Link → Lessons on Saving the World
I’ll try to get some album art up later this week, but in the meantime, here’s my mix. The following liner notes are contained in the zip file.
Lessons on Saving the World
Hello, my name is Justin McDowell, and I decided to interpret this mix theme as a zombie movie soundtrack. (For this mixer, the theme I contributed was Sequel to a Soundtrack; I guess I’m a little obsessed with movie music or something.)
1) Elton John—“Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”—This song would play during the opening credits. It’s a little taste of the excitement to come, but a little bit of old-skool fun, too.
2) Lou Reed—“Perfect Day”—Here’s a good song to play to introduce our first two main characters. It’s ironically peaceful considering the gorefest to come.
3) Against Me!—“Y’all Don’t Wanna Step To Dis”—Here’s where we meet the first taste of zombies. The song is a bit erratic and surprising, so it’ll confuse our protagonists some good. This song was from a stellar EP before Against Me! started sucking and playing arena rock.
4) Johnny Cash—“Folsom Prison Blues (live at Folsom Prison)”—This song introduces the Han Solo of the bunch, if you will. He’s the rugged type, and he’ll give our naïve couple a lesson or two about shedding some blood. After all, he was in prison for killing a man. See, dangerous! He managed to escape after all the guards turned into zombies and no longer cared about keeping prisoners locked up, but were more interested in eating them. When they tried to eat this guy, he killed them with a broom. See, deadly!
5) The Clash—“White Riot”—All three of our heroes have met up and are now having a good ol’fashioned zuvembie beat-down.
6) Queen—“Don’t Stop Me Now”—This one was, admittedly, stolen outright from the soundtrack to Shaun of the Dead, but it’s a great song, for one, and the trio needs to have a li’l fun with their zombie slaughter. It’s pretty easy to kill a man once you have the right attitude. *Shifts eyes nervously.*
7) Bag Raiders—“The Punch (Reprise)”—Okay, so the area has been contained and quarantined, and now the three can have some rest at last. Time to build a stronghold, and develop relationships.
8) Múm—“The Ghosts You Draw On My Back”—And now it’s time to fuck. All the relationship-building has gotten my hormones in a twist. Here’s a sweet and tender song, suitable for Hollywood fornication. Note: Our badass cowboy doesn’t require fulfillment of such base desires. Also, this is one of my favorite Múm songs.
9) The Riverboat Gamblers—“What’s What”—Oh noes! Zombies have come to crash the party, just when they were basking in their post-coital bliss. Time for another game of Brain Stabby.
10) My Chemical Romance—“Hange ‘Em High”—Here’s a great violent, western-hinted punk song that fits pretty good here.
11) Pelican—“March to the Sea”—Here’s the song that everybody is going to skip over whenever they listen to this mix. It’s a 10-minute instrumental post-metal song, but it’s pretty neat. This is where the story gets particularly grim and our violent anti-hero gets consumed by the hordes, leaving our weaker, but more relatable lovers vulnerable. So they really have to work together and in ever-more inventive ways to surmount the odds.
12) Röyksopp—“Dead to the World”—And they did it! But at what price? Let’s walk off into the sunset and contemplate how we’re going to rebuild our shattered world. My guess is that it’s going to involve more fucking. As they round the bend and disappear off screen, a zombiefied version of our anti-hero saunters by!
13) Bobby Conn—“Never Get Ahead”—Which brings us to the end credits. If you know anything about Zombie movies, it’s that they’re about two things: 1) ultra-violence, and 2) thinly-veiled commentary on current economic and political culture. So what Bobby Conn is singing about is you’ll never get ahead by giving in to the man; likewise, for the zombies, they’ll never get a head by giving in to the man.
