Exactly a year ago, I started this blog of music mixes. One new one a week, and older ones from the previous five plus years, amounting to 333 posted mixes.
This year will be easier, just one new one a week.
But, before I get to that new one this coming Thursday (they are always dated on the Thursday of a given year) I thought I'd post a "best of" for each year, starting with last year.
It will save you the trouble of trawling through all the old ones, but if you like any of this, by all means trawl away. Your "best of" all of the old ones would very likely be different than mine.
The "best of" will consist of exactly the top 10% of each year's posted songs. Why the top 10%? Well, that seems to be a nice round number of the best. Just selective enough. Reminds me of what my high school counselor told me to strive for. By the "best", it just means my favorites. All of the music that's been posted on here has been enjoyed by me, and now hopefully you. These are my favorites of 2009.
And if you're new to this blog, the mixes of any given year are not necessarily in line with the date the music was released. A typical mix spans many decades of stuff I like. It's just what I was enjoying that week.
In 2009, my 53 mixes totalled 1,107 songs, which means I get to choose 111 songs for my best of.
I'll make, as I did in pervious posts, brief mentions of each song on here, save for the 11 or so that will make my "Countdown 2009" post of the very, very best of this year.
"All Apologies" by Nirvana played constantly on the radio after Kurt Cobain's suicide some 15 years ago, like a cruel piece of funeral music. It's dark and haunting and I liked hearing it again this year. "Married/buried" indeed. A little bit more hopeful was Divide & Kreate's mash up of Willie Nelson's "Always On My Mind" over U2's "Without Or Without You" sprinkled with a little bit of MARRS's "Pump Up The Volume" called "Always On My Mind". It reminds me very much of late winter turning into spring last year, and a lot of crazy hope I was feeling.
Love Spit Love's "Am I Wrong" must have come out around the same time as Cobain's suicide as I associate it with the same time in my life. I have loved Richard Butler's voice since he sang for The Psychedelic Furs and was happy to be reacquainted with this song this year. I loved it 15 years ago and hearing it this year, my answer to the titular question was "no".
MF Doom's collaboration with Ghostface Killah alter ego Tony Starks called "Angelz" samples not The Charlie's Angels television show it references but another 70s tv show, The Hardy Boys. It's got an eerie, cool feel to it. The Who's "Baba O Riley" could not be killed by its ubiquity on classic rock radio. I heard it all the time growing up, forgot it, and then let it knock me on my ass this year. Simply awesome.
I don't know anything about Martin John Henry but his cover of one of my favorite Beatles songs, "Because", is just gorgeous.
New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" reminds me of high school dances. It became very much a song for me this year, and I also love both the Nouvelle Vague cover, which is cute but especially the Occidental Dance Band International version. I think that's my favorite of the three but I could change my mind at any time. Speaking of Latin-tinged cover songs, Los Chicros breathe new life into David Bowie's "Changes".
The Cure's "Close To Me" has always been a favorite of mine, and this year it was a special song for me. Of all the versions I threw on mixes this year, WHY?'s is my favorite. All the noise and distortion is a nice tension with the lyrics.
M.I.A.'s Timbaland collaboration "Come Around" has some great vocal sound effects from her. For sound effects, nothing beats the doorbells in Lou Reed's "Crazy Feeling".
"Crying In The Chapel" features, through some inventive mashing up, Elvis Presley singing with backing from The Wailers. It works. Led Zeppelin's "Dancing Days" just never gets old. Makes me happy. That's it.
John Barry's haunting and beautiful soundtrack work "Diamonds Are Forever [Bond And Tiffany]" was good trance music for me this year. And no, diamonds are not forever. But this music is.
"Didn't Want To Have To Do It" by The Lovin' Spoonful was one of my favorite songs this year. I had no idea these guys were that good, I just know some of their goofier hits. What an amazingly well-written song. The covers on here are by Jackie DeShannon and Peggy Lee that shade the song with differing emotions that I struggle to describe. Regretful and defiant, respectively, I think.
