WARMER MIXTAPES #169 | by James Brooks [Default Genders] and Josh Clancy of Elite Gymnastics
SIDE A | by Josh Clancy
1. Alanis Morissette | All I Really Want
I remember when I was five or six years old I'd get up in the morning with my mom. She was a single parent and we were living in Brooklyn center Minnesota at the time. We'd wake up and hop in her really used red geo prism. It may have been her car from high school still... She was a really young mom. She was also a full time student that worked a full time job on top of raising me. I'd have to go to daycare and I always remembered her putting in tapes of female singer/songwriters on our way to drop me off. She loved Alanis Morissette and I can sing every word of this song with her. It's awesome though because I could tell my mom saw a lot of herself in this chick and that made a big impact on me.
2. New Kids On The Block | Step By Step
So like I said I went to daycare and it was just one of those daycares ran out of someone's house in the suburbs. There weren't a lot of kids at the daycare I connected with except for the teenage daughter of the lady that ran it. I remember we'd hang out in her room with her older friends. I felt so cool...The door would be closed and they'd be listening to this on repeat. I remember her New Kids posters on the walls...She was so subscribed to this group. We would all yell out the STEPS towards the end of the song and I would always shout the UGH part.
3. Nine Inch Nails | Down In It
When I was eight or nine we lived with my grandma. We moved out of our apartment because chances are my mom was having trouble paying for it. Not totally for sure but that's usually why you move back in with your parents right? My grandma was divorced as well and she rented out part of her house to this really cool guy named Gary. Gary was just a guy that worked at the metrodome (sports stadium in Minneapolis). Anyway he had a son named Jerry that would sometimes come over. Jerry must have been like 14 or 15 but we'd always hang out. I remember Jerry having a weird taste in music. He would always rock this NIN song and it's stuck with me ever since. I just recently rediscovered it and have been playing it in most of my dj sets. It's too good. The drums, the pop appeal, the lyrics. The drums though...Yeah.
4. Michael Jackson | Will You Be There
Free Willy was one of my favorite movies growing up (aside from ET). I really connected with the bro in the movie for some reason. The artwork for the movie was so dope...The whale jumping over the kid. My mom knew I loved the movie so she bought me a walkman and the soundtrack. I would listen to this song on repeat and run around outside singing to it at the top of my lungs. This song is so hopeful and genuine. The strings, the piano, the claps, the choir. Michael...Carry me like you were my brother. Love me like a mother. Could you be there?
5. Lion King | Just Can't Wait To Be King
My mom and I later moved out to the suburbs after she got a pretty nice job as a chemical dependency councilor. We could afford a place again and I think she wanted to take me out of the cities as I was getting older. I think she feared I would get mixed up in the wrong crowd. So we lived in these apartments for two years or so where I would meet my then best friend, Kenny. Kenny and I met on the bus on our way to school and I just remember us both being into all the same things. It was my first taste of meeting someone that was on the same wave as me. My mom and Kenny's mom were in similar situations with relationships, money, etc so we all instantly bonded. Kenny had a brother named Ben and all three of us on Friday nights would watch The Lion King and jump around singing this song. I remember Kenny and Ben's socks being really oversized and so whenever they would jump off the couch their socks would fly all over the place. I liked this song because of the dialogue between the bird and the lion. Like...you can't be a king Simba but Simba knows he can be. It's a really thought out song but it's also really catchy.
6. The Jesus And Mary Chain | Happy Place
So after living in Buffalo a while my mom met her husband and my new dad to date. We moved even further out of cities to a place called Dassel-Cokato where I would spend the rest of my teenage years. D-C had a population of only a thousand people but I didn't notice the difference when we moved. I was really into the radio at this point and I remember tuning into college radio stations a lot. This song I heard once and never forgot. We didn't really have the internet then so you couldn't just go search for it. I had to live with it in my head until two years later when we got 56k and I could download a 96kbps version. I still had that version up until like a year and a half ago. I really like the key of this song and I love the guitar.
7. Bright Eyes | It's Cool We Can Still Be Friends
So yeah because I lived in such a small town there was a big folk influence on me. It was a really small town and community. People didn't like rap music here...They were into Garth Brooks. I could never ever talk to anyone about music really other than my friend Joe. He had a really eclectic taste in music because he too had the internet. He turned me to Bright Eyes. I was hooked...The realness of Bright Eyes is undeniable. I was swept up in Oberst craze. The funny thing is James and I went to the same high school and both listened to Bright Eyes but he was an outcast so I never gave him the time of day. It wasn't until years later when we met at the club we were friends...I was like Did you got to D-C?...
8. Throbbing Gristle | Hot On The Heels Of Love
I started to get into electronic music without knowing it. I mean I was always into 90s shit like Snap, INXS, Crystal Waters, Inner City and stuff but the more time I spent on the computer the more I started to dig for music. It must have been a little after Y2k when I got into the early shit like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Gerogerigegege, Orchestral Maneuvers, and other weird similar shit. It was so different than anything I'd ever heard before because it was pure. I could tell music for these producers was more spiritual than anything else. I would burn this shit on a cd and go drive around the back roads of D-C making up my own lyrics on top of the sounds and singing to Hot On The Heels Of Love over and over. I didn't think anyone would understand it haha so I had to go drive alone.
