Wider Reading | Mixtape in the Hood

Though it is in a slightly different vein to the fine selection of mixtapes on offer at Silkworms, I feel that The Hood Internet certainly deserves an honourable mention for this superb 60 minute hip-hop mix:


The Hood Internet - The Mixtape Volume Five by hoodinternet

Songs Included:

1. Intro [R. Kelly x Drake x Ally Sheedy x Tim Blaney]
2. Bars In The AM [Ninjasonik x !!!]
3. L is For Love Junkie [Donwill x Harlems Cash x Peter Hadar x El Perro Del Mar x Caribou]
4. Hot Tub Freaks Like You [Slug x MURS x Tobacco]
5. Rude Baptism [Rihanna x Crystal Castles]
6. Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti - Round And Round (The Hood Internet remix)
7. Moar Doo Wop N Whatever [Lauryn Hill x Deadmau5]
8. Show Me Red Lights [Robin S. x Holy Fuck]
9. Psycho Break [Talking Heads x Ellen Allien & Apparat]
10. Show Me The O.N.E [Yeasayer x Jump Jump Dance Dance x Grum]
11. Back You [Cee-Lo Green x Sir Mix-a-Lot]
12. Freeze, Barbra! [Young Dro x Gucci Mane x Duck Sauce]
13. Blowin' Money At The Deli [Drake x Birdman x Delorean]
14. It's Front Row Love [Metric x Treasure Fingers]
15. Giving Up The Sunshowers [M.I.A. x Vampire Weekend]
16. Ignition (Keep It Remixing Louder) [R. Kelly x Major Lazer]
17. Chi Citizens [BBU x Broken Bells]
18. How Purple Can You Go [Ludacris x Joker & Ginz]
19. Swag Boost [Soulja Boy x Rusko]
20. Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet [Waka Flocka Flame x Flock Of Seagulls]
21. Cards And Quarters And Green Lights [Local Natives x John Legend x Andre 3000]
22. Oh My Kids [Usher x Sleigh Bells]
23. Virginia Is For Cameras [Clipse x Matt & Kim]
24. Dougie Vision [Cali Swag District x Toro Y Moi]
25. This Shit Was (All I Know) [Drake x Free Energy]
26. Brigade & Yellow [Wiz Khalifa x The Go! Team]
27. Shutterbugg In Miami [Big Boi x Foals]
28. Nuthin' But A Journal Thang [Dr. Dre x Snoop Dogg x Class Actress]
29. The XX Gon Give It To Ya [DMX x The XX]
30. Outro [John Barry x Faith No More x Larry David x Robin Bartlett


I also highly recommend this mashup of Arcade Fire and Blondie:

The Hood Internet - Sprawl Of Glass (Arcade Fire x Blondie) by hoodinternet

Wider Reading | David Lynch Goes Electro

Writing about Guardian article: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/nov/29/david-lynch-good-day-today

I don't know what I was expecting when I heard that David Lynch had released a single. I suppose part of me was thinking Aphex Twin. Or maybe some of that beautifully weird score we get so much of in Twin Peaks. What I wasn't expecting was this:

Good Day Today by threeminutesthirtyseconds

Honestly, it sounds like something that could be knocked up in Garage Band in twenty minutes. But then, as I have often been told when it comes to David Lynch, I just don't 'get it'. But does anybody else think it sounds like the batshit crazy Aussie animator Wendy Vainity?

Swamp | Mixtape | Vol XV, Narrative for Orchestra

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Music As Reading: Mixtape XV, Narrative for Orchestra

For a background to this mixtape, a rather hysterical and dreadfully organised set of paragraphs are available here. To summarise, it is intended to be a reflection on the way that we can’t help but read certain songs forever tied up with the television show/ film/ whatever narratives that we’ve seen them accompany/ introduce/ symbolise/ whatever enough times that this connection has become the point of the song, whether we like it or not. Such tracks, indeed, represent an act of Music As Reading that we’ve all engaged in, subconsciously or not, at one point or another, and deserve to be recognised as such. Lyrics and even mood are discarded and the connotation is king! Half of the mixtape will illustrate the various points made in those aforementioned paragraphs, the other will introduce a few other particularly compelling examples – for the potential scale of this mixtape is enormous, but citing examples such as the Star Wars theme and Singing in the Rain would be a waste of everybody’s time.

