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A New Mix In The Cloud

5:27p.m., Sun 30 May 2010

I uploaded a new mix to mixcloud.com yesterday. The notion for the mix came from the grunge podcast we recorded in October 2008, once again I prove I have the reflexes of a cougar.

The podcast had a grunge theme, but the aims we set for ourselves with the pod included a conscious decision to make unusual choices rather than play those songs that we'd both heard a hundred times before. So I set out to make a mix that told the story of grunge. That's how I started anyway - but I got halfway through and wondered why I was listening to songs I had no great passion for. So I chucked out the Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and chose more agreeable tunes - it's still limited to the heroes of 'grunge' (whatever that is)  even if a few big namesare missing. I think it makes a good companion piece to the podcast episode.

mixcloud.com/gareth53/grunge-is-a-dirty-word/

I could have gone further back in time and included something by The Thrown-Ups, Green River, Hüsker Dü or Flipper, but, for me, Mudhoney, and the 'Superfuzz Bigmuff' album in particular, were the starting point for the genre.

The mix kicks off with a clip of Peter Fonda's famous courtroom speech from the Roger Corman directed 'The Wild Angels'. It's a speech that was most famously sampled by Primal Scream on the Screamadelica LP: 'We wanna be free to do what we wanna do... and we wanna get loaded', but it was sampled by Mudhoney before that, on the 2nd side of 'Superfuzz Bigmuff'.

There's clips from two more films: Portland-resident Gus van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and Terry Gilliam's "Fisher King" (1991) both films belong to the same era and with thematic links to the music that was coming out of the Pacific Northwest (and ebyond) in the late eightes/early nineties

John Peel features - I always link Babes In Toyland with John Peel, such was his enthusiasm for the band - with a clip from his Festive 50 rundown in 1990.

There's an advertising jingle for the young women's deodourant 'Teen Spirit' which provided the inspiration for the title of Nirvana's anthem. There's a clip of Kurt Cobain from the band's appearance on Channel 4's "The Word" as he introduces a chaotic performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

I really enjoy pootling around on mixcloud and doing the podcast, and I have a bucket-ful of ideas for both, but they're incredibly time-consuming. The effort that's required in producing them, coupled with my laziness and other demands on my time mean that most of these ideas will probably never come to fruition.

If you listen to the grunge mix, I hope you like it. Let me know if you do. Ta.

Tracklist

  1. Mudhoney - Touch Me I'm Sick
  2. Love Battery - Between The Eyes
  3. Tad - Jack Pepsi
  4. Babes In Toyland - House
  5. Hole - Teenage Whore
  6. Nirvana - Sliver
  7. L7 - Shove
  8. Dinosaur Jr. - Just Like Heaven
  9. Screaming Trees – What Goes On
  10. Smashing Pumpkins - Siva


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