JCC Amph The JCC Mixtape, Part III - Now Complete! (I think)

I've only heard a few of these so this will be a wide open list!

 

I just want to point out that there are 12 tracks on the voting list, but the YouTube link only gives me 10 tracks (Sarah McLachlan and Cowboy Junkies tracks are missing).

 

Aw, what the heck, why not!

 

This is a fantastic playlist, but I’m going to have to auto-vote for It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken. An absolutely fantastic, touching version of my favourite song. I can’t not vote for it.

 

A working version of Building a Mystery should be up, now.

Until I can find another License to Kill on the YouTubes, here's a spotify link

 

Here's a link to what I believe is the right Cowboy Junkies track:

 

And that video is unavailable to me. But it looked like a cover of Bob Dylan's "License to Kill" from Early 21st Century Blues, so that would be it.

 

Anecdote time.
Since songs by female vocalists were the winners in my last playlists, I thought I’d go all in on female vocalists this time around. I considered calling it “All Chicks, few *****” but I changed my mind while watching “The Cage.”

Anne Murray – “Song for the Mira”

Anne Murray was pretty inescapable growing up in Nova Scotia. And “Song for the Mira” is a lovely little song about a river up in Cape Breton. Though if we’re being honest Marion Bridge ain’t that great of a town, or a bridge, really, since that snowplow incident in the early 80s.

Sheryl Crow – “All I Wanna Do”

I remember driving around with my mum when she had Tuesday Night Music Club on cassette. I loved singing along with “All I Wanna Do” and then decades later realizing what the song is really about as I’m sitting in a bar surrounded by drinking buddies and not real friends. But I did love driving around with my mum. She’s a good mother. Speaking of…

Jann Arden – “Good Mother”

I think Living Under June was one of the first CDs purchased by someone in my household. It had some of Jann’s best songs: “Insensitive” “Could I Be Your Girl?” “Unloved” And it had “Good Mother” which I dedicate to my mother, who is good.

Melanie Doane – “Goliath”

I loved this song, and the album Adam’s Rib. I rocked it hard from 98-00, and again last year.

The Be Good Tanyas – “Light Enough to Travel”

Originally written by Vancouver accordionist Geoff Berner, this song was included on a CD a former friend made for me before my great American road trip of 2010.

Serena Ryder – “Brand New Love”

I really love Serena Ryder, and I love this tune she wrote in a bathtub in France.

Cowboy Junkies – “License to Kill”

Early 21st Century Blues is a great album of mostly covers. This is the opening track and this is one of those Dylan songs (like “Changing of the Guards”) where hearing someone else do it allowed me to appreciate it more (though that 84 Letterman performance by Dylan of this song with The Plugz was freaking fantastic, and when YouTube became an option for the playlists I almost made a “Live on Letterman” list just to put that version out there). Margo Timmins has a fantastic voice which elevates the material the Junkies do, whether their own, or covers.

Sarah McLachlan – “Building a Mystery”

She isn’t just about sad songs for pet adoption. I just find this song lyrically evocative. And blackmyron had Neko Case’s “Hold On, Hold On” on his list and I needed another song.

Tracy Chapman – “Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution”

The problem is capitalism.

Phoebe Bridgers – “Motion Sickness”

Ryan Adams is a real ****: the song. This is the song that introduced me to Phoebe Bridgers. After a few weeks of her staring at me intensely from the video still I finally clicked “play” and a new world opened up for me. She’s just the bee’s knees.

Ria Mae – “Clothes Off”

I wanted something a little more upbeat for the playlist, and this is a banging tune, in every sense of the term.

The Tragically Hip with their dear friend Leslie Feist – “It’s A Good Life if You Don’t Weaken”

Somehow I’d fit the Hip onto this list. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Juno Awards, Canada’s Grammys (named after the beach Canadian forces landed at on D-Day, because nothing says Canadian Music like a beach in Normandy where James Doohan lost a finger). The Hip received the Humanitarian Award and gave a rare, rare performance. Maybe their first since the passing of Gord Downie. Of course they were lacking a vocalist so they thought of only one person, Feist. And so, one night last year, for a brief 4 and a half minutes The Tragically Hip (with Feist) took to one of the most storied stages in Canada to rock it. My girlfriend and I watched it. Then we watched it again. I went out for a puff the next evening and when I came back in my girlfriend was crying on the couch. “I watched it again” she said over the closing notes. Pym and I had been taking about the Hip and I was able to share this performance with him (yay playlist friends!)? The other week I was driving home late at night and I heard this song on CBC radio. It gave me chills, even after listening to it hundreds of times.
Before YouTube was an option, I had Feist's "Mushaboom" on my spotify playlist and the story was going to be "most people, even those in Nova Scotia, don't realize Mushaboom is a place. It sucks and everyone is related to each other. Roll Tide."

 

I was hoping that Clothes Off song was a cover of

 

Another playlist, another Hip song that only Duck and I voted for after including it ourselves. Woe.

 

We're refined gentlemen of taste in a world that's not ready for us.

That said I thought "Clothes Off" was going to be more popular that it has turned out to be.

 

Hey, I said my list would sound old.

They're not just random songs that I like, there's a theme, and I'm wondering if anyone can guess what they all have in common...?

 

They're all videos on YouTube



What do I win?

 

All that and a bag of chips.

You'll have to come to my place for the chips.

 

My guess is that they're all songs in heavy rotation at the USAF.

 

Letsee here...guess I'll bookmark all these, and listen to them while I'm at work.

Oh man, that's a lot of them.