We’ll begin then, to pay lip-service to this week’s theme, with Jace Everett’s ‘Bad Things’ along with another of his recent tracks, ‘More to Life (C’Mon C’Mon)’ to demonstrate that ‘Bad Things’ probably isn’t as good as we think it is. Then we’ll draw out the strand of teenage association via Remy Zero’s ‘Save Me’, Mates of State’s decent attempt to make ‘California’ listenable and Simple Mind’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ to demonstrate that this has been going on for some time in a teen-sense – since 1985’s Breakfast Club, certainly. We’ll then explore four of the five versions of The Wire’s ‘Way Down in the Hole,’ two versions of Twin Peaks’ ‘Falling’ (the Wedding Present cover proving that even when a band with a significant, important, connotative identity take on one of these songs, the narrative prevails) and finish off with Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’ in order to state, in less explicit terms, I hope it was the fucking label what sold it to Hollyoaks. ‘Red Right Hand’ also offers a useful segue into Cave’s cinematic soundtrack work, an unsurprising example of music acting, beyond its original context, as a vessel for narrative – considering that Cave wrote a soundtrack for the audio version of his most recent novel and just generally has form here, as regular readers will have noticed. Then, by way of conclusion, three other examples of this phenomenon manifesting in film: Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does it Better’ from The Spy Who Loved Me, mainly because of Alan Partridge. Bernard Herrman’s Psycho work for straightforwardly evocative reasons as well as the fact that when he combined all the cinematic fragments into a single composition he called it ‘a Narrative for Orchestra’. And the Door’s ‘The End’ because, despite the fact it was the final song played at the band’s last ever gig i.e. represents a fabulously important musical-biographical punctuation mark (and a staggeringly appropriate one at that), one can’t hear that without first thinking of Kurtz/Brando. A fitting final testament to the power of the imposed filmic narrative. And one that comes full circle, in terms of its relation to this week’s theme. For Apocalypse Now = Martin Sheen, in blackface, in primeval swamp, as much as it = anything, right?

TRACKLIST, Y’SAY?

Bad Things – Jace Everett (True Blood)
More to Life (C’mon C’mon) – Jace Everett
Save Me – Remy Zero (Smallville)
California – Mates of State (The OC)
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds (The Breakfast Club)
Way Down in the Hole – The Blind Boys of Alabama (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – The Neville Brothers (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Domaje (The Wire)
Falling – Julee Cruise (Twin Peaks)
Falling – The Wedding Present
Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (NOT Hollyoaks)
The Proposition #1 – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Proposition)
Song for Jesse – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James...)
The Road – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Road)
Nobody does it Better – Carly Simon (The Spy Who Loved Me)
Psycho: Narrative for Orchestra – Bernard Herrman (Psycho)
The End – The Doors (Apocalypse Now)

Live Performance | Mixtape | Mixtape XI, by Cypress Grove

Music As Reading: Mixtape XI, by Cypress Grove

Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.

*Cypress Grove is the man responsible for this year’s most interesting collection of songs that aren’t his own – a king among mixtape-makers, then.

*That it also represented a heartfelt paean to a king among music-makers is not particularly surprising – the role of the mixtape-maker is to draw as much attention as possible to others’ talents, not one’s own.
Basically, you could say his imagination has made him on of the best-connected men in music.

*And he’s already started putting together a new Jeffrey Lee Pierce tribute record which, I gather, is going to feature contributions from an even more compelling array of musicians than appeared on the first. Can’t tell you who though. Sorry.

*So we very much wanted to get his take on the Music As Reading project before he got too knee-deep in superstars. Being the resolutely cool guy that he is, he even made sure his choices would fit on one side of a C60.

(Cypress’ tracklist is, due to the same Spotify shortcomings as were brought to our attention last week (no BPB – and no Dylan either, turns out) our second YouTube Mixtape. Click on the individual track-title for audio/video. So as to provide some Spotify content though, here’s a link to a playlist containing both We Are Only Riders, Cypress’ remarkable take on the compilation record (also purchasable, obvs – on Glitterhouse Records) and the man who inspired that record, Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s most important achievement, the Gun Club’s first album, Fire Of Love. For a brief introduction to what We Are Only Riders actually was/is, along with some of Cypress’ thoughts regarding compilations/mixtapes/etc. I’d recommend going here.)

The Ghost Of Tom Joad – Bruce Springsteen
From the album of the same name. We had to read The Grapes Of Wrath at school. It was the first piece of American literature I had read, which in turn made me seek out the music of Woody Guthrie, and traditional American music in general. I owe that book a great debt. Brilliantly evocative and “dustbowly”, it is similar in tone to Nebraska, an album that Springsteen had recorded a few years earlier, which is probably his masterwork.

