(...are not on this mix)
Format: CD-R
Date: 29 February 2007
Packaging: wooden AOL-disc box (my last one!) stripped and recovered in white construction paper, with typed tracklist on the back and magenta-sharpied title. (placed on the gift table at <3heidirob<3's wedding reception. box also including a copy of the revised gold star for robot boy and a burn of love, pain, and the whole damn [
[eta: revisions for 2008 edition]
1. be my husband - nina simone
2. be my wife - david bowie
3. the marriage - billy bragg
4. the marriage - cex
5. (today i met) the boy i'm gonna marry - darlene love
6. (today i met) the girl i'm gonna marry - the nation of ulysses
[+ marry me – suburban kids with biblical names]
7. marry me - dolly parton
8. let's pretend we're married - prince
9. let's get married - al green
10. i wanna get married - nellie mckay
11. i just wanna make love to you - etta james [cut]
12. shack up - banbarra
13. earn enough for us - xtc
14. mushaboom (postal service remix) - feist
[+ when we get married – the dreamlovers]
15. let nothing come between you - warren zevon
16. wedding march - gary lucas
17. ban marriage - the hidden cameras
18. the day - they might be giants
19. big day - xtc
20. dracula's wedding - andré 3000 feat. kelis
21. a) the wedding (lindstrøm and prins thomas remix) - annie [moved to end]
b) stay with me ('75) - lemon jelly
[mixed by ross of love]
22. neat little domestic life - of montreal
[+ the little things you do together – company]
23. guide for the married man - the turtles [cut]
24. when i say wife - jonathan richman
25. yes i do - solomon burke [cut]
this is a long-in-the-planning, short-in-the-doing re-working of a cassette mix made for rebecca about a year ago (?) called ceremony, matrimony, alimony, which had nineteen or so of these songs (some in different versions) and a handful more besides. basically i took out all (or most) of the songs that present marriage in a negative light - which also happened to be almost all of the ones that take place after the marriage actually happens (lyle lovett's "she's no lady," the fiery furnaces' "single again," ry cooder's "married man's a fool," - obv. the canon of cheatin' songs canon runs long and deep) (i kept bragg and cex's more generalist skepticism, but not whiskeytown's "matrimony") - and also the clutch of songs about friendship that ended the original tape. a few more recent discoveries, some acquisition fortuosity, and voilá.
turns out to be a pretty darn swell listen. (never mind that it breaks rules 1, 2, 3, and 4, willy nilly.) it's up there with the most stylistically diverse compilations i've ever done, spanning blues, jazz, folk, country, rock, punk, funk, soul, hip-hop, and techno (and perhaps"pop" though, interestingly, not really in the strictest sense) but somehow it doesn't seem overly scatterbrained to me. i like that a decent number of iconic figures weigh in (nina, david, dolly, prince, al), and generally the diversity of perspectives.
obviously, i had some fun with the track sequencing. (like we get to imagine simone and bowie as a couple, which isn't so far off, and darlene love and ian svenonius.) (to get full mileage out of the "boy i'm gonna marry" resonance, i could have used tmbg's "lucky ball in chain" - but that's clearly poor form and taste.) "dracula's wedding" is probably the most questionable inclusion (thematically - it'd be more at home on a halloweeny mix.) "guide for the married man" is an utterly ridiculous song, with approximately zero actual content to the lyrics (i think the story is they wrote it as the title song for a film without knowing anything about the film) but it's hard to resist. (though for the most part the scope of this mix ends at the wedding ceremony.)
so there's that. i defy y'all to listen to it and still want to argue about marriage not being hot hot hott. as i wrote in the note to the newlybirds, "some songs about love, sex, domesticity, and, well, marriage, 'cause i guess that's what you've got to look forward to." sounds good to me. much love to r+h and b+e and all those other marryin' fools out there. and more love love lo--o--ove comin' riiiiight up.....
7 comments:
yeah, that would be best!
Oh, I would love to listen to this! How fabulous!!! I feel inspired. Unfortunately, I only own about 1/4 of the songs you list. Seems a shame since we have about 9900 songs in our digital library. ;)
hmm. there's a lot of songs out there. you could probably make your own marriage mix out of the 9900.
but i'd like for you to be able to hear it as well. eh, i guess that's what itunes music store is good for.
how do you feel about marriage?
I love marriage. It's a good thing.
You?
absolutely. can't you tell?
Mmm, i'll have to post the list from the CD we gave away at our wedding - on my blog so I can stop hunting for comments here. ;)
And seeing how David covered "Wild is the Wind," we can easily imagine them as a couple, at least lyrically and vocally. :) Now back to work.
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