For now, Third Man are already taking pre-orders for the first single, “Love Interruption”, which will contain a non-LP B-side, and be released on vinyl on February 7th and through iTunes tonight at midnight. Tide yourself over in the meantime with this stream:

And since Record Store Day is happening before the album’s release, I’m sure Third Man are going to have something special coming out that day as well. After all, it was on RSD in 2009 when the first Third Man single, The Dead Weather’s “Hang You From The Heavens”, was released…

Upon learning that Fugazi were about to release a new album, The Argument and a related EP, Furniture, this fall as well as reissue Instrument on DVD (yay!) with bonus footage, I contacted Dischord Records by e-mail. That was mid-August. By late September, Guy Piccotto, one of the band’s two guitarist/frontmen, initially replied that an interview might not be possible with everything that was going on both in the band and in D.C. in general. Being a more understanding journalist, I told Guy in my reply, “No problem — let me know when anyone’s free.” Last Monday, Guy said Brendan was available and passed on his e-mail address.

Fugazi. The name was found by vocalist/guitarist Ian MacKaye (co-founder of Dischord Records and lead singer of the influential early 80′s punk quartet Minor Threat) in a book about Vietnam, a slang term which is actually an acronym for “F’ed up, got ambushed, zipped in.” Their music shed’s punk past in favor of meshing such disparate influences as reggae, funk, go-go and hard rock. MacKaye and the band’s other vocalist/guitarist, Guy Piccotto [pronounced "ghee"], are probably the two most distinctive vocalists in rock today — MacKaye’s Joe Cocker-influenced “melodic shouting” style (honed during the three years that Minor Threat existed and refined with various side projects between 1984 and Fugazi’s formation in 1987), and Piccotto’s one-of-a-kind, full of raw emotion vocalisations. Ian and Guy’s guitar styles — thick powerchording and searing lead lines eminating from either or both guitarists at the same time — stand out in a sea of tenth-generation Ramones/Dickies/Buzzcocks/Descendants copycats and detuned unwashed KornSmackParkVayne slackers to this day, while bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty anchor the whole thing.

“You know what?” Brendan said, “My youngest son son is having a hard time going to sleep. Is it possible that you could call me back in about a half an hour?” It was possible, so I said no problem, thought of a few extra questions to ask in the meantime, and rang Brendan. What follows is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done to date. There were literally a lot of laughs in the close to an hour we spent on the phone, as the transcription will reveal over the next couple of days… [Note: The transcription had originally been spread out at Project X by its editor over the course of a week.]

CJ Marsicano: Hello, Brendan?

Brendan Canty: Hey! How are you?

I am good.

[My youngest son] actually fell asleep about five minutes after you hung up. [CJ laughing] He was playin’ me. Where are you right now?

I’m in Pennsylvania. Hazleton, near Wilkes-Barre.

OK, yeah. Oh OK. I know the area, more or less.

Oh, you do?

Yeah, a little bit.

Oh my god! Small world.

Yeah [laughs] We’re not that far from you guys.

You’re not that much older than I am, too. I’m 34.

Oh yeah, that’s right. You are my age!. Do you work for Project X?

Yeah, I think I’ve done about half the writing so far for that site. I don’t know if you’ve been to it yet.

Yeah, I’ve looked at it.

Oh, that’s wonderful!

So, did you get a chance to listen to the record at all?

No, I didn’t hear the new record yet.

Oh, you haven’t gotten it yet?

No, not yet. What can you tell me about the new album?

Well, it was very long, and now it’s shorter. [laughter]

That’s why there’s the separate EP [Furniture].

Right. We were trying to sequence it with all the songs on it and it was just getting, it was horrendously unlistenable. And then we picked out a couple of the really harder and faster songs and one older song that we just did on the fly in the studio, this old song called “Furniture”, which we started playing back in ’87 or whatever. And we took those off, and the album just fit much better. It suddenly all clicked into place. So we just decided to have two separate entities.