Desolation Row – Bob Dylan
Name checks for Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot – and Ophelia also gets a look in. Probably a stream of consciousness affair, but the imagery is dazzling. An unparalleled moment of truth from Bobby.

Ulalume – Jeff Buckley
Hal Wilner (who produced this) is of course known for his unlikely collaborations, and they don’t come much more unlikely than Edgar Allan Poe and Jeff Buckley. With bereavement at its core, it was a central theme for them both.

Tied And Twist – Lydia Lunch
As well as being a musician, Lydia is, of course, a writer. We met up for a drink recently and she brought me a copy of her book Amnesia. As the evening wore on, I started ranting about something entirely inconsequential. She listened patiently, then picked up the book and wrote in it ‘learn to forget.’ Best advice I have ever been given. An excellent human being.

More News From Nowhere – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Another musician who is also a writer. He excels at both. He is the polymath’s polymath. The title is apparently a reference to the Utopian novel News From Nowhere by William Morris. Plus Will Self appears in the video, but more importantly Beth Orton appears as a waitress.

Killing An Arab – The Cure
Another song inspired by a novel – L’Etranger by Albert Camus. Robert Smith takes on the role of the title character (Meursault) during the book’s central episode – the apparently motiveless murder of an Arab man in Algiers.

Thousands Are Sailing – The Pogues
One of the few Pogues-composed songs that MacGowan had no hand in writing. This was written entirely by guitarist Phil Chevron. ‘In Brendan Behan’s footsteps, I danced up and down the street.’ The album artwork also features a picture of James Joyce.

The Man Comes Around – Johnny Cash
As opening gambits go, reciting from the book of Revelation is a surefire attention-grabber. One of many apocalyptic biblical references scattered throughout the song. An end-of-time ballad if ever there was one.

Brother and Sister – The Gun Club
Well, it does have D.H. Lawrence Jr. (AKA Debbie Harry) on backing vocals!

Youth | Music | Postcards from Italy

Music As Reading has gone Italy! I lie: in fact, at the time of writing, Music As Reading is sitting on his bedroom floor half-writing, half-packing in preparation for his Tuscan holiday – it’s Friday 2nd July, soon to become Saturday 3rd July. Music As Reading is coming at you…from the past!

Anyway, long and short of it is Italy and t’internet are, despite sharing two letters (three if you count the T twice) not as happy friends as England and t’internet (by England, I mean all of England except Cumbria). Which means that for two weeks only, Music As Reading (mixtapes not included within that umbrella-sort-of-term incidentally – I prepared those earlier) will be relying upon more analogue methods of communication. Inspiration courtesy of the wonderful Beirut, whose ‘Postcards from Italy’ can be enjoyed in its Spotified entirety if you’re willing to click on the hyperlinked title above…

Whose ‘Postcards from Italy’ also has some maybe-profound things to say about this week’s theme, yoof, actually:

The times we had
Oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow
Were not all bad
We put our feet just where they had, had to go
Never to go…

The shattered soul
Following close but nearly twice as slow
In my good times
There were always golden rocks to throw
At those who admit defeat too late
Those were our times, those were our times…

And I will love to see that day
That day is mine
When she will marry me outside with the willow trees
And play the songs we made
They made me so
And I would love to see that day
Her day was mine…

Hmmm. A link at best tenuous, at worst entirely non-existent. I’ll move on. Basically, throughout my Tuscan retreat (lol) I’ll be sending postcards from Italy to one of my fellow editors in lieu of contributing to the blog (for, let’s be honest, this is hardly a proper contribution) in the hope that, A, they don’t get lost or take a million years to get to England, it being not quite yet high season, and B, one of said editors can be arsed to scan them into the blog so Silkworms gets to see them. Both sides please chaps, scan both sides! Not yet being in Italy, I obviously have no idea what I’m going to write, but I will promise now that it will be vaguely linked to the weekly themes and SHORT. Such is the advantage of postcards. An advantage blogging lacks, as I daresay you’ve noticed.

They shall be our very own Postcards from Italy – without a ukulele in sight or sound. Actually, I lie, Mother’s bringing her ukulele with her, so goodness knows what kind of synthesis might happen. Useful fact: BA are cool with passengers bringing a musical instrument (guitar or smaller) in addition to their hand luggage onto their flights. A boon Mother intends to take full advantage of. I recommend you do the same. And there you were thinking BA were strike-breaking bastardbitches and nothing more. Shame on you. Shame on us all.

