summertime (concl.)

got it: i just need to think of this not as a "music blog" (something i don't really like or get, er anyway something i don't really read) but as an artist journal/news update website. course, still backed up on "artist"-life news (hey, i'm deejaying! tonight even! and look up!), but -

wanted to write in a little bit about that mix that's been hanging at the top of this page for close to two months now...even if it's not "summer" anymore, tho it still basically feels like it, and i feel funny about continuing to give it out.

Title: Summertime, Cont. (Popsical Bonus Disc) [a.k.a. Popsequel]
Format: CD-R (23 track continuous mix, + 2)
Date: July 2007
Packaging: it fits inside the same paper printer-printed sleeve alongside Popsical

1. Summertime, Summertime/Smile Around the Face - the Jamies/Four Tet
2. Happy Summertime - R. Kelly ft. Snoop Dogg
3. Summertime - Beyonce ft. Ghostface
4. Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff ft. the Fresh Will Smith
5. SummerLove - Justin Timbalake ft. Stat Quo
6. Dear Summer - Jay-Z ft. Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, etc. plus Weldon Irvine
[Morning Sunrise - Weldon Irvine]
7. Summertime - Sublime ft. the Pharcyde
8. Umbrella (the Summerbrella ThatzmyJAM "Lolly Brolly" Remix) - Rihanna ft. Jay-Z, Keak da Sneak, Mims, Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Clipse, Birdman, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Cassie, Lil Mama, T.I., DJ Webstar, Young B, DJ Unk, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne
9. Oh My God - Mark Ronson ft. Lily Allen
[Heat Wave - Martha Reeves + the Vandellas]
10. Summer Night on Hammer Hill - Jens Lekman
11. Her Breasts Were Still Small - Tribeca
12. Vacation/Summertime Blues - Vitamin C/Eddie Cochran
13. The Rockafeller Skank/Surfin' U.S.A. - Fatboy Slim/The Beach Boys
14. Summer Samba - Walter Wenderly
15. Nice Day - Persephone's Bees
16. Sun - The Toms
17. Computer Camp Love - Datarock
18. Real Summer - Future Bible Heroes
19. Don't Falter - Mint Royale ft. Lauren Laverne
20. Heavy Metal Drummer - Wilco
21. Do It Again - Steely Dan
22. Do It Again - The Beach Boys
23. Do It Again/Summertime - The Chemical Brothers/The Zombies

bonus tracks:
24. Sketch for Summer - The Durutti Column
25. Black Like Me - Spoon

it's a strange little hodgepodge, i think, the cobbling-together of several different strains of ideas, but i tend to think it works. rather than a repository for ideas left off of popsical proper, it's the realization of mostly post-facto vision of what i'd like to have played at laurel's summer solstice barbeque. didn't worry too much about making it overtly dancy, though it ends with up roughly the same danceability quotient as Popsical [~80%] i sort of reverse-engineered the concept-heavy flow of the mix starting from that smattered list of songs, ending up with something like this:

1-7) every song i could think of [or acquisit] titled "summertime," which it turns out are all more or less hiphop/r&b, and all ft. "ft." the most overdetermined tracklist joke i've done in a while, but it works.
8) the official song of the summer, mashed with all the other jamz, past and present, that sometimes flitted into my headspace while i listened to it.
9) my new favorite performance by lily allen, who became something of an embodiment of summer-pop last year, but that's a stretch i don't particularly care to make, because in fact this is the only song here ['cept steely dan] that's not decidedly summery in theme. it does work well as a transition from the r&b to the indie/pop portion, tho.
10-12; 15, 17) scandinavians! now allowed. singing about nostalgia and love, because that's what summer songs are about. [erm. vitamin c isn't scandinavian, but her music owes at least as much to swede-pop as it does to hawaiian slack-key folk. persephone's bees are russian...ish?] i still can't get over how strange and amazing "her breasts were still small" is - sweetly, earnestly nostalgic but also very extremely creepy; resultingly, both funny and somber, also a little sexy, albeit uneasily so; and somehow the music manages to fit that duality perfectly.
12-14) mash-ups of classic good-time summer songs. ["vacation" is an acknowledged classic right?] i'd done the fatboy/beach boy one live once or twice; the other just sort of happened. fun!
16) a stray cut from the original original popsical (last year), previously a stray cut from yellow pills, previously a stray cut from the nth era of lost power-pop whatever. sun=summer.
18-20) some of my personal classic good-time summer songs. about nostalgia and love.
21-23) do it again and again and again. self-explanatory? inexplicable? also, "summertime," for real, finally. nice lil version too. (though i never loved that song.)
24-25) cd-only bonus tracks. the first a recent and fortuitous discovery - "sketch for summer," the beautifully languid (instrumental) opening track from the durutti column's cheekily named debut, the return of the durutti column. the second pretty much my personal song of the summer, spoon's "black like me" - achingly gorgeous and clearly a summer song in disguise (there's really no reason for it not to be titled "street tar and summer" - wtf britt.) somebody called it "a day in the life" in miniature, and that is almost uncannily apt. maybe i'll write about that some other time.