9. UGK | International Players Anthem
So I kept up with radio a lot as I grew up. I mean radio to me is kind of worthless at this point but there is some beauty in top 40. This song no matter where you come from is an anthem. I remember getting drunk for the first time. I was at a house party in Philly and this song came on. Everyone at the house erupted in a dance fest sing along. It was heightened because I was blitzed but damn I will continue to play this out forever and ever. It's just so good. I remember James made his own t-shirt with permanent marker that said, Ask-ask Paul McCartney and no one got it. I did though...I knew exactly what he was talking about. We've been bros since.
10. Kanye West | I Wonder
Kanye's Graduation and 808s And Heartbreaks are really big albums for me still. We are watching Kanye grow for better or worse but Kanye's I wonder is a staple tune. The drums are so good in this track...I always go back to it. I BEEN WAITING ON THIS MY WHOLE LIFE. THESE DREAMS BE WAKING ME UP AT NIGHT...I know exactly what he's talking about.
+11. Girls | Hellhole Ratrace
I know this is 11 songs but this is the latest thing I've gotten into and I think it deserves a spot on my list. I hope I meet this guy someday. True moosic ♥
SIDE B | by James Brooks
1. Sarah McLachlan | Vox
Riding in a chevy suburban with every single seat filled to white rock beach. Hot dogs from the am/pm with anything I want on them, even if it is nothing. A cooler full of juice boxes and cans of Labatt's floating away on the tide because everyone's too drunk and content sitting by the illegal bonfire to notice the waves lapping up against it. Z95.3 on the radio playing this song.
3. The Notorious B.I.G. | Mo Money Mo Problems
Tasha, the cutest girl on my school bus, sitting next to me and asking if I am okay after being hassled by a bully. Her friend Serena immediately yelling you little slut! at her. Running through the cornfield behind my house with my best friend, a golden retriever named Bailey. Spice Girls posters on the inside of my locker. Defiant celebration in the face of violent death. Youth and sunshine forever.
4. Nine Inch Nails | Something I Can Never Have
Knew this kid with a super cool Nine Inch Nails HATE 1991 tour t-shirt. Was too shy to say anything to him about it, but one day he saw me fumbling with the cd case to my copy of Pretty Hate Machine and immediately produced the shirt from his backpack and gave it to me. He wouldn't take it back, he said I should have it. The next day he was withdrawn from school and placed in inpatient treatment after wrecking his house and threatening his family. Never saw him again.
5. Radiohead | Talk Show Host (Nellee Hooper Mix)
Woke up from a dream in the middle of biology class and realized that I could not go on with my life without talking to the pretty girl I passed by in the halls every day. My heart beating at 2000bpm I handed her a note with my phone number on it that said she was beautiful and that I wanted to know her. She had a dumb boyfriend but we became friends anyway and would drive around Las Vegas listening to music in her truck during lunch sometimes. I burned her CDs of every Radiohead album and every Radiohead b-side. She told me on myspace years later that she still listens to them.
6. Cat Power | Metal Heart
Once I was listening to this and there were tears in my eyes and my mom burst into the room and shouted THIS MUSIC SUCKS, JAMES. She must have heard it from the next room and started to get sad. She didn't understand why anyone would want to listen to music that made them sad and I guess I don't really understand it either but I have still listened to this song 1000 times and will probably listen to it 10000 more times before I die.
7. Whitehouse | Cut Hands Has The Solution
One of my best memories of being in love is jumping on a bed with my ex-girlfriend in the summer of 2006 screaming the lyrics to this song back and forth to prove that we had both memorized them. After the squealing the last YOU'RE DOING THE RIGHT THIIIIIIIIING together we collapsed on the bed laughing and hugged in a pool of sunlight under the window. I think she still has the Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel 12" I gave her as a birthday present.
8. Brian Eno | By This River
A sociopath with a crush on me played this song for me three times on the piano in the occupational therapy room of a psychiatric ward. Each time he would finish he would ask if I was in love with him yet, and when I said no he would start again. It was late and people were trying to sleep so security had to come remove him after the third time.
9. Joanna Newsom | Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road...There are some dragons who were built to have and hold...And some machines are dropped from great heights lovingly...And some great bellies ache with many bumblebees...That's just the best thing that I've ever heard in my life. I teared up the first time that I heard it and I probably cry every third or fourth time I listen to it. I love this song. I love this song like I love my deceased pets, I love this song like I love the teachers who did their best to single me out and make me feel special as a kid, I love this song like I love my favorite food that my mom makes every thanksgiving. I love this song. I cannot imagine my life without it.
10. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti | Round And Round
A few years after the chemistry class we were both in one semester in a small town in central Minnesota I ran into Josh at a friend's club night. I can always count on him to be at least half as goofy and teenage as I am about whatever new band or song I'm psyched on. When most people were like who the fuck is Ariel Pink? Josh called me up and said it was an absolute necessity that we spend the rest of daylight driving around Lake Calhoun with the windows down blasting Round And Round. Five of us piled into his car and passed weed around singing along with the chorus and yelling YOU'RE DOING GREAT! to everyone who was jogging along the walking path. It was an awesome day.