(To access a [very, very short] Spotify essay-soundtrack-playlist to accompany the above, click here)

Sam Kinchin-Smith
Music Editor

Destruction | Mixtape | Mixtape IV, Thorn In His Side

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Music As Reading: Mixtape IV, The Poet With A Thorn In His Side (he only ever wanted to be a music-maker)

Armitage: “I really like your stuff.”
Mark E. Smith: “Got a light, cock?”

The poet who, really, would have liked to be in a band more than he enjoys being a really-quite-successful poet – an evocative, pathos-drenched, rather depressing image. And one of crucial import to the Music As Reader. For out of it buzz a swarm of questions at the heart of what the Music As Reading project is, really, all about: what is the relationship between the poet and the music he or she listens to – and what can one discover about both forms from that relationship? Does the poet who loves to music-listen read or write with, alongside music because of the benefits to be had out of this relationship? And is poetry (slash, the poet) not just ultimately, compared to goodmusic (slash, the musician) intolerably sad, po-faced, poontang-repelling, and does it (slash he slash she) therefore require an injection of rockandgoddamroll if it (slash he slash she) is to regain the reputation, readership and romanticism that once defined it (slash he slash she) as a mode? Because let’s face it, most people start writing poetry because they want to be Lord fucken Byron, not Sir Andrew Motion – ladies and gentlemen, we’re being cool-shortchanged… Why?

Armitage is so specifically important, though, because he did the unthinkable and actually started a bloody band – way late (perhaps middle would be the more appropriate word, actually) in life. Then wrote a book about it, Gig (published by Penguin) which contains the above two-line anecdote – and a full history of not-being-in-a-band-but-being-a-really-quite-successful-poet Northern miserabalia. In it, and generally, he is admirably open and generous about who he digs, who he adores, the kinds of artists he would have loved to be a part of. Unfortunately, his actual band, the Scaremongers (www.simonarmitage.co.uk for videos etc.) sound like nothing so much as Registered Trademark The Worst Band Of All Time, the Beautiful South. Only a bit less shit. Surely, Simon, there might have been another way? Surely, Simon, is not Music As Reading it?

Part one, Bands Armitage would like/have liked to be a part of.

Searching for Mr Right – Young Marble Giants
She’s Lost Control – Joy Division
Independence Day – Comsat Angels
Spoilt Victorian Child – The Fall
Wildcat Fights – Eyeless in Gaza
The Boy With A Thorn In His Side – The Smiths
Nocturnal Me – Echo and the Bunnymen
Diamonds are Forever – Arctic Monkeys
Ever Fallen in Love (with someone you shouldn’t’ve)? – The Buzzcocks
Blue Boy – Orange Juice

Part two, Bands Armitage’s writing/songwriting reveal would have, in actuality, been a slightly better fit (note, half the size of part one).

Lucky You – Lightning Seeds
Irish Blood, English Heart – Morrissey
Our Mutual Friend – The Divine Comedy
Perfect 10 – The Beautiful South
Put A Donk On It (original mix) – Blackout Crew*

* I suspect this one needs a wee explanatory note. Blackout Crew are, basically, the Beatles of the Donk scene, a relatively new species of drainpipe-techno defined by a quintessential northern-only-ness to compare with, say, Armitage’s rendering of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Simon would surely approve – somebody should put them in touch with one another, get the poet to ‘drop’ on the next record (if there is a next record…) See the VBS donk-umentary (http://www.vbs.tv/watch/music-world/donk) for more information.

Prizes | Mixtape | Mixtape III, To a Wolf

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Music As Reading: Mixtape III, To a Wolf, after Luke Kennard

The Wolf and I visit the Arts Centre for the private view of Franklin Gewitz’s screen prints.

The Wolf signs the guestbook: Dear sir, I enjoyed your exhibition, but would have preferred it if all of the pictures had been of me. I suppose your meaning of life is different to mine. Wolf x x

Why is Luke Kennard’s wolf a wolf? There are clues. In the poem this mixtape takes its name from, the wolf reflects on the ‘rather circumlocutory’ novel the narrator has written about him: ‘Where are all the descriptions of my white-noise fur and bloody breath like the steam from a kettle?’ As if to confront the florid, melodramatic, vigorous connotations of the Wolf In Art head-on: feral, the opposite of a domesticated dog; Adolf, the most notorious name in the world (apart from possibly Lucifer) meaning ‘noble wolf’; Lycanthropy and Bram Stoker. And it talks! The talking wolf dressed up as Grandma in Little Red Riding Hood must be one of the most disturbing single images in all literature. Fairy tales, fables, parables. Wolf in sheep’s clothing. Boy who cried wolf. Three little pigs. I could go on. Musicians have, often.

