Click Here for the January 2018 Spotify Playlist

For the inaugural edition of Andy Berens’s Blue Note Mixtape Club, members were asked to introduce ourselves with a sampling of what we like. I could probably put together a 50-track playlist that meets that criteria, but since we’re limited to about 75 minutes, I decided to stick with what I’m listening to now. Some of it is old, some is new. Some I’ve been enjoying for more than two decades, some I just discovered in the last few months. The following is a deeper dive on each track:

Track 1 – “Big Mama” – Left Lane Cruiser
Today, Left Lane Cruiser is one of my very favorite bands, but when I showed up to the High Noon Saloon on a random Thursday in July 2011, I had no idea who they were. I made my way to Madison’s best live music venue that night to see my buddy Steve play with The Midwestern Charm and catch up with some other old friends, and pretty much the last thing I was expecting was to have my musical ass kicked by two guys from Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

I was several drinks deep when LLC took the stage to close the show, and as soon as Freddy J. touched slide to guitar neck I was transfixed. I don’t remember much of their set, to be honest, but “Big Mama” was one song that stuck out as a real rock and roller. Somehow, I put the pieces together the next day and found the band’s first album Gettin’ Down On It, and the rest is history. I’ve seen the band live at a handful of shows since, both in Madison and most recently in Portland (at a club whose upstairs definitely has some questionably savory adventures taking place within) and most times have been the lone fool stomp-dancing super hard while trying not to spill any beer.

Like many American blues bands, they attract far bigger crowds in Europe than in the U.S., and they mostly stay east of the Rockies, but if you ever have the opportunity to see Left Lane Cruiser in concert, you will not be disappointed if you show up (especially if you’re also trying to have a couple of drinks).

Track 2 – “Fire on the Bayou” – The Meters
I’m a real snob, so I haven’t listened to the radio in many years. I’m also super clumsy and prone to dropping things, so I have a really thick protective case around my phone. Here’s why this information is relevant to The Meters:

My phone case is designed such that I cannot actually plug my phone into the speaker cable in my car to feed the music through the stereo without disassembling the case components. (I’ve dropped my phone a whole bunch of times and it’s still intact, so small price to pay I guess.) The result until just a few months ago was that I drove mostly in silence, because I’d literally prefer silence to hearing a song that sucks. Like I said, snob.

One night, though, I was slowly progressing my way through the long line of cars in the Arrivals area at PDX and flipped through the various Portland radio stations to see if there happened to be anything appealing on the air. It was then that I found 89.1 FM, KMHD – Portland’s Jazz Radio.

A partnership between Oregon Public Broadcasting and Mt. Hood Community College, KMHD is a non-profit public radio station that plays a variety excellent music under the wide “jazz” umbrella. I’ll listen to Taking Off as I drive to the gym and Hard Choices if I’m running errands on a Saturday afternoon, but my favorite show by far is Friday Flashback. From 6-8 p.m. pacific time on Friday nights, KMHD plays rare soul, funk and R&B tracks that are pretty much 100 percent awesome and almost always new to my ears. “Fire on the Bayou” was one of the more memorable songs from a recent edition of the program, and it’s very representative of the sort of groovy stuff you’ll hear on Friday Flashback.

Track 3 – “Whole Lotta Rosie” – AC/DC
Growing up in Green Bay, AC/DC was a ubiquitous presence at pretty much anything involving athletics. “You Shook Me All Night Long” could frequently be heard over the loudspeakers of Lambeau Field during Packers games. “Thunderstruck” was a fixture during breaks in the action when the Gamblers were playing. “Back in Black” was part of the gym-class soundtrack throughout my school years.

All this is to say that the bulk of my AC/DC exposure during my younger years was pretty limited to the Brian Johnson-era stuff. It took moving to Portland and several games on the AC/DC pinball machine before I discovered the slightly less frequently played songs from the band’s earlier albums (I strongly, strongly hesitate to call them deep or even deeper cuts), when they were fronted by Bon Scott. It didn’t take long for Let There Be Rock to make its way into my regular rotation, and this is one of the strongest closing tracks I can think of. The best version is their live performance in Paris, which you can watch here.

Track 4 – “Buccaneers of Hispaniola” – The Darkness
It’s only appropriate that I follow AC/DC with the band I consider its modern-day successor. Most people remember The Darkness as a one-hit wonder from the early millennium when “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” became a radio smash and extremely challenging karaoke favorite my freshman year of college. In truth, the entire Permission to Land record is an incredible callback to the sort of rock and roll that’s pretty tough to find on modern Top 40 stations today, and remains one of my most frequently played albums.