I tend to feel like, if you start to just put out as many songs as possible [on an album], you put out 16 songs, it’s just unbearable, you know. I think an important aspect of the whole thing is the editing process, of getting it down and treating it like one body of work so that people can actually digest it all, as opposed to slogging their way through 16 songs. Even with those songs taken out, it’s still fifty minutes long, so it’s still plenty long.

What else about the record – it probably took more than a month to record, and we had a second drummer on quite a few of the songs, this guy Jerry Busher, who was our roadie for years, and then when we started writing songs, I started throwing double drums on some of the songs on End Hits. He started playing some of those songs live with us, just the few songs from End Hits with double drums, like “Arpeggiator.” Then we have this woman named Amy Domingues play cello on a few of the songs. And then we also put a little bit of piano on there. It gets kind of expansive. I don’t know, it’s up to you to decide, it’s up to the general population to decide what they make of it. I can’t really put a spin on it. I’m not really comfortable putting the spin on it.

Yeah, you can’t really put a spin on your own work after you spend a month recording it and however long beforehand writing it.

Yeah, it took us years to write, really. When I think about writing some of these parts three years ago…

Jeez!

Yeah, it’s ridiculous. But it’s just that we’ve had a lot of things going on in our lives. We haven’t been working on it constantly for that long, but it’s certainly taken a long time to get us into the studio. Finally, we just had to say “let’s just go book the time and have done with it.” [Laughter]

I can imagine like, promoting the movie [Instrument] was taking a lot of time over the past couple of years.

Well, making the movie was. There was making the movie, and there was also, at the time when we started making the movie, I was having kids. I’ve had a couple of kids since then, and that’s sort of one of the reasons over the last few years that we’ve slowed down touring. And so, Guy [Piccotto] and Ian [MacKaye] and [filmmaker] Jem Cohen, who shot the film, they all worked together more than I did on the film. It was really kind of lucky for me that we had a project like that for them to work on, and also it was lucky for me that they were willing to work on it without me and to maintain the band through their spotty schedule over the last few years. You know what I mean. Anyway, they did a lot of that work while I was, you know, losing my mind. [laughter]

Kids.

Yep.

That’s why I don’t have any yet.

[laughter] You know what I mean, Just don’t rush it. If you don’t want ‘em, don’t feel like you have to have ‘em. [laughter] ‘Cause even if you want them more than anything in the world, they’re still a challenge.

Yeah. Jello Biafra said “they don’t give a [mandatory] class on the most important thing in life, and that’s parenting.”

Yeah. Well, actually they do give classes on that… [laughter] Jello might not be tapped into the parenting thing [laughter]

Unfortunately, he’s been divorced since the Frankenchrist trial, so that’s a moot point for him. [laughter]

Yeah, that’s right! [laughter] Yeah, but once you have kids, you realize that there’s an entire universe there that you previously knew nothing about… [laughter] thankfully! Because you’d never get pregnant if you knew about it beforehand! [laughter]

Anyway, that’s pretty much the deal with the new record. It’s called The Argument, and it’ll be out on the 17th of October. And it seems to be getting, people seem to be interested in it. That makes me happy.

I understand you’ve been doing some scoring outside of the band.

Yeah, I’ve been working for some producers that I’ve known for a long time – basically friends, there’s a few different producers that have been making documentaries for TV for the Discovery Channel. So I did [the score for] a mini-series a couple of years ago called Buildings, Bridges and Tunnels, and then I did a score for this show called High Speed Impacts, which is basically like a Butthole Surfers video [laughter] for an hour…

[laughter] Without the penile implants.

Right! Without the penile implants! It was just shit blowing up for an hour! [laughter] It was all test footage from the Sandina Rocket Test Facility in Arizona or Nevada – I can’t remember where it was. You’d think I’d know after I’d watched the damned thing a thousand times. [laughter] But it was just the greatest documentary to work on, ’cause it was literally like – my friend was at Sandina doing a different documentary and he came across all this footage of shit blowing up, and ten different camera angles running at different speeds and super high quality – and he decided to piece it all together and make a storyline out of it and make some sort of documentary out of it, but it was really just, “let’s put as many cool shots [laughter] of shit blowing up in one hour that we possibly can fit in. That was just the greatest one to score, too. It’s very easy, and as far as I’m concerned I can be me and I can rock out a little bit, you know. Don’t have to worry about appeasing people. I’m allowed to be aggressive…

You have to lock yourself in your basement and do the Danny Elfman thing for however many days you get to do the soundtrack.