J.V.C. F.O.R.C.E. were one of my old school rap discoveries this year. "Doin' Damage (original version)" features witty lyrics over an ingenious sample of "Louie, Louie" by The Kingsmen.
"Don't Ask Me To Be Friends" by The Everly Brothers is so simple and devastating. It actually lives up to its title in the way the lyrics, singing and playing are all direct and perfect.
"Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey just got me through this year. It rocks. "Doom Town" by The Wipers rocks harder than anything else on this "best of", and I love listening to it full blast, the way any Journey song needs to be enjoyed as well.
"Electric Relaxation" by A Tribe Called Quest is such happy music. Jay-Z's anthem "Empire State Of Mind" featuring Alicia Keys was also really inspiring this year.
"Everything's Coming Our Way" by Santana was one of my favorite songs in college, and I was so happy to rediscover it this year, it's really uplifting. Radiohead's acoustic version of "Fake Plastic Trees", on the other hand, is really kind of a bummer. But a beautiful bummer.
The next few songs are pretty weird. I can't explain why I love GZA's "Firehouse" featuring Ka. GZA doesn't even come on except for a brief chorus, and Ka's not rapping about anything that I can make sense of or find interesting. But I love his gravelly delivery and the track behind him is killer. Even more strange is "Flower Of My Heart" by Sparkle Moore. Her voice, so all over the place, just knocks me out. Santogold's "Get It Up" (Radioclit Mix)" with M.I.A. and Gorilla Zoe is a chaotic mess. I feel like I'm in the back of a jeep hurtling through a third world country. "Go To Sleep My Darling" by The Dezurik Sisters is so sweet and oddly sung, I wish had this sort of lullaby sung to me as a child.
"Goin' Out Of My Head" by The Zombies is their BBC version of their cover of Little Anthony And The Imperials and it's even more spare and beautiful.
Michael Small's haunting "Goldfarb's Record" is from his soundtrack work for the movie Klute. I tried to get a composer to copy the feel of this for something we shot this year, and it just didn't work. Not his fault, none of the shoot worked. Probably all my fault. Anyway, I loved walking around Manhattan this year with this playing on my headphones. Speaking of walking around the city with soundtrack music on my headphones, nothing beats Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now (Theme From 'Rocky'). Nothing. Just gets me pumped up.
I found Stevie Nicks's demo version of Fleetwood Mac's "Gypsy" while hunting around online for something else and loved how simple it is compared to the great produced version. Also really gorgeous, but far from spare, is Charles Mingus' "Hearts' Beat And Shade In Physical Embraces", which is one of those pieces that sounds slightly different every time I hear it.
Carmen McRae took an underrated but pretty Beatles song called "Here, There & Everywhere" and just simply killed it. The definitive version for me. Equally evocative of mood is Jackie Gleason's "Honeymooner's Theme", a weird blend of melancholia and romance. Judy Garland's version of the Cole Porter standard "I Happen To Like New York" is also very romantic and inspiring. Makes me happy to live here, just as Jay-Z's aforementioned song does.
Marvin Gaye's version of the Motown standard "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" also stands up, as The Who song mentioned earlier, despite incessant exposure. Loved hearing it this year, the sense of drama in the song. "I Wanna Be Adored" by The Stone Roses has a similar amount of drama and I was happy to rediscover the song this year with the album's reissue. I also really love the more understated country cover by Hoyt Axton.
Dean Martin's "I Will" has just the right kind of jauntiness about saying goodbye to a lover that makes it unique and yes, uplifting. "I Won't Share You" by The Smiths, by contrast, is so petulant and sad and funny and heartbreaking. It was a very big song for me this year.
With Michael Jackson's passing this year, I dug into a lot of his old stuff. To me, there is no more affecting song in his catalog than The Jackson 5's "I'll Be There". The anguished "I've Been Loving You Too Long To Stop Now" by Otis Redding is my favorite of his ballads. Calico Horse's cover of Radiohead's "Idioteque" brought new light to this song for me, and it's a pretty arrangement. Nothing is prettier than Duke Ellington's ballad "Isfahan", and I can't believe it took me until this year to throw it on a weekly mix.
