If Life Ain't Just A Joke, Then Why Are We Laughing?

If Life Ain't Just A Joke, Then Why Are We Laughing?

A fine collection of songs here. Though I used a picture from the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight, this mix has little to nothing to do with the film. Though, the titular track, "Dead" by My Chemical Romance, has a vaguely Joker-ish flair to it.

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So, let's get to it, shall we?

1. The Hold Steady - Chips Ahoy!
2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Phenomenon
3. A Perfect Circle - Weak & Powerless
4. The Dears - Who Are You, Protectors of the Earth?
5. Bear vs. Shark - Baraga Embankment
6. Elliott Smith - Son of Sam
7. Dieselboy - Dear John
8. Flogging Molly - Old Beggar's Bush
9. Superdrag - Remain Yr Strange
10. The Apples in Stereo - Do You Understand?
11. 2 Skinnee Js - Sugar & Candy
12. The Beatles - She Said She Said
13. My Chemical Romance - Dead!
14. David Bowie - Afraid
15. Courtney Love - Mono
16. A - Better Off With Him
17. Reggie & The Full Effect - Your Boyfriend Sucks
18. Sarge - A Torch
19. No Use For A Name - June 19
20. Piebald - Long Nights
21. Alkaline Trio - If We Never Go Inside
22. Spacehog - Space is the Place
23. Imarobot - Creeping Me Out

Quick and easy, cause I'm running out of time.

The Hold Steady rock in a way few people do. Buy their record, Boys and Girls In America, you won't regret it.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs make fun, art-rock that doesn't sound pretentious. (Ok, maybe a little bit). Show Your Bones is endless fun.

A Perfect Circle = Tool - angsty maleness. 13th Step is underrated, and I don't know why.

The Dears are like Morrissey, if he joined an indie-rock band and was black. Gang of Losers is awesome, No Cities Left is way better.

Bear vs. Shark = Fugazi + At The Drive-In. RAAAR! Get Terrorhawk today!

If you don't own Figure 8 by Elliott Smith, you don't know what you're missing. "Son of Sam" is the most rock Elliott ever laid to tape.

Dieselboy, the sex-obsessed pop-punk group, not the hyperbolic DJ, wound up writing one of the better John Lennon tribute songs ever. Don't ask me, I have no idea how. From the album Sofa King Cool.

Flogging Molly are Irish, they love their roots and punk rock. It works wonders on Swagger and everything they've put out since.

This Superdrag song was written and sung by Rob Pollard of Guided by Voices. Might as well be a GBV song, since it sounds so similar. The rest of Last Call for Vitriol, except, "Baby Goes to 11" was actually written by the band proper.

Apples in Stereo are cotton candy for the ears! Velocity of Sound is their best record, so far.

Speaking of candy, 2 Skinnee Js rap about candy, contact lenses and hobos. Yes, this is par for the course for the album Volumizer.

The Beatles. 'Nuff said. Taken from Revolver, this trippy gem is dark as hell.

The aforementioned My Chemical Romance song, from Black Parade. Dark, twisted and a lot of fun to shout along with.

David Bowie has been getting better as the years go by. This track from Heathen proves it.

Courtney Love, on the other hand, continues to go downhill. "Mono" from her solo record America's Sweetheart is about the only good thing she's done since "Violet"

British band A (yes, the vowel) are hard to find on Google. But they're worth the search, especially their album Teen Dance Ordinance.

Reggie & The Full Effect is a emo "supergroup" - members come from The Get Up Kids, The New Amsterdams and others. The album Greatest Hits 1984-1987 is well worth the purchase, considering the re-release has the "Lord of the Bling" trilogy on it.

Sarge are no longer around, but their album A Glass Intact was a template for other women-fronted punk bands in the Midwest.

No Use For A Name are still around and still making soulful punk rock, which sounds like an oxymoron. Hard Rock Bottom came out to literally no notice whatsoever. It's a great record, though.

Piebald just finished touring with MC Chris. And if that's not enough nerd cred, one of the albums is called If It Wasn't For Venetian Blinds, It'd Be Curtains For Us All. This song comes from the record We're The Only Friends That We Have and is one of the best on there.

Alkaline Trio make dark punk music for the goth kid who hates Peter Murphy, but loves the Misfits. This song is from Good Mourning, still considered one of their better albums.

Spacehog got overlooked in the 90s because of their tasty jam "In The Meantime." People bought Resident Alien expecting more of the same and they didn't get it. Songs like "Space is the Place" really rock and can not be ignored.

