Usable Mix

After listing the proposed contents of Useful Mix, I arranged 33 of the 35 songs (only YG and The Kinks didn’t make the cut, through no fault of theirs) onto two hour-long discs. Of those, disc one ended up with fairly coherent sequencing, while disc two ended up as a dump of leftover tracks meant to keep us (or perhaps just me) occupied during our drives around Albuquerque. So I present to you only disc the first, for download and streaming. It’s served me well, and I still dig it. In choosing a bright, crisp, subtly anxious song about flying to anchor disc one, I might have erred in choosing Jenny Lewis’, not Best Coast’s, but like I’ve said I never exactly intend these as soundtracks. Over-emphasizing a song called “My Life” might have given me funny ideas.


1. Springtime Carnivore, “Foxtrot Freak (Something in the Atmosphere)”
2. The Chambermaids, “China Blue”
3. Swervedriver, “For A Day Like Tomorrow”
4. DJ Rashad, “Show U How”
5. Jessica Lea Mayfield, “Standing in the Sun”
6. Scrawl, “Hymn”
7. Bedhead, “Half-Thought”
8. Azealia Banks, “Soda”
9. Gang Starr, “As I Read My S-A”
10. Jenny Lewis, “Aloha & The Three Johns”
11. Girlpool, “Chinatown”
12. Clarence Carter, “I Can’t Leave Your Love Alone”
13. ILoveMakonnen, “trUe thang”
14. Supergrass, “Low C”
15. Young Guv, “Kelly, I’m Not A Creep”
16. Dawn Richard, “Phoenix”
17. Alvvays, “Next of Kin”


As for our vacation: Albuquerque is still a beautiful place. We noted small changes (R.I.P. Blackbird), no major ones (they don’t build new sports stadiums every year and new luxury high-rises every minute, there). But I suppose it’s only a matter of time. If you compare this picture I took to the image I used for the mix’s cover, you’ll notice a new apartment building over on the right, on Montclaire, at the former site of an AIDS resource center. Its four stories dwarf everything else in the neighborhood.