I threw up a lot of versions of Carole King's "It's Too Late" this year, but my favorite is the one that made this best of: Isaac Hayes performing it live. He brings just the right blend of funkiness and sensitivity. Marlene Dietrich's version of the standard "Just A Gigolo", with a wordless male chorus, is just overwhelming with pathos.
"Just Like Honey" by The Jesus & Mary Chain was one of my favorite songs this year, and the acoustic demo and cover by Headless Heroes on here brought a fresh perspective on the lyrics to me. It might be my favorite song this year of the ones I featured more than one version of.
The Flaming Lips cover of John Lennon's "(Just Like) Starting Over" might be even better than the original. It sounds more Lennon-like, with acoustic guitar replacing the 80s production of the original and Wayne Coyne's vocals are amazing. Bill Withers' "Let Me In Your Life" is an underrated classic from him. It's so simple and direct yet incredibly moving.
Q-Tip is featured on the next two songs with a cameo on the energetic "Let's Organize" by Organized Konfusion and with his much later collaboration with Norah Jones on "Life Is Better". Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" is a song so obvious, again it's one I can't believe didn't make a mix in the previous five-plus years. But it sounded perfect this year.
I could have filled the whole "best of" with just Nina Simone. Instead, just a couple. Her version of "Little Girl Blue" is so pretty and so sad. Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town" was playing at a bar recently and I love how spooky it sounded. My Bloody Valentine's "Lose My Breath" is so dramatic and pretty and unusual-sounding. The Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris duet version of the standard most associated with The Everly Brothers called "Love Hurts" is so gorgeous and evocative. The version I put on a mix this year is an alternate version that is just slightly quieter and has a different vocal mix. In the standard version, their voices appear in separate channels: even though they are singing in harmony, each voice comes out a different speaker or earphone. In this version, their voices are together. Back to Nina, her version of the standard "Love Me Or Leave Me" was my favorite of the ones I featured this year, especially for her piano playing as well as her singing.
Randy Newman's "Marie" is such a touching song, The demo version I included this year strips away some of the strings, and the cover that also made this "best of" by The Morning Benders doesn't differ too much in feel except to replace the piano with an acoustic guitar. But the singing in both versions really makes this song, and these lyrics, among my favorites this year.
I first heard the track "Morning Sunrise" by Weldon Irvince when it was sampled by Jay-Z in "Dear Summer" from a few years back. Now that I've heard the song, I love it and need to find out more about him. He seems to straddle genres, like a Roy Ayers, and seem definitely worth checking out. Hank Mobley's "My Sin" is great late night music, and like a lot of jazz for me, takes on different shades of meaning each time I hear it. Raekwon's first comeback single "The New Wu" with Method Man and Ghoistface Killah is so perfect I can't believe it didn't make my top 11. The title is ironic because it sounds like "old Wu", which is more than good enough for me.
The demo version of John Lennon's "Oh My Love" is simpler with a clearer vocal. What a perfect love song. I got into a real Buddy Holly kick this year, with so much unreleased stuff, particular his "undubbed" acoustic versions of songs. "Peggy Sue Got Married" benefits especially from this treatment, a sad sequel to the exuberant "Peggy Sue". I don't know if it was John Hughes dying this year or conicidence, but I found two great versions of "Pretty In Pink" by The Psychedelic Furs. One is a cover by Ariel Aparicio where after heavy strumming and strings he breaks into the chorus of their "Heartbreak Beat" at the end. Love it. Also, the acoustic version on the BBC by The Furs is also really elegant and cool.
There was a great "new" MF Doom album this year of various unreleased tracks and guest spots on other albums. From that, "Project Jazz" with Hell Razah and Talib Kweli and Doom in his Viktor Vaughn persona. It's got a great, jazzy feel to it and I love the graffiti can sound effects. Two of my favorite deceased rappers, The Notorious B.I.G. and Ol' Dirty Bastard, appear on this year's "best of" long after they've been buried: the former with the reggae-tinged "Respect" and the latter with the Peaches & Herb-inspired "Reunited". Totally crazy, both tracks. Nowhere near dead is Jay-Z, and "Say Hello" with its defiant lyrics and 70s soul feel, was one of my favorites to play on the headphones when I walk around the city.
