Our 11th-and-maybe-final end-of-year mix: RIP RIP RIP RIP 2019

Date

January 14, 2020

Miracler

Toby Barlow

Location

Detroit

Note from Your Hostess:

And you thought the Prodge had pulled up anchor and sailed away forever. Not quite, thanks to Hall of Famer aka Minister of Miracle Maker Mortality, Toby Barlow. This may (or may not) be the last Miracle mix of all time (let's see what kind of energy we get here), but whatever happens, 2019's in the books and ready for savoring.

Massive thanks as always to Toby for creating these loving recaps for us each year. If you're feeling nostalgic for further talents lost, you can always peruse our archive here: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 and 2017 and 2018. If you dig this mix, please leave a comment below! And with that, I give you...

RIP RIP RIP RIP: Liner notes from Toby

I took it as a sign when both Rip Torn & Rip Taylor died this year. 

So, this is it. End of the end. No more of these after this one. Dylan, Keith, Mick, Ringo & Paul.  All of them made it nicely through. Even Iggy, against all odds, still standing. Perhaps future digital archeologists will wonder if they, in fact, were immortal. I mean, seriously, imagine a universe where there is an actual god with a name like ‘Robert Plant.’ Sounds like an IBM employee that none of the other IBM employees like. 

We’ll open with a little bit here from Dr John.

Ric Ocasek met Ben Orr in Cleveland sometime in the 60’s, when Orr had a band called The Grasshoppers (back when insect bands were all the rage, and Ohio was cool.) Then, the two made their way to Columbus, then on to Boston. There, they started the band Milkwood. That didn’t pan out. So, then, after that, The Cars. Think about that journey for a moment, all that travel and work and belief every step of the way. Plugging and unplugging. Gigging and hustling. Then think about what that first album. A perfect debut. After the needle dropped on this song played, the Cars went on to sell 23 million albums (The suggested retail price of an album back then was around $8.00, if you want to do the math). So, there had probably never been as prophetic a song opening a debut album than this one. Let the Good Times Roll, yeah.

“My parents always tried to get me to play country music, and I just didn’t like it that much.” Jimmy Johnson, guitar player at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio FAME, ended up playing with Aretha, Otis, Lynard Skynard, Bob Dylan, The Stones, and Wilson Pickett.  

Another power player. From "Return to Sender," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Good Vibrations," and even the theme song to "Batman” you grew up with the drum beat of Hal Blaine inside you, you just didn’t know it. Not only was he in the Wrecking Crew, he came up with the name. Max Weinberg wrote, "If Hal Blaine had played drums only on 'Be My Baby', his name would still be uttered with reverence and respect for the power of his big beat."

(Oh, speaking of Ronnie Spector, Eddy Money also died this year. I love the tune he did with Ronnie, “Take Me Home Tonight”. Well, I thought I loved it, and then I listened to it again, and it almost holds up. But it doesn’t.)

David Berman’s Silver Jews caught an angle on the whole Drag City scene that made Hoboken much cooler than anyone else did. This song that makes me happy every time I hear it (I think I first discovered it on a 3MPM mix by our Hostess).  Sadly, I think David Berman was rarely as happy as this song makes me.  

Clydie King was one of those singers. Lotsa “20 Feet from Stardom” moments in her, she was on Sweet Home Alabama and Dylan stuff. Christ, she’s on as much Steely Dan as Michael McDonald. She also had a few minor R&B hits of her own, so, I was going back and forth about what to put on here. But then I stumbled across the fact that on this song, she first shows up in the background when Mick sings

Angels beating all their wings in time

With smiles on their faces and a gleam right in their eyes

Whoa, thought I heard one sigh for you

Come on up, come on up, now, come on up now

Sometimes I think Little Feat is my favorite band. I know that makes me uncool, but fuck you. Anyway, Paul Barrere wrote and sings on this one. 

Ginger Baker always scared me the way that your drunk uncle scares you. But – again, let’s go with the first song on the debut Cream album – this tune feels okay. This was, in a metaphorical sense, your uncle before he’s drunk, when he’s telling you a great story about his day, while he pours his drink. 

The English Beat were pretty great, weren’t they? And pioneering in their way. I dunno why we’re not more nuts about them. Too pop? Rankin’ Roger was rappin’ about race on Wha’appen about the same time Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were hip hoppin’ in the Bronx.

Okay, Art Neville. We all love a little Art Neville. I know the bar I was in down in Soho – a kind a lame fern bar where you could always get a seat - when I first this song. I remember thinking “This is a perfect song.” And it is. Also, the Neville Brothers live shows? Did you ever see them? Wasn’t it fucking great? 

I had a theory once that Bob Dylan decided, somewhere around 1999, to just start mimicking Leon Redbone’s whole style, the look, the music, etc.  I thought that was a kind of odd choice. Then, I read how Dylan actually discovered Leon Redbone, back at the Mariposa Folk Festival in ’72, and got Leon his first record contract. Sometimes people thought Leon was just someone else in disguise, Andy Kaufman or Frank Zappa. He was always a bit of a ghostly myth, and now that’s all he is. 

You know those movies where some small-town kids just want to dance and be groovy, but “the man” puts them down and crushes their dream? Roky Ericson’s debut album was “The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13^th Floor Elevators” and it appears that the authorities in his native Texas didn’t take kindly to that. He was eventually arrested – for a single joint. As writer Paul Drummond put it, “By the end of 1969, Roky virtually re-enacted the plot of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ when he pleaded insanity and was incarcerated in a maximum-security unit of a prison for the criminally insane,” As for the rest of the band, “Stacy was imprisoned in the jail Roky attempted to avoid, Tommy spent two years living in a cave with an LSD mafia cult, their bassist was drafted to Vietnam, and the drummer was given involuntary shock treatments.” To be fair, Roky did have some mental issues beforehand). 

Teresa Ryan was a Southern California girl hanging with her friend Belinda when they saw an ad placed calling for “two untalented girls” to join a band. So, they joined. Belinda got mono and had to quit but Teresa stayed with it, became Lorna Doom, and, along with Darby Crash and Pat Smear, made the seminal LA punk band the Germs. There weren’t a lot of girls in bands back then, much less a band lie the Germs. Lorna was a true pioneer. (Oh, and Belinda did fine, she joined up with the Go-Go’s).

More punk girls. Kim Shattuck was lead singer in the Muffs, which had a very Sub Pop groove. I picked this song because, while it’s not the original, it was the version in Clueless, so it’s the one everybody knows. 

Doug Patterson isn’t a big fan of Daniel Johnston but I like listening to him every once in a while. This tune, to me, captured the perfect simplicity of Mr. Johnston’s music. So simple, it’s actually joyfully hilarious. I used to sing a long with it a lot. 

I’m gonna admit that I should have put something more Scott Walker-y instead of this Walker Brother tune. But I’m building a mix here and where Walker took music in his brilliant career doesn’t quite fit in with these other gems. It would be like bringing a buffalo to a little kid’s birthday. So here we are. 

This guy was something, wasn’t he? Again, I am totally pandering and playing the monster hit. But João Gilberto probably would have been okay with it. He invented Bossa Nova holed up in his sister’s bathroom. He liked the acoustics.

“Surf music is a heavy machine-gun staccato picking style to represent the power of Mother Nature, of our earth, of our ocean,” Dick Dale once told the Times. His first instrument was a ukulele. This tune is actually a reinterpretation of a Middle Eastern turn and, turns out, Dale’s father was Lebanese. 

Here’s a story. I once was in love with a woman who, back long before she met me, traveled with the band. Not the band, actually, but The Band. She was with Garth Hudson. Anyway, years later, she would keep me awake at night in a cabin in the woods telling me hilarious stories. One of my favorites was about a European multi-group package tour they took with Dr John. And because they were rock and roll kids, the customs agents would go carefully through their luggage. Unpacking Dr John’s bags, in particular, would be an endless adventure there at the border. The Belgian customs official would pull up a packet of yellow powder, and John would say “Well, you know, that there is the dust of a root, okay, for if your woman is cheating on you, you just gotta sprinkle that in her coffee and she will lose that roving feeling…” and the customs official would nod and then pull out a strange vegetable, and Dr. John would say “That’s a root for if you’re feeling like your worried about a curse…” etc.

 This year, so many southern Muscle Shoals and New Orleans voices left, it’s like you can feel the spirits floating out into the delta, out into the sea. Then the tide returns and the waves wash back in and some of what we thought was gone returns.

There was this memorable quote from Allee Willis captured in the Times, “I always say, ‘If you were to drop dead, I could write to the clunk of the body.” A legendary songwriter, Allee Willis was a Detroit native and a truly spirited character. And then there’s this thing Prince said: always end your DJ set with “September.”

So, there you go. That’s a wrap. Good luck on the path ahead. 

Mix is UP. Let me know if anyone has a prob downloading this slightly chunky set, and I'll break it up into 2 smaller downloads. Check your email for the current password. Please comment! Just click on the 'Comment' button below the post and write something. See you back here or on our members-only Facebook page soon. XOK