For this playlist, I chose a song from the band’s latest album (in support of which The Darkness will be touring the U.S. this spring; I bought my ticket to the Portland show months ago) which, despite the fourteen-year gap between first and last records, still brings the noise in the most enjoyable possible way. It’s pretty much impossible to listen to the chorus’s guitar riff without having your energy increased by at least 25 percent. I can’t wait to hear it live.

Track 5 – “Knock Knock” – The Hives
I didn’t really care for a lot of the early-2000s garage-rock-revival stuff that made it to the radio, and was too securely locked in my bubble of emo to look much harder at the time, but I do really love The Hives. Veni Vidi Vicious still holds up in a big way nearly 20 years later, and it’s still part of my regular rotation.

Track 6 – “G2G” – RX Bandits
If someone wanted to be really reductive and strictly ask about my one “favorite band of all time,” RX Bandits would be among the few I’d consider naming. I’ve written a lot here about how I love when bands retain their rock and roll sound, so it’s ironic that one of my very favorites has also evolved the most from beginning to present.

Its initial incarnation in the 1990s was one of many Southern California-based third-wave ska bands, and the group retained its reggae influence well into the new century. Starting with 2001’s Progress, RX Bandits began incorporating more prog rock elements into its records, but it was The Resignation, released in 2003, that really hooked me. Combining punk, reggae, prog, ska and some world influences, along with the sort of sledgehammer-of-social-consciousness lyrics that appealed to a less nuanced 19-year-old, The Resignation stayed in the CD player of my parents’ Toyota Corolla the entire summer of 2004 and I couldn’t wait to get back to Madison that fall to annoyingly spread the gospel.

RXB’s next album (…And the Battle Begun, 2006) was no less remarkable, and I’m sure the people who spent time with me in the succeeding two years probably got sick of hearing it. Not me, though.

Anyway, fast forward to present day. RX Bandits doesn’t really tour much anymore, though I’ve been fortunate to see them twice since moving to Portland. Their most recent album, Gemini, Her Majesty (2014), would be unrecognizable to fans of RX Bandits’s first few records. It still has that flavor of early Police that much of the band’s catalogue has leaned on, but it’s spacey tones and many sonic layers make it best listened to through headphones.

I’m still not sure if I’ve seen RX Bandits in concert for the last time, but if they come anywhere near where I live, I’ll always pay to get in.

Track 7 – “Chan Chan” – Buena Vista Social Club
I love latin jazz of all persuasions. Not really much else to write here. Check out the Buena Vista Social Club documentary, and watch PBS’s miniseries Latin Music U.S.A. for even more.

Track 8 – “Diamonds & Wood” – UGK
I would be remiss if I didn’t include any Houston rap in a lineup of music I listen to now, which the me of even just ten years ago would be sort of shocked to read. It took me quite awhile to get into hip-hop, despite growing up in what many consider to be the genre’s Golden Age. As a conflict-averse teenager growing up in Green Bay, I had a really hard time getting past the harder elements of some of rap royalty’s lyricism, so I didn’t (and still don’t) listen to much 2Pac, Biggie, Snoop, Dre. and the other giants of the sort of ’90s hip-hop that made it to regular rotation on MTV. It took the introduction of what I’ll call the second-tier of hip-hop artists to get me interested, but I’ll talk more about that with the next track.

In the years since, I’ve fleshed out my collection with artists like A Tribe Called Quest, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Cypress Hill and the former Mos Def. Most recently, though, I’ve been listening to a lot more rap from the Third Coast, including but not limited to Paul Wall, Fat Pat, Chamillionaire, Geto Boys and many, many DJ Screw mixtapes (the most legendary of which can be found here). Something about that slowed-down vibe unsurprisingly appeals to me now that I’m into my 30s.

For many enthusiasts of the genre, UGK’s Ridin’ Dirty (1996) is the quintessential Houston rap record, and I won’t disagree. I don’t know anything about candy paint or cups of lean, but it gets my head nodding. RIP Pimp C.

