Side A
Artist	Song
Patti Smith	Gloria: In Excelsis Deo / Gloria (Version) (1975) ("Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine / ...Thick heart of stone / my sins my own / They belong to me")
Roger McGuinn	The Ballad Of Easy Rider (from Easy Rider) (1968) ("The river flows / It flows to the sea / Wherever that river goes / That's where I want to be")
Iron Maiden	2 Minutes To Midnight (1985) ("The kil-ler's breed or the demon's seed / The glamour, the fortune, the pain / Go to war again, blood is freedom's stain / But don't you pray for our souls anymore!")
The Who	It's A Boy (1969) ("A son! A son! A son!")
Pink Floyd	The Thin Ice (1979) ("Momma loves her baby / and daddy loves you, too / And the sea may look warm to ya, babe / and the sky may look blue")
Blue Oyster Cult	The Marshall Plan (1980) ("I ain't playin' no surf music / I'm gonna play some heavy music! / I'm gonna play bad, I'm gonna play loud! / ...It's gonna sound like, it's gonna sound like...")
The Chambers Brothers	Time Has Come Today (1968) ("Might get burned up by the sun / But I'll have my fun!")
Paul Giovanni & Magnet	Gently Johnny (from The Wicker Man) (1973) ("I put my hand on her knee / She says to me do you want to see? / I put my hand on her breast / She says do you want a kiss?")
Ennio Morricone	Interrupted Melody II (instrumental) (from Exorcist II: The Heretic) (1977)
The Holy Modal Rounders	If You Want To Be A Bird (1968) ("Just glide there / Through the clear air / Making figure eights / through the pearly gates...")
Thin Lizzy	Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed (1976) ("Around the bay / they got some crazy DJ / Sen-d you right out to heaven")
The Cult	Be Free (1994) ("You gotta fly if you wanna survive / Don't eat shit if you wanna stay fit")
Anthrax	Fueled (1995) ("What's important is a mind that's sicker / Turning Jekyll into Hyde much quicker")
David Bowie	The Man Who Sold The World (1970) ("I thought you died alone, a long long time ago / 'Oh no, not me! / I never lost control'")
Cowboy Junkies	Me And The Devil Blues (from Pump Up The Volume) (1990) ("Early this morning, he knocked on my door / I said 'Hello Satan, I believe it's time to go'")
The Police	Man In A Suitcase (1980) ("Bird in a flying cage, you'll never get to know me well / The world's my oyster, a hotel room's a prison cell")
Green Day	Nice Guys Finish Last (1998) ("Every joke can have its truth, but now the joke's on you / I never knew you were such a funny guy")
Soundgarden	Overfloater (1996) ("I'm on the wire, over and higher / Over the pretense, over the spire / ...Alone")
Peter Hammill	The Comet, The Course, The Tail (1974) ("How can I tell that the road signed to Hell / doesn't lead up to Heaven? / And what can I say when, in some obscure way / I am my own direction?")
Rainbow	Still I'm Sad (instrumental) (1975)
Side B
Artist	Song	Buy
Jeff Beck	Greensleeves (instrumental) (1968)
Nirvana	You Know You're Right (1994) ("Things have never been so swell / and I have never failed to feel / Pain!")
John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band	Mother (1970) ("Children, don't do what I have done / I couldn't walk, and I tried to run")
Motorhead	Overnight Sensation (1996) ("You're just looking for someone / to take your spirit home / The bad boys sold your franchise / and stole your rock 'n' roll")
Alice In Chains (w / Tom Araya)	Iron Gland (1992) ("Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!")
Metallica	The House Jack Built (1996) ("The higher you are / the farther you fall / The longer the walk / the farther you crawl / My body my temple / this temple it tilts...")
Wayne Kramer	Junkie Romance (1995) ("An old time Rx croaker / The doctor? Yeah, he's in / A drugstore substitution / for the thing the priests call sin")
D Generation (w / Jesse Malin)	Guitar Mafia (1994) ("...Mom and dad don't mind / White House says it's fine / Porno to the blind / ...Rock 'n' roll has betrayed me / Jesus can't even find the truth")
Suede	The Living Dead (1994) ("Nothing here works but your works, and I mean it / I have to leave / But oh, what will you do alone...?")
Mott The Hoople	Through The Looking Glass (1974) ("Did I mean it...or did I lie? / Or did I dream it? / Oh Christ, I'm tired...")
Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers	Born To Lose (1977) ("Nothing to do / and nothing to say / Only one thing that I want / That's the only way")
Ten Years After	I'd Love To Change The World (1971) ("...But I don't know what to do / So I'll leave it up to you")
Ennio Morricone	Interrupted Melody I (instrumental) (from Exorcist II: The Heretic) (1977)
Richie Havens	High Flyin' Bird (1968) ("Then one day, my woman up and died... / She wanted to fly / and the only way to fly is die, die, die")
The Doors	The Unknown Soldier (1968) ("Unborn living, living dead / Bullet strikes the helmet's head / ...And it's all over / The war is over!")
Manic Street Preachers	Die In The Summertime (1994) ("A tiny animal curled into a quarter circle... / I have crawled so far sideways / I recognize dim traces of creation")
Marilyn Manson	Long Hard Road Out Of Hell (from Spawn) (1997) ("You never said forever could ever hurt like this / ...I'd sell my soul for anything, anything but you!")
Bad Company	Shooting Star (1975) ("...And all the world will love you / just as long, as long as you are")
Apocalyptica (w / Till Landemann)	Helden (Heroes) (2008) ("Niemand gibt uns eine Chance / Doch k÷nnen wir siegen / Fnr immer und immer!")
Antony & The Johnsons	Knockin' On Heaven's Door (from I'm Not There) (2007) ("Mama, wipe this blood from my face / I'm sick and tired of the war")
Howard Shore	Love Will Find Out The Way (from Spider) (2002) ("You may esteem him / a child for his might / Or you may deem him / A coward from flight...")