Yeah, ’cause you don’t get a lot of time to do it, so you really have to cram. I don’t know if it’s exactly … sometimes I think I’d be happier selling real estate! [laughter]

Don’t let my mother hear you say that, she sells real estate!

I won’t. [laughter]. [Doing that instead of recording soundtracks] would bring me into contact with more people, anyways. [laughter]. You kinda crave it after awhile. Luckily I have both outlets in my life, I can be in the basement and I can also get out of the house with Fugazi and go and play in front of a thousand people. When we want to.

You have the luxury now, basically.

It’s pretty nice, I have to say. And the crowds have been so great in the past couple of years. Touring is an absolute pleasure. There’s no skinhead armies out there fucking with little kids, which used to happen. It used to be all messy, but not it’s not messy, it seems to be quite… I don’t know if I’d call it “tame”, but it’s pretty awesome. I think the crowds might understand what we’re going for and maybe don’t think we’re assholes. [laughter]

For awhile, people didn’t know who we were; I think [Instrument] has kinda helped people know who we are better.

People think you’re this dour band, but there’s this sense of humor coming out from all you guys [throughout the film]. I can’t understand the dour thing anyway, I don’t know why they even think that!

I don’t know either! I do understand that we stopped giving interviews a long time ago to major publications, like to Spin, and so they paint us as being stick-in-the-muds. And so, the mass media, a lot of people don’t get [adequate] information about us and they also can’t talk to us point-blank, face to face unless we’re in their town. So, if silence sort of breeds suspicion, I think definitely people get suspicious of people who don’t speak to them. So, anyways, I think the movie helped people to realize that we’re human beings [laughter], so people are relating to us better, and us to them.

I’m looking forward to the DVD of Instrument coming out, ’cause one of these days, I’m gonna stick the videotape of Instrument into the VCR, and the VCR’s gonna spit the tape out of the machine and say, “Fuck you! Play something else!” [laughter]

I appreciate that. [laughter] DVD is actually a great format, isn’t it?

I got about 100 DVD’s right here in my office, I love them!

It’s not a real expanded DVD of ours, but it does have about five extras things on it. There’s the first thing we collaborated with Jem on, which was this movie called Glue Man [based on the closing track of the same name from the band's first record], which I think we did, I can’t remember, exactly, ’88?

Wait a second, the record’s right here. [I had the vinyl editions of all of Fugazi's albums on my desk handy as reference for the whole interview. I grab the first self-titled 12" EP and turn it over to check the copyright date.] 1988.

It is ’88?

Yeah.

I would think it was ’88. I think Ian and Guy actually some of those lyrics together, and then we recorded, the music of it was from an earlier, dubbed-out version of “Glue Man”. [Jem] had released it previously through C-100, which is Mike Stipe’s film company out of Athens. [Editor's Note: Yes, it's that "Mike" Stipe from R.E.M.] But we figured we’d include it because most people probably haven’t seen it. And then it’s got a couple of live things, and there’s another film that Jem made about the Gulf War “celebrations” [laughter] – I don’t know if it’s about them, it’s maybe about humans more than that, but it’s got a slowed down soundtrack from a four-track [recording] that we actually put on it very recently. Yeah, and I guess the other three things are live, just more live music.

Yeah, ’cause you get through the two hours of the [original] movie and you’re like, “That’s it?” [i.e., you're disappointed that it's over.]

Aw, c’mon! [laughter] It’s the longest fucking movie ever made! [laughter]

It’s not!

It is!

[NOTE: Brendan and I were both chuckling through the above sentences, I don't want anyone to get the incorrect impression that the conversation turned into an argument.]