Track 9 – “Big Shots” – Eyedea & Abilities
OK so just a minute ago I talked about how the “second-tier” of hip-hop artists really turned me on to the genre. I’m talking here about Jurassic 5, Atmosphere, Aesop Rock (who currently lives in my old Portland neighborhood, which is a fun twist), Del and the sort of hip-hop that skater kids listened to. I can’t say it was “underground,” since a lot of those records had major-label backing in one way or another (though I’m sure that’s what I called it at age 15), but it wasn’t anything I was going to hear on Green Bay’s hip-hop station in 2002.

Among this group of artists, Eyedea & Abilities occupy the biggest place in my heart. Maybe because their first two records remind me of my first two years of college before I had to really start thinking about being an adult. Maybe it’s because the virtuosically talented Eyedea died in 2010 (at age twenty-damn-eight) and his output is resultantly pretty limited and I like to think about what might have otherwise come next. Maybe it’s just because DJ Abilities remains my favorite DJ of any genre.

I don’t know, man, but “Big Shots” is a banger.

Track 10 – “Honest Man” – Fat Night
Much of this list is made up of music I’ve been listening to for many years, and most of the rest is either older music that’s new to me or new music by a longtime-favorite artist. Only this and one other song in the January 2018 edition are both new to me and were produced in 2017. That’s a lot of the reason I’ve joined up with the Blue Note – to be exposed to music that’s both new to me and actually new, since I don’t really do a good job of digging this stuff up on my own.

In fact, I first heard the soothing grooves of Fat Night during a jiu-jitsu class, of all places. One of the reasons I loved training at 10th Planet Portland was the relaxed vibe that my former coach Sam brought to the sessions. Where one might expect to hear some sort of nü metal or, like, really aggressive electronica, Sam most often played classic reggae or something vaguely adjacent during his classes, keeping the mood light while we learned how to break each other’s arms most effectively.

When “Sun Go Down” kicked on during warm-ups, I had to find out who the band was. I subsequently went home and bought two of their records and the single included in this playlist. I’ve never heard a singer sound so much like Daryl Hall, while the other lead-man’s voice could easily be confused for Raphael Saadiq’s. This one will get in your head, ladies and gentlemen, so be careful.

Track 11 – “Spaceship Coupe” – Justin Timberlake
Without a doubt, my favorite musical surprise of my adult life was when I first heard Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience. I’ll cut right to the chase and tell you that I think this is the best pop record released since 2000, and I really want to go back to that year and watch my Timberlake-hating 16-year-old self have an existential crisis when I tell him so. Only two (two!) of the record’s 10 tracks clock in under six (six!!!) minutes, which is frankly unbelievable for a major-label release from perhaps the most famous singer of his generation, and there really isn’t a bad song in the bunch.

Nearly five years after its release, 20/20 remains one of my most played albums, with the three-song stretch from “Tunnel Vision” to “That Girl” being particularly popular with my eardrums. The song sandwiched between those two is the one I’ve selected for this list, and you can count me among the millions that are very excited for JT’s forthcoming record.

Track 12 – “Stand By Me” – Otis Redding
My dad raised me on oldies radio, so I really have him to thank for my enduring love of soul and R&B. Even still, Otis Redding’s outstanding voice evaded me until the very end of high school (other than “The Dock of the Bay”) when fellow burgeoning soul-head Jake McDonald urged me to at least pick up his greatest hits record.

I love Freddie Mercury and Aretha Franklin for their power, and for pureness of vocal sound it’s tough to beat Andy Sturmer (who you’ll learn about next), but Otis Redding’s voice is something in its own category. He died when he was only 26 when his plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison – a lake my apartment overlooked for the last several years I lived in the city.

There are a lot of tunes I could have chosen from Otis’s fairly limited discography, and I just love this cover of “Stand By Me” off of his debut studio album. This song is good enough when sung by Ben E. King in its most popular recording, but it’s magic when Otis Redding is on the microphone.

Track 13 – “Russian Hill” – Jellyfish
Jellyfish is another band whose abbreviated output has left me wanting more since I first heard this band my sophomore year of college. Their masterful layering of vocal harmonies rivals anything done by Queen or The Beach Boys and lead singer Andy Sturmer’s strength and accuracy is particularly impressive when one considers that all of the band’s music was recorded before pitch-correction was a thing.

A lot of songs evoke very specific memories for people. This one brings to mind the many nighttime walks home from the offices of The Daily Cardinal, where I spent probably 50 hours a week during that second year at UW-Madison. Walking with my jacket zipped up all the way, iPod headphones threaded up through the bottom and then the collar of my t-shirt, cigarette glowing between my fingers, I’d pass on a nightly basis the same strip of buildings that have since been torn down and rebuilt on the way back to my Johnson Street apartment to write a paper or not do some reading.

