Artist	Song
SinTad O'Connor	Molly Malone [Sean-N=s Nua] 3:33
The Beatles	Maxwell's Silver Hammer [Abbey Road] 3:27
Bob Dylan	In My Time Of Dying [Bob Dylan] 2:39
Van Morrison	Country Fair [Veedon Fleece] 5:42
Laughing Sky	Tomorrow Never Knows [Free Inside] 4:58
Joan Baez	The Trees They Do Grow High [Joan Baez Vol. 2] 2:59
Terry Jacks	Seasons In The Sun [Seasons In The Sun] 3:30
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	Telephone [Doc At The Radar Station] 1:31
Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue with the Bad Seeds	Where The Wild Roses Grow [Murder Ballads] 3:57
Moby	Machete [Play] 3:37
Queen	Bohemian Rhapsody [A Night At The Opera] 5:57
Nico	Eulogy To Lenny Bruce [Chelsea Girl] 3:46
Brian Eno	On Some Faraway Beach [Here Come The Warm Jets] 4:36
Phil Ochs	Cross My Heart [Pleasures Of The Harbor] 3:19
They Might Be Giants	Mink Car [Mink Car] 2:09
Kings Of Leon	Rememo [Aha Shake Heartbreak] 3:20
Lhasa de Sela	Soon This Space Will Be Too Small [The Living Road] 4:46
The Beatles	Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight [Abbey Road] 3:08
Emerson, Lake and Palmer	Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression [Brain Salad Surgery] 9:03
United Travel Service	Wind & Stone [single only] 3:17

Comment:

Well, i guess it's pretty ironic that as soon as i get a few mixes in a trade with Dead Man, i put two of the songs -- Laughing Sky's "Tomorrow Never Knows" cover and United Travel Service's "Wind & Stone" -- on a mix about death. I nicked the title from Brian Eno's beautiful, terrible opening lyrics to "On Some Faraway Beach": "Given the chance / I'll die like a baby / On some faraway beach / When the season's over", which gets my vote for best opening line of all time. Breaking through after nearly three minutes of mounting instrumental textures, Eno's voice is simply exuberant here about his chance to die; and in accordance, the theme of this mix CD is death by random chance, that occurs simply by the whims of fate, and that might be only avoidable by a supernatural force of will. The belief in such death is a kissing cousin to depression, the idea of the last chance, acquiescence to life steadiness, and thus we have tracks like "Country Fair", "Rememo", "Machete", whose lyrics are death metaphors even when they don't mention death explicitly. In "The Trees They Do Grow High" the young husband dies at the end, but that's only a mirror of the symbolic death Joan Baez's noble-lady narrator has gone through in giving up her life to fulfill her father's wishes to marry this teenager. No room for, say, Tom Waits, who even in tracks like "Earth Died Screaming" gives death enough carny atmosphere to make it familiar and mentally approachable; that's Tom the sage of compassion for you. But on the flip side, certain other artists, far less bleak on the surface, such as The Beatles, TMBG, and Van Morrison, practically seem to swim in this mood many a time -- it's my hypothesis that songs like "Country Fair" spooked Van so much that he retired from recording for three years -- and there are any number of songs i could have included for each of them. Particularly, the Beatles' Abbey Road album, which i bought expressly for this mix, seems to me to be nearly entirely one long extended metaphor for impending, random death -- part of the album's incredible beauty, and also, I think, a good reason to include two (well, officially three) songs from it. i came to realize that i'd sequenced this mix in such a way that, as the CD goes on, the deaths implied in the songs become, basically, more and more serious and grievous: we start with just about the quietest death imaginable in "Molly Malone", proceed through the no-going-back point of "Where The Wild Roses Grow" with its actual murder (the only real *gothy* track on the compilation), followed by the turbocharged drug-dream "Machete", until finally we arrive at the opening lyrics of the penultimate track: "Man alone, born of stone, will stamp the dust of time / His hands strike the flame of his soul / Ties a rope to a tree and hangs the Universe / Until the wind of laughter grows cold". "Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression" documents, for nine minutes, the ultimate battle: Man (played by Greg Lake) versus Machine (Keith Emerson) for control of the entire universe. "Rejoice! Glory is ours!", Lake shouts at the finale, "Our young men have not died in vain! / Their graves need no flowers / THE TAPES HAVE RECORDED THEIR NAMES!" We've been tricked! Only to pray that it was merely a dream! Quickly, then, the final track? "Wind & Stone", which opens "Left the graveyard today" -- a universe of the undead? Ah, wait -- it's a metaphor! Death is a metaphor, then -- for leaving society behind! But then, it always was -- just like the previous tracks took the metaphor the other way! Or -- what did Freddie Mercury *really* mean when he sang about being condemned to death in "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Which -- death, or being an outcast -- is the deeper meaning, which is the metaphor? In any case, "Iron & Stone" is hardly comforting. Something of an escape from the black hole, though. But can it offset the 76 minutes of steadily mounting Apocalypse that came before? That's for the jury to decide....

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