It’s not! [laughter] It’s not The Longest Day, Brendan! The Longest Day is like, four hours!

The Longest what? [still chuckling]

The Longest Day, that war movie with John Wayne and like, sixty other people [in the cast] that took three directors just to make the damn movie!

Oh yeah, that’s right. [laughter] Ever see Shoah? Shoah was ten hours long, that was a movie about recollections of holocaust survivors.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.

That’s a great movie. If you ever see it – I saw it in sitting down in a theater, it was just brilliant. That was the longest film I’d ever seen! Ten hours! [laughter]

I don’t think I could sit through ten hours…

You could! I tell ya, if you see Shoah in a theater, you could sit through ten hours, you just get totally into it, totally captivated. I tend to think that there is a point past an hour and a half where every minute seems like an hour, but then if you know that you’re gonna sit there for ten hours, then it never feels like that, because you’re just adjusting to a completely editing time frame, a different aesthetic completely. So I don’t think you actually ever fall into that. Anyway, that’s my recommended movie of the day. [laughter]

I’ve been on an Asian foreign film kick lately.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, I’ve been finding all these obscure Asian films from Netflix and just renting them, eight at a time.

What, more like, kung-fu things?

Not just kung-fu things, but there’s stuff like this Japanese movie called Tampopo which is all about food.

Oh yeah! That’s a great movie. There’s that funny scene in the noodle bar there where [Tsutomu Yamazaki, playing the male hero] flips that fish cake in the guy’s face.

I think that was a vegetable, actually…

A radish?

Yeah!

That’s pretty brilliant… [Brendan wanted to mention this famous Iranian director but he couldn't remember his name.] Next time you go to the video store, you have to ask him about it, because I’m sure they’ll know who you’re talking about.

I’m trying to think what else is going on in Fugazi world… You know our bass player [Joe Lally] just had a baby?

Yeah, Guy told me over the E-mail. Two [members] down and two to go. [laughter]. I can only imagine how an offspring of Ian MacKaye would be like. [laughter].

Yeah [laughter]

He’d probably have Henry Rollins for a godfather. [laughter] [NOTE: Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins grew up together in Washington D.C. and are still friends to this day. Henry used to roadie for Ian's first band, The Teen Idles, and Henry's first recording was a 7" EP with his first band S.O.A., released in early 1981 on Dischord!]

He probably would [laughter]. Those guys are still pretty tight. That’s D.C. for you. D.C.’s like Mayberry R.F.D. [CJ laughing even harder] It is, it’s just a dinky town, you know everybody here. A sleepy southern town… with a massive target on it.

Oh god! We’re not even going to go there. I can’t imagine how it was on the 11th.

Yep.

Oh my god.

It was pretty bad, I can remember it well.

I don’t think anybody’s going to forget it.

Nope.

Speaking of unforgettable, there’s this scene in Instrument that’s one of my favorite scenes, the scene where you’re in Philadelphia at St. Joe’s Gym [in 1988] and Guy’s hopping on the basketball hoop right above your head during “Glue Man”. What were you thinking when he did that?

I was thinking, “God, it’s just like Rites of Spring [a pre-Fugazi band both Brendan and Guy were in in the mid-80's, their only album and EP are still in print on Dischord], which basically when we were in Rites Of Spring, he would… actually, he did that kind of shit a lot! But in Rites Of Spring, it was constantly, there was shit flying everywhere, we would smash all our shit [instruments] all the time, [laughter] and it was jumping off, just, you know. You have to understand, I’ve played with Guy since we were sixteen, so we were always just going as crazy as we possibly could. In our first band Insurrection, definitely that shit came first and music came second. [laughter]. It was like juggling or something – try to play the song while going as crazy as possible. [laughter] That was just… we had so much footage of Guy doing stuff like that, too.

