you you... words fail) but catch these lyrics: I want you more than ever now/We're on the floor, and you want more, and I feel almost sure/That cause now we've agreed, that we got what we need/Then all the thing us needs is wanting (wait, there's more) I realized when I saw you last/We've been together now and then/From time to time - just here and there/Now I know how it feels from my hair to my heels/To have you on the horns of my dilemma/- Oh ! Wait a minute ! -

Wow, eh? That's some good stuff! It's from song #3: Moon in June. Go to the attached mp3 site, buy the song, listen to it ALL and repeat after me "That's 19 minutes and 18 seconds of this, my only life on earth that I can never get back." If noodles made music they would sound like this band.




4. Tiny Tim: Resurrection

Track 1 is "Tiptoe through the tulips." I just re-listened. Take me now, Lord, I am ready.









5. Yoko Ono: Season of Glass

"Walking on Thin Ice." Yoko Ono. Singing. Enough said.

Oh, it's not like I didn't consider and reject the following as too obvious: all contestants on Canadian or American Idol, Celine Dion, the Dionne Quintuplets, Rene Simard, Rene Levesque, ANY MOVIE SONGS BY ELTON JOHN, BARRY NEWMAN, OR ELTON JOHN AND BARRY NEWMAN, the Sex Pistols, Ashley Simpson, Jennifer Simpson, Homer Simpson, OJ Simpson, George Plimpton, Syd Barrett, Hanson, Terry Jacks, Michael Jackson, Jackson 5, Coolio, Freezio, Meltio, C-Threepio, Rush, Mahogany Rush, Meatloaf, and so on... maybe I should enter the contest under a different pseudonym. Anyway, I wanted to mock the music I like, or liked, anyway.