Ima Robot make fun, drugged-out music that's funny and very often self-depricating (see the line, "Well, there must be a mistake / Girl, you're way too hot / You could make a million dollars with the face you got / Don't you know my last album was a flop?") Monument To The Masses is a slice of pure awesome.

whew. That still took forever.....

The Lonesome Electric Turkey Tapes (Part 1)

It was 14 years ago this Tuesday that the world lost one of the greater musicians of the 20th century, Frank Zappa. Today, Weekend Mix Tape offers up a slice of some of the better tracks from his many albums, entitled "The Lonesome Electric Turkey Tapes"

If you're new to FZ, or even if you're an FZ fanatic, enjoy the selections here. This collection is by no means comprehensive, but is a cross-section of albums the author enjoys.



The Lonesome Electric Turkey Tapes Part 1

1. I Could Be A Star Now!
2. My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama (Live)
3. Harry, You're A Beast
4. Baby Snakes
5. Uncle Remus
6. Keep It Greasy Part 1
7. Joe's Garage
8. Rudy Wants to Buy Yez A Drink
9. Suicide Chump
10. Titties And Beer (Baby Snakes Version)
11. St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast
12. Father O'Blivion
13. Broken Hearts Are For Assholes
14. Who Needs The Peace Corps?
15. Cheap Thrills
16. Disco Boy (Live)
17. Absolutely Free
18. Dirty Love
19. City of Tiny Lites
20. The Groupie Routine
21. Dong Work For Yuda
22. Be In My Video
23. Bobby Brown Goes Down
24. Fembot In A Wet T-shirt
25. Lonesome Electric Turkey (edit)


We begin with a goofy bit of dialogue from Zappa's bizarre-o movie "200 Motels" where a member of Frank's backing band, The Mothers, laments his lack of fame.

First up, a delightful bit of rock entitled "My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama", the epitome of youthful rebellion and angsty teenage love. Ike Willis, as usual, on backup vocals gives this live version a bit more punch.

Next, a selection from the first FZ album I ever heard, We're Only In It For The Money. "Harry, You're A Beast" is a vicious swipe at proto-feminists and "American womanhood" in general. The backmasking on the last bit of the song was a fine bit of censorship, concealing the prayer of women everywhere. I'll let you figure out what they're really saying.

This version of "Baby Snakes" is taken from the soundtrack to the movie of the same name, instead of the album Sheik Yerbuti. I still don't know what the hell they're talking about, but rest assured that it's probably sex related - though why something sexual would follow the code of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is beyond me. The inimitable future porn star Warren Cuccurullo is featured on high-pitched vocals.

Apostrophe is one of the greater mid-period Zappa records, featuring his biggest hit "Nanook Rubs It" and a ton of stellar songs, like this somber, piano-driven mid-tempo number, "Uncle Remus", which invites people to "[knock] the little jockeys off the rich peoples' lawns."

Sometimes FZ would go on a tangent that seemed almost irredeemable. In the case of Joe's Garage, a three-part rock opera that mocks totalitarian governments, small town "crew sluts", self-important musicians, wet t-shirt contests and all manner of other real-life phenomena. In the case of "Keep It Greasy," the second half of the song devolves into a 5 minute jam. While usually awesome, in this mix, I was pressed for time and didn't want to cut anything. So, the first 3 minutes of the song are presented here, minus the last 5.

Taken from the superior live album series You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, this version of "Joe's Garage" cuts right to the heart of why the song is timeless - everyone has been in some dumb band, playing some dumb song that you think is the best thing in the world.

"Ruby Wants to Buy Yez A Drink" is yet another music industry stab, courtesy of the album Chunga's Revenge. Lead vocal duties here are filled by Mark Volman and Kaylan Howard, known as 'Flo & Eddie'. Which is actually short for 'The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie'. Don't ask me, I don't really know why.

Only FZ could make suicide, or suicide attempts, funny. Somehow, "Suicide Chump" from You Are What You Is, works. Featuring, once again, Ike Willis as the goofy stereotypical black singer, telling the lead vocalist that his pronunciation of "appropriate" is funny and goofing on the lyrics.

"Titties and Beer" was never recorded in a studio and every performance featured improvised dialogue. Taken from the soundtrack to the movie Baby Snakes, this concert version features drummer Terry Bozzio as the devil, asking Frank if he thinks he's bad enough to get into hell. Frank replies, "I have been it!I have seen it! It has happened to me! Remember, I was signed with Warner Brothers for eight fuckin' years!" One of the most bitter moments in Frank's feud with WB, and it stands as one of the best performances of this song (though the one on Zappa In New York is a touch funnier.)