Before shattering the very same connotations: ‘My girlfriend and I agree that the wolf should pursue a career – and there is just the position for him at Whitehall: WOLF REQUIRED, £20 per hour… ‘So what does the job involve?’ I ask, that night. ‘Nothing,’ says the wolf. ‘As I understand it, they mean to pay me simply for being a wolf.’’ Thus relegating the wolf to the mediocre-surreal, unambiguously middle class, two-dimensionally literary, academia- and ideology-deflating existence that all of the rest of Kennard’s characters enjoy. Modernity (in England, anyway) means a literary wolf is interchangeable with a literary centipede, fire, owl, Kennard’s poetic persona, Kennard himself – all have to deal with the same middle class absurdities, guilt, crises. The likes of the public-school-new-age-camp Patrick Wolf represent, I think, a similar joke. Others saw different potential in the shape of a wolf.

Luke Kennard’s wolf is such a brilliant, enduring (over three volumes already) character because he is a wolf, a creature laden with more mythological, monstrous, symbolic, humorous and pop-cultural baggage than, probably, any other. This mixtape offers an opportunity to get a widescreen sense of this phenomenon via a medium (guitar music) about which Kennard knows his shit – from the perspective of men and women from very different backgrounds writing at very different times, all of whom decided what they needed was a wolf. There are clashes here: what would Kennard’s wolf make of Peter’s wolf, Howlin’ Wolf, Three 6 Mafia’s bark (he’d definitely love Three Six Mafia)? From out of them, though, you may begin to understand: why is Luke Kennard’s wolf a wolf? Because of Duran Dumotherfuckingran.

(Luke Kennard’s wolf-poems can be located in all three of his volumes of poetry, all three of which are published by Salt)


Part one, The Wolf as Clergyman

Peter and the Wolf Op. 67, Introduction – Sergei Prokofiev
Howling Wolf – Muddy Waters
Wolf Like Me – TV On The Radio
Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts – Wolf Parade

Part two, The Wolf as Memoirist

Wolf in the Breast – Cocteau Twins
The Back Door Wolf – Howlin’ Wolf
Queen Isabella (She-wolf of France) – Patrick Wolf

Part three, The Wolf as Educator

Peter and the Wolf Op. 67, The Wolf – Sergei Prokofiev
The Grandmother Wolf – Pretty Girls Make Graves
Wolf Notes – The Fiery Furnaces
Wolf at the Door – Radiohead

Part four, The Wolf as Playwright

Crying Wolf Version – Lee “Scratch” Perry
The Wolf that Lives in Lindsey – Joni Mitchell
The Circuitry of the Wolf – Mew

Part five, The Wolf as Lieutenant

Peter and the Wolf Op. 67, The Procession to the Zoo – Sergei Prokofiev
Wolf Wolf – Three 6 Mafia
Killer Wolf – John Spencer Blues Explosion
Hungry like the Wolf – Duran Duran

Second Person | Mixtape | Mixtape II, Songs for Natalie

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Music As Reading: Mixtape II, Songs for Natalie ‘Tusja’ Beridze, after Don Paterson

O who is this dark angel with her unruly Slavic eyebrows ranged like two duelling pistols, lightly sweating in the pale light of the TTF screen?

Writing actually about music was always going to be an early focus of Music As Reading – it represents a point at which a connection between music-listening and words-reading becomes kind of inevitable: here’s how a writer has described an artist slash song, now I’d better listen to it slash them myself to see how good a job he slash she did. Inevitable, then, but necessary? Does a writer writing about music have as much of an obligation to describe his subject with a precision and three-dimensionality capable of catalysing a reader’s mind’s-eye – without any kind of visual or aural aid – as, I don’t know, a travel-writer sketching a remote destination? Almost certainly – but looking at the breed of metaphor peddled by the NME (the chorus: Frank Black buttfucking Iggy with a barbed-wire-guitar whist Steve Albini squats in the background ejaculating asymmetrical reverb-lines by way of lubrication etc. etc.) rarely is this obligation met with much success (is it even possible?) And neither does justice or precision seem to be Don Peterson’s project with Song…, which owes more to the wonderful bad-poetry of William McGonagall than it does to the best of music journalism.

