Artist	Song
talking heads	"uh-oh, love comes to town"
patti smith	"redondo beach"
the pretenders	"precious"
the smiths	"hand in glove"
television	"venus"
richard hell & the voidoids	"love comes in spurts"
buzzcocks	"love you more"
the replacements	"androgynous"
the white stripes	"hypnotize"
the ramones	"i wanna be your boyfriend"
john lennon	"isolation"
joy division	"no love lost"
johnny thunders	"you can't put your arms round a memory"
new york dolls	"human being"

Comment:

well here we go again -- the fifth volume of this particular series finds me indulging in yet another genre excursion: namely proto-punk, punk & post-punk, & its direct offshoots & influences. it does not contain all or even much of what is essential to punk, in my eyes, & that's okay: when compiling a genre mix, i will always choose flow & cohesion over comprehensiveness & reach any day of the week. what this lacks in scope, it makes up for with a consistent line-up; this is meant to play as a tight & structured blast of what i consider to be some prime punk (& punk-inspired & inspired-punk). not to mention, it would be pretty impossible to create a perfect single-disc collection of everything essential in punk anyways, so the rhetorical exercise would be fruitless at any rate.

a couple tracks appear as rather out-of-place, particularly the john lennon track -- but let me ask you a question: how many reviews, dissections or articles about the john lennon/plastic ono band album have you read that don't blatantly state or at least strictly allude to its precursor to punk? ("Lennon attacks and denies idols and icons, including his own former band, to hit a pure, raw core of confession that feels like reality, however agonizing, and, in its echo-drenched, garage-rock crudity, is years ahead of punk." -- Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of Rock & Roll) not only is it aesthetically fitting, but sonically it fits comfortably right between the ramones & joy division tracks.

everything else is rather self-explanatory -- however i must admit my fondness for the opening two reggae-influenced tracks & the closing johnny thunders-into-new york dolls sequence. this took me so long to complete mainly because there was a wealth of material to wade through, & in the end i felt a concise blast of what gelled together best was far more enjoyable than a rambling, overlong mix of thirty-five two-minute punk songs.

so, until next time...enjoy!

p.s. december will be lacking a get fresh flow addition, as i'll be laboring away at christmas mixes for everybody. oh how i love the holidays...

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