The next two songs follow each other in sequential order on Apostrophe, making the first half almost a song suite. The songs "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast" and "Father O'Blivion" tell the tale of Church of St. Alphonzo, home of the finest pancakes in the town and home to Father Livion O'Blivion, head chef. And something about leprichauns, bingo cards, stealing butter, abusing sausage patties and Father O'Blivion's massive member, which "rip[s] right through his sock."

A trend that started happening as Zappa's touring schedule ramped up in the late 70s and early 80s was the use of live tracks as album material. One of the best songs to come out of this period, "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes", changed every night. So Frank set about recording the best version he could. What came out was this. From the album Sheik Yerbuti, this song is just ... vulgar. Somehow it goes from being a song about broken hearts to being about fisting. One of the funniest FZ songs on record.

Also from We're Only In It For The Money, "Who Needs The Peace Corps?" is one of the finer anti-hippie songs ever recorded, mocking "phony hippies" and the bourgeois kids who move to San Francisco and want to pretend at rebellion.

Somewhere along the line, Zappa got into Doo-Wop. Yes, it's as weird as it sounds. From the classic record Cruisin' With Rueben and the Jets, "Cheap Thrills" takes you back to the 50s, complete with thinly-veiled sexual material and "cretin simple" music.

I realize now that a lot of my favorite live tracks come from the soundtrack to Baby Snakes. It was, admittedly, the first Zappa movie I ever saw, so that probably has a lot to do with it. This version of "Disco Boy" includes an audience member yelling into Frank's microphone that "they stole my poodle from me!", referring to the opening of the show where FZ and crew explained the origins of the poodle. The song itself is a vicious dig on the disco music scene and the goobers who inhibited it.

Some saw We're Only In It For The Money as the flipside of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which it was, to an extent. But the rest of the album is actually just FZ and crew goofing on pop culture, the San Francisco scene and the world around them. "Absolutely Free" at first seems like a hippie anthem, but then it turns nasty. The song did teach me a new word, "discorporate", which means "to leave your body."

"Dirty Love" is another excuisite cut from Overnite Sensation, with its horrible double-entendres and it's mixed metaphors. "I'll ignore your cheap aroma and your Little Bo Peep diploma. I'll just put you in a coma with some dirty love". Ewww.

Adrian Belew returns again as the lead vocalist and bass player on "City of Tiny Lites" another from Sheik Yerbuti.

OK, the reason I put "The Groupie Routine" on here is pretty simple. It's funny. But it also showcases Frank's band and their willingness to do crazy/stupid things onstage to amuse the audience. Here, one of the members, playing a touring rock star, tries to convince another to sleep with him, only to be rebuffed. "We only like musicians for friends." There's no point to this, other than to show that the You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore records are pinnacles of musical improv.

Joe's Garage features the all-knowing voice of The Central Scrutinizer, a being from the future who warns the audience that music leads to big trouble. At this point in the story, the titular character Joe gets sent to jail for being a musician and meets Bald-Headed John, played on the record by Terry Bozzio, but based on the real-life speech patterns of one John Smothers. "Dong Work For Yuda" is full of these Smothers-isms, making it one of the funnier tracks on side 2 of the album.

If there's anyone qualified to bitch-slap hair metal bands for their ridiculous videos, it's FZ and crew. On this track from Them and Us, the singer of a band, presumably Angel, who FZ riffed on quite a bit, is imploring a Tawny Kittean-esque girl to "Be In My Video". The video as described in the song sounds exactly like the tripe that came out at the time - bondage, midgets, limousines, fake nuclear blasts and "danc[ing] the blues", whatever that means.

The epic tale of "Bobby Brown Goes Down", taken from Sheik Yerbuti, tells of an All-American boy who becomes an S&M fanatic. Ah, that old chestnut.

Joe's Garage takes aim at a lot of pop culture conventions, but one that never gets old is FZ's riffing on strip clubs and wet t-shirt contests. "Fembot In A Wet T-Shirt" is a hilarious and audacious track featuring Ike Willis singing about boobs and Frank as the MC at The Brasserie ("home of the tits").

Since I wanted the album to bookend nicely with the second volume, I decided to end this on an instrumental note. And, the titular track. "Lonesome Electric Turkey" is a swirling mess of guitars and keyboards, taken from the album Fillmore East 1971, easily one of the finer live performances of that time period. NOTE : The song does cut off about 30 seconds early, due to time constraints - the CD was too long, so cuts had to be made in the original file.


Watch this space for "Lonesome Electric Turkey Tapes Part 2" coming soon!