I think it’s the most responsible I’ve ever been.

Track 14 – “Cure for Pain (Live)” – Morphine
Speaking of The Daily Cardinal, it’s where I met Blue Note Progenitor Andy Berens when his then-girlfriend brought him in to be one of my writers. From there, a friendship was created and remains intact more than a decade later. If you’ve made it this far, you can sarcastically thank him for including me in this group.

For sometime between six months and two years (it’s a hazy timeline, folks), Andy worked at an awesome chili spot on the corner of State and Gilman. Many a winter night you could find me bundled up walking in that direction to eat some Real Chili and visit my buddy. It was during one of these visits when Andy introduced me to Morphine (the band).

Two-string slide bass, baritone sax and drums? Sold.

More than any other band, Morphine makes me think of Andy, and I still listen to them on a regular basis (especially their live record from which this selection originates), so they had to be on this list.

Track 15 – “Keeper of Atlantis” – Pujol
Without a doubt my favorite band of the last few years, Daniel Pujol and his rotating pack of musical mercenaries produce thoughtful, catchy rock and roll songs that have yet to get old despite dozens and dozens of plays. The band’s earliest recordings are the lowest of fi, which can get a little in the way of the songwriting excellence you’ll hear, but Pujol fully realized its sound starting with 2012’s United States of Being.

Kludge (2014) has my highest recommendations and is absolutely worth playing start-to-finish on its own. In a very cynical time, I love hearing such assertively positive lyricism from a Nashville punk-rock band. The song I’ve chosen for this list is among the best examples, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time Pujol is included here.

If you need a quick pick-me-up in the middle of the day, give Pujol’s WKNC mini-set a watch.

Track 16 – “Eat Shit” – Remo Drive
This Minneapolis three-piece reminds me of all the bands my friends were in during high school. They were a random discovery via YouTube’s side-panel recommendations. After watching the goofy video for “Yer Killing Me,” I took in their amazing Audiotree performance and immediately bought their first full-length, Greatest Hits (2017).

Here’s the most Old Man thing you’re gonna see me write: I’m really happy that there’s still some new rock and roll music being created by early-twentysomethings today. I’m so fuckin’ out of touch when it comes to what’s even out there, so that sentiment is probably due more to ignorance than anything else, but I don’t really see a lot of bands like Remo Drive getting famous in 2018. And yet here they are, knowing all of this, still making a record that sounds like The Get-Up Kids, Saves the Day and Pinkerton-era Weezer. There’s something very encouraging to me about that, and I’ll be the old dude rocking my socks off on March 17th when they come through Portland.

Track 17 – “Under the Storm Clouds” – Tenement
Boy was I lucky to be a teenager in Green Bay at the same time that the Concert Café/Rock ‘N Roll High School was putting on all-ages shows for less than $10 like three or four times a week (thanks, Time Bomb Tom!), and I’d like to think the spirit of those hallowed grounds lives on in the bands plying their trade in Northeast Wisconsin today.

I first saw Tenement in February 2016 at a small show at what used to be an F.O.E. lodge, but soon learned that they’d already gotten quite a bit of national attention (and rightfully so) for their 2015 double-album Predatory Highlights. Because I caught the band at the tail-end of what I’ll charitably call a long weekend in Green Bay, I didn’t quite appreciate what I heard. After listening to about six songs from that critically praised record, however, I understood why this band from Appleton was generating the acclaim it was. It’s was the most recent album that really got my attention, and therefore provides a fitting closer to this compilation of what I’m listening to right now.

Bonus Track – “Caching Cheques” – Me vs. Hero
This song doesn’t really fit in a good spot on this playlist, so I’m stashing it on the end as more of an epilogue. I still like pop-punk provided a.) the band has a really great drummer and b.) the singer doesn’t have that stupid pop-punk voice that Blink-182 and A New Found Glory made popular. Me Vs. Hero, during their brief run, met those criteria like a mofo. I never got to see them live, since they’re from England and didn’t tour in the U.S., and maybe that’s a good thing given what can often be a significant disparity in this genre between what you hear on the record and what you hear at a show.

I mostly chose this song, though, because of the breakdown that starts just after the two-minute mark. Lots of fun.