Artist	Song
The Rolling Stones	This Place Is Empty
Mark Lanegan	House A Home
Tom Waits	House Where Nobody Lives
Pulp	TV Movie
Lou Reed	Ecstasy
Warren Zevon	She's Too Good For Me
Lucinda Williams	Are You Alright?
Mary Prankster	Arm's Length
Cat Power	She's Got You
Aimee Mann	You're With Stupid Now
The Jacks	Why Don't You Write Me?
Randy Newman	I Miss You
Beck	Guess I'm Doing Fine
The Zombies	Gotta Get A Hold Of Myself
Frank Sinatra	Saturday Night Is The Loneliest Night Of The Week
The Brian Setzer Orchestra	Since I Don't Have You
Jean Shepherd	The Low-Down White
Jerry Lee Lewis Feat. Keith Richards	That Kind Of Fool
Merle Haggard	Loneliness Is Eating Me Alive
Johnny Cash	I Forgot to Remember to Forget
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers	The Damage You've Done (Country Version)
R.E.M.	Last Date
Michael Nesmith	Listen to the Band

Comment:

As the title and artwork suggest, this is my homage to Sinatra's classic 1955 album "In the Wee Small Hours." The original is one of Sinatra's early concept albums, designed to capture the feelings of loneliness and isolation as experienced through the "wee small hours" following a break-up (supposedly inspired by Sinatra's break-up with Ava Gardner).
My own version is naturally quite different from The Chairman's, but I hope it captures the same feeling. Tracks 1-5 invoke the feelings of isolation and emptiness, the musical equivalents of the post break-up home littered with beer cans, pizza boxes, and piles of dirty laundry. Tracks 6-14 process the myriad of conflicting emotions experienced during the night, from bitterness ("You're with Stupid Now") to delusion ("Guess I'm Doing Fine") to sincere care for the ex ("Are You Alright?") and everything in between. By tracks 15-23, the booze is kicking in and one is singing (or slurring) along to songs of self-pity (at best) or self-loathing (at worst). "The Damage You've Done" is a deliciously bitter (yet funny) final kiss-off, followed by the instrumental "Last Date," because at this point one should be too drunk to even try to sing. The final song (which has seen me through many a breakup) suggests that music is the real elixir to provide catharsis and healing - which I suppose is what this mix is all about.

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