Comment:

"Heeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!!"


Well...here it is, finally! The big one! The "rock opera" I've been incessantly crowing about in the comment sections for my last couple of mixes...and now I finally present it to the world! :-)

Just a slight hitch...I may not be able to get it posted or establish a link for downloading! :-( But I'll certainly do my best to try (with the help of my brother, who's a tad more knowledgeable than I about such things! (Up-date: Both discs are now available for downloading. Just click below!)

I hope you find this interesting. I posted lyrical excerpts with the song titles in order to give some vague sense of the narrative that's in my head. On the other hand, I don't really want to over-interpret this too much for everybody, because I want people to have their own ideas and their own interpretations of the story!

Just a few more clarifications and disclaimers, and then I'll shut up. Okay? [*wink*]

1) Although the events within the story are presented in a pretty much chronological order, the storytelling is not necessarily 100% linear! For example, we don't establish Johnny's birth until after the first three tracks, and after Johnny's death is established, we have three more songs to go!

2) Not all the songs are meant to represent the lead ch-aracter Johnny's point of view. Some of them represent the POV of other ch-aracters and important figures in his life. (And by the way, there is one song per disc which represents the POV of a ch-aracter of the opposite gen-der of the song's lead singer!)

3) Even though this story is about the life and death/rise and fall of a troubled rock 'n' roll star, there are some songs which appear to address other concerns such as war, violence and general social strife. All I will say about that is that I inten-ded it to be partially metaphorical. (Although in my mind there is a certain amount of backstory and family history that could possibly shed some light on the matter!)

4) Why is one of the songs sung in German? Well...no reason in particular except that I happen to really love this particular cover version of the song in question! (And I already posted the original version on an earlier mix.) And besides, this is a rock...opera, right?? So it makes a certain amount of sense that we should have at least one number sung in a Continental tongue!

5) Speaking of which, I can quite emphatically and unambiguously say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Rammstein's Till Landemann (on the Apocalyptica track) is definitely not the voice of Satan (ha, ha)! Now, Tom Araya, on the other hand (guesting on the Alice In Chains track)...now that's quite possibly another story!

Well, just point, click and enjoy! And please let me know what you think! :-)

Disc #1
Disc #2

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