Rather, Song… is far more encyclopaedic than it is descriptive, choosing in the main to catalogue and generalise (although ‘a kind of glitch-hop Blossom Dearie’ is breathtakingly eloquent, it must be said). Indeed, against a backdrop of actual tracks, the poem sheds a good deal of its seeming music literacy, the sentence that inspires Part two of the mixtape appearing particularly problematic and uselessly generalising – until one remembers that the piece is, A, that rare thing, a genuinely funny poem, and B, as much an indictment of avant-garde electronic geekery as it is a celebration: ‘the true focus of one not merely content – as, no doubt, were others at the Mänover Elektronische Festival in Wien – / to hit play while making some fraudulent correction to a volume slider’. The layers of irony, deliberate obfuscation and acute, high-spec knowledge thus make for a more complex and challenging Music As Reading experience than, say, a haughty comparison of journalistic similes with the records they describe – isn’t writing about music far more about writing than it is about music?

(Don Paterson’s Song for Natalie ‘Tusja’ Beridze can be located in his latest volume of poetry, Rain, published by Faber)



Part one
…your fine vocals, which, while admittedly limited in range and force, are nonetheless much more affecting than the affected Arctic whisperings of those interchangeably dreary / Stinas and Hannes and Bjorks, being in fact far closer in spirit to a kind of glitch-hop Blossom Dearie…

Gorod – Tusia Beridze
Butterfly – Stina Nordenstam
Break My Body - Hanne Hukkelberg
Everything I’ve Got – Blossom Dearie
Wound – Tusia  Beridze

Part two
…how can I pay tribute to your infinitely versatile blend of Nancarrow, Mille Plateaux, Venetian Snares, Xenakis, Boards of Canada and Nobukazu Takemura…

String Quartet, Allegro molto – Conlon Nancarrow
Frictional Nevada – Venetian Snares
Cvet – Tusia Beridze
Plektó – Iannis Xenakis
Kursaa – Tusia Beridze
Roygbiv – Boards of Canada
Alone with the Alone – Zü & Nobukazu Takemura


Part three
…this little I have gleaned: firstly, that you are married to Thomas Brinkmann, whose records are boring – an opinion I held long before love carried me away…

Hextention – Tusia Beridze
Isch – Thomas Brinkmann
Smattack – Tba
Walk With Me – Thomas Brinkmann
Late – Tusia Beridze

Sam Kinchin-Smith
Music Editor

Issue 1 | Mixtape | Mixtape I, Berry Men

Music As Reading: Mixtape I, Berry Men

Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was bester! He wrote like wet papier-mâché, went the Heming-way, weirdly on wings and with maximum pain – we call upon the author to explain.

This mixtape represents the coming together of songs drawing upon the imagery slash message slash romanticism of a poet’s life and career, musical literary criticism, work with very similar creative specifications to the same poet’s best pieces, and combination’s thereof – the focus being that writer most beloved by contemporary American guitar bands, John Berryman. And more specifically, his 385 Dream Songs. In order to pose the following questions: can music about literature bring with it new understandings of literature? If not, does it have a right to essentially then leech off this literature – even if the result is a compelling new piece of work? What happens when a song like Okkervil River’s John Allyn Smith Sails reflects upon both literature and music (i.e. the Beach Boys) simultaneously? Do certain of these songs bring something new to the real-time experience of reading Berryman (have a look at Dream Song 4 with Gainsbourg on in the background and you’ll see what I’m getting at)? Is a musical thematic project (say, write a ‘Dream Song’) the same as – or at the very least, related to – a similar literary thematic project? And what happens in the spaces in between these questions – is the existence of a composition for a brass quintet entitled Fancies, Toyes and Dreams: His Rest pure coincidence?


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Part one, Biography

Intoxicated Man – Serge Gainsbourg
Stuck Between Stations – The Hold Steady
John Allyn Smith Sails – Okkervil River

Part two, Literary criticism

We Call upon the Author – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning? – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Softly and Gently (Angel), the Dream of Gerontius Op. 38, part 2 – Edward Elgar

Part three, Other people’s Dream Songs

Dream Song – Matthew’s Southern Comfort
Coat Check Dream Song – Bright Eyes
Dream Song – Scott Matthews

Part four, Combinations thereof

Papa Won’t Leave You Henry – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
We Live As We Dream, Alone – Gang of Four
Fancies, Toyes and Dreams: His Rest – Giles Farnaby


Sam Kinchin-Smith
Music Editor