That could have been a bonus section of the DVD in itself! [laughter]

Yeah, I know! Well, we put a lot of shit in there anyway. Nothing Guy does – not that it doesn’t surprise me, but I know that when I’m playing, the most important thing is to keep the atmosphere consistent. When he’s up there in the hoop, you don’t stop and watch him. [laughter]

Even though you’re like, “Oh, shit! I hope he doesn’t fall on the snare drum or something!” [still laughing, even while Brendan continues below]

Yeah, it’s the last thing you think about… actually, what you’re thinking of is, “I hope he falls on the snare drum, that would be kinda cool.” [several more seconds of laughter]. Definitely. But you’ve gotta keep going, you’ve gotta push it.

You do whatever [it takes].

If you’re really gonna attempt to reach a climactic moment in a song, to push it, then you really have to push it. It’s kind of an unconscious thing, and it only works if everybody in your band is shooting for the same thing, which you never know exactly when you get there, but you try to arrive at the same time. And you’re just pushing and pushing and pushing, so behind the drum set, that’s all I’m thinking about, elevating the environment. There’s not much thinking going on, it’s basically pretty primal, I think, what we’re going for. It’s the dance of death, man, you know? [laughter]

I knew about Rites Of Spring and some of the back history of you guys from reading the book Michael Azerrad did [Our Band Could Be Your Life].

Oh yeah. I haven’t read that yet.

I’d gotten the book two days before I talked to Mike Watt on the phone, and he telling me, “There’s this book out that’s got stories on the Minutemen and Black Flag…” and I said, “I know which book you’re talking about, I just got it the other day!” And coincidentally, by the time I was talking to him on the phone – I got the book on a Sunday and I was talking to him on a Tuesday – I was already up to the chapter on you guys.

Oh yeah? Just whippin’ through it, huh?

Yeah. I re-read books all the time.

Do you like that book?

Oh yeah.

Is it one of the better books about the stuff?

I think it’s one of the only books I’ve actually seen about the stuff, ’cause Mike was telling me, people, when they compile rock history, they gloss over punk rock and say, “Oh yeah, punk rock… Sex Pistols and Nirvana. Let’s move on to the next thing.” And you want to grab whoever’s putting this history together and say, “Hello?! You missed about fifteen years of stuff!”

Yeah, that’s really true, but they’re thinking about mass culture, and this was never about mass culture. This was about communities, small groups of people, all playing for people very esoteric music that other people will appreciate, that people cultivated and fed on the same wellspring and aesthetic will understand. That’s the most interesting music.

This year would have been [John] Coltrane’s 75th birthday.

Yeah, that’s right. Herbie Hancock’s going to be downtown doing a big concert on [Coltrane's] birthday. When is his birthday?

September 20th, I think.

Oh, so it’s just a few days away then… [oops!] Oh, no, we’re in October now. I missed the show. Son of a bitch.

I know. I missed Mike Watt last night in Philadelphia.

Oh, is he on tour?

Yeah.

Is he playing in D.C.?

Let me see. My computer’s on. He should be there soon ’cause he’s in New York tonight… [On the tape, you can hear the keys clicking on my computer keyboard. I end up misspelling the URL to Watt's homepage.] I just spelled it wrong – and I’ve been touch-typing since I was seven.

[Overhearing the keys clicking] Yeah, you’re fast, huh?

Yeah, I’ll be at my day gig and my boss’ll see me and he’ll be like, “How do you type so fast?” [laughter] [Brendan inquires as to where I work, initiating a little more small talk. Meanwhile, I'm looking up Watt's tour dates.] Oh, he’s gonna be in Baltimore on the 15th and in D.C. on the 16th at the Black Cat.

Great! That’ll be awesome. The Black Cat just moved three doors down, but [now] they’ve got this great huge space that’s really nice. Very pleasant place to play, very pleasant place to see a band. Not that your readers will be there checking it out – but I don’t know, you know? Actually, I don’t know who your readers are, but…

[page 8 missing] [CJ's Note: At this point, I was asking Brendan about the ship's bell that was part of his drum kit. He mentioned that Guy had found that bell for him after years of trying to use other things as percussion during their days in the improvisational band Happy Go Licky.]