Jackie Ross' "Selfish One" reminds me of "Dusties" Am Radio in Chicago year ago, playing old 60s soul songs in the middle of the night. It's very sweet and well sung. Lou Rawls' cover of Hall & Oates' "She's Gone" combines two of my favorite things: Lou Rawls and Hall & Oates. The arrangement is pretty faithful to the original but Lou brings his own inimitable style to it that I love. The all vocals mix of The Beatles' "She's Leaving Hone" makes this song even more haunting and sad than the strings ever could. I loved this song this year. Big Boi's "Shine Blockas" with Gucci Mane makes great use of a Teddy Pendergrass sample and is one the very best new hip hop tracks of the year. Betty Crutcher's "So Lonely Without You" is so quietly soulful and such a lush record.
In the realm of the bizarre: "Song Of The Burmese Land" by Cara Stewart is probably the strangest song on here. But I couldn't get it out of my head once I heard it. Almost as strange is the proto-disco of "Space Age" by The Jimmy Castor Bunch. "Don't be a robot, you'll lose your soul" was one of my favorite lines this year. And the production approximates what the "space age" might sound like.
"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" by The Walker Brothers captures an icy sense of drama that I appreciated in some of my darker moods this year. De La Soul's "Sunshine", with its buoyant J Dilla production, had the exact opposite effect on me.
Some dear old friends I visited with this fall presented to me their nine-year-old son, who's favorite song is Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne", to which I could only reply, "wow". I soon discovered this pretty cover of it by Francoise Hardy, where I imagine his lyrics against her French phrases. "Sweet Virginia" by The Rolling Stones might be Mick Jagger making fun of country music,. but the chorus of "got to scrape the shit right off your shoes" felt so apt this year. I fell in love with the Big Star song "Thank You Friends" well over a dozen years ago, when I was in college and had so many more friends to thank. So, I was bowled away to find this acoustic demo of the song on the Big Star box set released this fall. I could understand the lyrics better, and the song felt less sarcastic and more sincere. Nothing could be more sincere than Buddy Holly's acoustic version of "That's What They Say". Hard to believe someone this wise died at 24.
Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album was of course a staple of my high school life, but hearing "Time" again this year really moved me. It's the best song on the album and the one that evokes so many feelings and memories for me. Despite being a big Marvin Gaye fan, I have never really like "Sexual Healing", finding the production to sound more dated than his earlier work. And listless. Which is why I love the mash-up called "Troubled Healing" which puts his vocals over Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Waters". It's superb. I'm also a big Donna Summer fan, so "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It" perfectly captures the romantic feel of her Giorgio Moroder classic period. Patrick Cleandemim's "Until You Said I'm Gone" has a great retro cool sound to it. Julie Doiron's "untitled" makes sense as a "hidden" track on an album because it's so bracingly honest and sad.
TV On The Radio's cover of Daniel Johnston's "Walking The Cow" just had a hypnotic pull on me this year. Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman's version of the standard "We'll Meet Again" was the last song on my last mix of the year and such a sweet version, full of hope. Don Covay's kazoo-driven "What's In The Headlines" is, by contrast, world-weary but also oddly uplifting, thanks to his singing performance which rises as the song goes on. I love it whenever a singer refers to himself in the third person.
The last few songs on here are a little more quiet and reflective. Cat Stevens' "The Wind" is inspiring and never get old, even after having grown up with his music as a little boy. Paul Weller's live acoustic version of Rose Royce's "Wishing On A Star" is such a well chosen cover for both song and artist. As I mentioned in my original post, he changed the lyric from the resigned "in the game of love you reap what you sow" to the more apologetic "in the game of loving you I was slow". Stevie Wonder's "You And I' might be his greatest love song, which is saying something. Had to wait a few years to pull that one out onto a mix. And finally, Joe Cocker's version of Billy Preston''s "You Are So Beautiful". I used to hate this song when I was growing up, but when I heard it this year, it knocked me out. So there you have it.
