Mixology: Rock This Joint

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes (or CDs) I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

Rock This Joint (January 2009)
A lot can happen in two years. When this mix was made, Barack Obama had just been sworn in as our new president and things were looking up (unless you were a Republican). Two years later, things don't look a whole lot different than they did in '09. Sure, there have been some superficial changes, but the economy still blows, we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Gitmo's still open. Call me jaded, but we've seen this before. The party in the White House may change, but behind the scenes, it's a lot of the same players. Same shite, different year.

Mix-wise, I dig this one. The Sabbath song is from the 1983 album Born Again, which featured Ian Gillan of Deep Purple on vocals. It was post-Dio and was extremely heavy and dark (natch). Unfortunately, it was marred by really shitty
production and sounded really muddled. I still dug it as a 16-year-old when it came out. There's a great back story to the album, as it was plagued by an awful cover that was a rip-off of a Depeche Mode cover from a few years earlier. I had a t-shirt with the devil baby on it that freaked the hell out of my very religious mother, so I never wore it around the house. The subsequent tour featured some classic Spinal Tap moments (even though the movie had already been made by that point) with dwarfs and a Stonehenge stage set gone awry. Classic stuff. Nonetheless, I was psyched in January 2009 to find an entire album's worth of demos online that sounded better than the released product. I listened to that a lot for a few months. Same with the Gary Numan album The Pleasure Principle; I knew "Cars" from back in the day, but I downloaded this album from eMusic and really enjoyed it. It's always fun to rediscover old music in a new way.

Daily Grind - Bob Durling
Trashed - Black Sabbath
Automatic Thrill - Gluecifer
Sometimes I Don't Know - The Hellacopters
Nobody's Fault - Aerosmith
Now I'm a Fool - Eagles of Death Metal
Total Fucking Madness - Carbon/Silicon
We Call Upon the Author - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Metal - Gary Numan
Great Expectations - The Gaslight Anthem
Pop Lie - Okkervil River
Come On Over (Turn Me On) - Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Why Do They Leave? - Ryan Adams
Postcards from Tiny Islands - The Walkmen
I Feel My Stuff - David Byrne and Brian Eno
Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer - A.C. Newman
Atomic Heels - Secret Machines
Fitz and the Dizzyspells - Andrew Bird


Trashed (ah, '80s videos):



Metal: