Brake Up the Breakup!

click playlist to stream mixtape

That's the thing about breakup mixtapes. Emotions change so fast. I swim through the various levels of heartbreak: feeling devastated, still feeling in love with her, not understanding anything, getting wasted to deal with not understanding anything, feeling the rage come over my body like a fever, the anger, the SPITEFULNESS, the realization that nothing will come from the situation but terrible and sad memories, the almost vengeful return to what you think might be sanity, only to come to terms with the fact that you won't have a happy ending.

I started this about three months ago. I probably switched these songs around so much that only three or four or a handful of them are part of the original draft. I don't think I feel like this anymore. Nonetheless, it's a great fuckin' mix, and part of me feels embarrassed to share this spinning ferris wheel of feelings with phantom friends and foes. They're not my words, obviously, but I wrote them.

Notes: I first ended with "Give Up The Ghost," but thought the chorus for "Cars Can't Escape" better fits what lingering emptiness manifests in the small, private moments of my every day ado. I don't know if Ben Gibbard does it better than Phil Collins (he doesn't). "Against All Odds" appears on the Give Up 10th Anniversary release, which I purchased on vinyl on Record Store Day. It still amazes me how Ben was pretty much making dubstep before dubstep was dumbstep. If there's any song that I live the most, it's probably "I Walked." While bullshit critics talked mad shit about Age of Adz, it is one of the best breakup albums of 2009. However, "Sluttering" is still my favorite breakup song of all time. It's what a real heartbreak is: stingingly ugly and permanent. Ashanti is terrible, but the bridge was written for me and all the women who don't know how to take themselves out of a detrimental situation. The acoustic version of "You Oughtta Know" isn't as annoyingly girl-anthemy as the original. Alanis is more hurt than she is angry, and you feel compassion for her instead of spite for Uncle Joey. "Beer" is the song I pretended to write and execute throughout my every day life. It's also the reason I'm being sober for six months. And I chose "Anyone's Ghost" instead of "Sorrow" solely for the third verse. I'm starting to wonder if Matt Berninger and I are both meant to be miserably, brilliantly, mediocrely muddling through society's expectations of human growth. I'll say yes just to make myself feel better.

Notes part 2: "Cars Can't Escape" doesn't appear on the Spotify stream because it's a local file. AKA it's on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos (NOT the Engineered Demos) and I should have made and uploaded a sound file for this. But. I didn't. The only way to make up for things I didn't do is to never make the mistake of not doing them again. But. I probably won't do that either.

Notes part 3: I am the saddest I have ever been in my entire life.

Just as Bad

 Ah. I think I figured it out. It happens when the human spirit is repressed. Over a month since the last update.. everything is changing, shifting, forming. Movement growing, expanding, but we need more people here. We need more people on the ground. My relationships with my friends are good right now. I am having some trouble with following plans I made for myself in terms of grad school, but everything is changing, shifting, forming. I honestly don't know what is going to happen and I feel like so much already has that I don't even know where we can go from here. I can hope, I can guess, I can love.. in the end I guess life is how you deal with those tomatoes, you know. At the same time, there is an enormous chance I will completely fuck up my life, consciously. I'm back to "I don't know" again. I don't know. I don't know how this happens, I can't understand how or why shit happens, and I can't decide which method is really working, not for the movement, not for the struggle or the progress, but for me. Why is there a voice inside my head that tells me that life is not going to work out for me? Is it karma for how I dealt with my shit before? I don't know. Complicated situations are just part of me I guess. I just need to find something to live for, and the places I've found for now are the wrong places. They are so tempting and they are so wrong and I've come to that point in my emotional maturity to just not give a fuck sometimes. I pour my heart into too much of everything, I talk too much, and I feel everything. And sometimes, I don't know. I just want to stop.

"I've made a terrible mistake."

There are approximately 17 steps from the entrance of my apartment to the front of my door. This is the amount of time it takes to walk up those 17 steps, in a manner that would become a metaphor in a Camus novel, maybe. It's a pointless drawl, with little to no intention. By the third time around, I am out of breath. I can't control my airstream. It sounds like shit and I'm not happy with it. It's probably the worst thing I've ever published. But I only had 20 minutes to write about 17 steps, 20 minutes before the 18 bus leaves me at the stop. As stubborn as I am, I won't re-record the mistakes. This is it. The first take. The truth. The ugly, naked, honest truth. That I am erred, that everything I write sounds the same, that I don't venture from my comfortable compositional techniques, though I know what I am capable of doing and creating. It is a genuine disrobed falsity. It is me without the mask I'm about to put on before acting the part necessary to survive in this world. It is my artistry with no meaning.

But it is a real feeling, and everything imperfect about it is what makes me human.

I am sorry.

Download:
A Walk Up The Stairs

O, me patrie!

I love its fragrance of romanticism. It was a favorite the second I heard it, and I will never forget its fragrance. Chopin liked it a lot, too. Something cool happens to your right hand when playing this... it does harmony and melody at the same time. His voice was in his fingers. I always wonder what he would have done if he lived longer, in terms of composing for orchestras. I look at stuff like synth keyboards and am intrigued at how many different voices can be used with a single button. But that's the thing- it's a button. Yes, it's an instrument, but it doesn't have the same effect of a real piano. That's why I like it so much- because you literally have to grasp the sound. And it makes my heart melt.

This guy was birthed to this song. It's a memory I'll always have to myself.

Harder = a terrible safeword

you're depressed because you compare yourself to john coltrane
but when did you stop thinking you could be like john coltrane?

here's a little lesson in hard bop:
they didn't call it hard bop because it was harder than be-bop
they called it hard bop because everyone shot a bunch of dope
it was the 1950's
all them cats
art blakey
paul chambers
miles and coltrane
lee morgan, dude who blew trumpet on this track
he played an angled horn on the record
given to him by dizzy
another heroin addict
i mean, what better way to put funk into jazz
other than being inside the jazz?
anyway, lee morgan died too young
his woman took a glock and shot him up on stage
i guess she lived in the music, too

i wonder what he could have possibly done
to have his woman kill him like that.
is it even possible
to separate the murder from the music?

have you ever tried to write a song and realized it has already been written?

Procrastination...

I recorded this exactly two years ago, on an upright Young Chang . It's titled "September 8," though its working title was "No Substance World." I don't know why I never finish songs unless prompted. Perhaps I'll finish this one... winter's coming. I miss having a piano. I swear my creativity soars when one's around.

Download:

Interrupted

Also, sidenote: notating music on Finale Notepad is excruciating. I swear to never use this notation software again... back to the pencil and paper.

Also, another sidenote: graphic scores are the shit. They're probably my favorite way to notate music. When people say they can "read music," it pretty much means they can look at a piece of paper and execute the intended results, usually with other people. But what if those intended results aren't really... intended? The New York Miniaturist Ensemble has some really interesting shit to say about that. And they have a fairly decent, part humorous collection of graphic scores on their site.. check them out.

Mistaken for strangers by your own friends

I guess I started this mix a really long time ago with the working title "Corrine's Mixtape." I got the idea from my friend Rob when he made a mixtape that "completely defined him" or something like that. I don't know if this mixtape completely defines me. But I could see myself writing every song on it, or at least contributing a chorus or something.

Download:

An Ode to Serotonin

(click to enlarge)

13 tracks, 47.2 minutes

I noticed that my mixes are getting progressively shorter and shorter. I think that I subconsciously envision the larger framework as a "Side A." Also, I like making mixes for a specific environment, event, activity, ala music for purpose. I guess I always envision theme music for everything I do. This one's the background to my everyday life. Just sitting down. Talking and thinking. Staring out the window. Folding clothes occasionally, maybe learning a song or two before getting ready for work. You know.

A few notes: the Untitled Brand New track comes from their untitled demo album that was leaked in 2006 before The Devil and God are Raging Inside of Me was released in November. Some hardcore fans would argue that those demos are infinitely better than the mastered recordings. What people don't really know is that most of those songs were SUPPOSED to be on The Devil and God... but Jesse was so pissed/embarrassed that the songs had leaked, so he purposefully didn't put them on the album.

Now, in retrospect, I want those songs to be on the album and many of them aren't, and I'm probably more to blame for that than anyone. This record already feels incomplete to me without those tracks and probably will forever. -Jesse Lacey

It must suck to hate the product of your art with only your own neuroticism to blame. Oh well. That's what major labels are for, right?

Rufus Wainwright's version of "Instant Pleasure" can only be found on his Best of album... and the Big Daddy soundtrack. Why do people shame others for enjoying sex for pleasure with multiple partners? I say be a slut and own it and fuck what they say.

Anyway. Enough of that. "Reparations" by Saul Williams is my battle cry. I impulse bought tickets to see The National in Kansas City last month.. super excited to see them again, hopefully from the rail, again, and this song is amazing live. I love the chorus to the Vampire Weekend song "Run." Apparently, according to my room mates, it sounds like Paul Simon. It's funny listening to old records, by the way, and realizing that most of my favorite artists now are mere reincarnations of 70's and 80's bands. I'm always weary to put Antlers songs on mixes... I just think that each song fits so perfectly in the new-age song cyle, Hospice, that taking them out of context makes them lose their essense. Whatever, I really like the second part of this song. Can't get that Kid Cudi song out of my life... Sam showed me an acoustic live version by this chick Lissie and I can't get the melody out of my head. The only reason I like the original better is that it's produced by Ratatat, and they're incredible.

I totally had this idea for a video before I saw this by the Morning Benders. Now I don't want want to do it because I feel like I'd be jocking their style. Still cute.

Yeehaw!!

And in the crush of the dark...

I could not, for the life of me, get this song out of my head at work today. Minor flashbacks of pole dancing on Halsted. Ow. I also blame Nikalas and Samantha for having the same exact music tastes. It came to my attention that I don't really listen to chick singers. I don't think it's on purpose. I guess I just relate to male front men more in the same way that Nik relates to Alanis Morisette. Haha. This one's for you, buddy.

Instruments: Ukulele / trumpet / my mouth / pill bottle filled with rice

Download:

Psychobabble all upon your lips

Currently listening to: Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People EP (2010) (just came out omg) (so good)

In conjunction with: The National - Boxer (2007)

You should maybe listen to: La Roux - s/t (2009)

A triumphant return

Me 12:45 am

i say fuck it, you only live once

12:45amChelsea

lol until you die

12:46amMe

hmm.. i guess i never really thought about that part of it

It's been a year since the initial conception of this project. Life has come full circle, but everything is still the same. That being said, music is and can no longer be just a form of escape- it must be the propeller of creative energy, a substantial reason to keep going, surviving, or else all this "figuring out" turns to a pile of bullshit.

After the JTIC meeting last night, Dietzler (who is a more badass version of me in 4 years... or the other way around) helped me to realize what I already knew. That time happens, that life happens, and we are responsible for our own complications. Is Conor Oberst right? Should we just take it easy, love nothing? Or is everything really everything, as Lauryn Hill says?

I made this mixtape thinking about solipsism, but it eventually transformed into something more hopeful. I guess some human beings can't help who they are or who they've become, but if life changes like the colors of the leaves, then I guess we have to believe we can, too.

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