… I don’t, … no. Not really. To me it’s more like going back to the Wire live record, you know? Or some of the more super-experimental shit that was going on – Einsturzende Neubauten and stuff, all the more experimental noisy stuff…

Yeah, like Einsturzende Neubauten banging on a bridge tunnel and stuff. [An early Einsturzende Neubauten single, "Stahlversion" ("Steel Version"), was a recording of the band members drumming on the hollow underpass of a steel bridge in Berlin. Check out the CD 80-83 Strategies Against Architecture.]

Or Sink Manhattan – ever hear of them?

I might have heard of them.

Yeah, they were sort of like that, they were brilliant. It’s sort of a reference to that sort of thing, and it’s also atmospheric, trying to bust the genre a little bit.

You push everything so that it doesn’t sound like the last record or whatever else is going on.

Yeah, that’s the idea. And it’s also a feeble attempt to try not to get bored playing drums. [laughter]

Well, how bored could you be when Guy’s usually in danger of toppling the drums over? [laughter]

I know, don’t worry, I’m just… [several seconds of laughter] … being facetious. [laughter] I wouldn’t say it’s boring to play drums. What I mean is, you’re limited to the four or five different things you have to play, so it’s kind of cool to break it out a little bit and bring some trash in there. Just bring some reality back to it. Perk your ears up.

While I’ve been inconsistent in my buying of Dave Grohl’s efforts since his first Foo Fighters album dropped in 1995, to be honest, listening to this album made me regret it immensely to the point where I turned around and filled in the considerable holes in my collection. And Pat Smear’s back in the band while Bob Mould and Krist Novaselic join in on the fun? Yes, please.

The Osaka Four are still unstoppable. This album is just more proof of why that is so. And the whole SCANDAL album catalog is on US iTunes now? No more excuses, folks – pay your $9.99 apiece and see what I’ve been raving about for the past four years!

For whatever reason, there’s a serious air of mystery – intended or not – surrounding what is apparently the current flagship act on Jack White’s Third Man label. So be it. But the attention he’s giving their collective career is justified and the album is a solid debut release. The only complaint? At 29 minutes and six seconds, you’re left wanting more.

…to alternative icon Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, seen here channeling Husker Du circa Zen Arcade:

…and to guitar hero Adrian Belew (of King Crimson, Frank Zappa, and Talking Heads fame):

Given the label’s history, it’s understandable if during lulls in releases people start to worry about the future of Dischord. After one listen to this debut long-playing effort from the new project of ex-Jawbox leader J Robbins, though, it’s obvious that the label and it’s legacy will be fine for quite a while.

…to Elvis Costello, who turns 57…

…and a special Happy 60th Birthday to the Metal God, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, seen here with the Metal Son of God, aka The Man Who Should Be Idol (that’s right, I’m still not letting that one go, folks…):

OK, I know that nobody outside of the hip-hop world calls them mixtapes anymore considering that the primary sound carriers of these things are either CD-Rs or iTunes/iPod playlists, but the concept is still the same. You make a mix that you’ll be playing on the regular when you’re driving to the beach, lying on the beach, driving home from the beach, going on vacation… you get idea. The kind of tape where, if immaculately mixed and sequenced, will stay in your car all summer – maybe even during the fall and winter, too – until it either gets lost, borrowed, or left on the dashboard absentmindedly (where it’ll get fried by the sun).

And there is an art to making good mixes. You don’t just throw together eighty minutes worth of songs and call it a mix. You make the sequence as perfect as possible. You try not to be clever by putting ten-minute track from your brother’s favorite Yes album, or hip by slipping some American pop tartlet like Katy Perry inbetween tracks by Anthrax and Bright Eyes.

It’s been said by some aficionados of mixtape culture that mixtapes are going the way of the Edsel, thanks to the presence of iPods. Given that there are still plenty of participants on sites like Zen Running Order and Art of the Mix, that isn’t true. In my case, iPod/iTunes playlists have served to be the perfect test lab for making mixes. Ever since I first started using the program in 2004, I’ve used iTunes to do multiple drafts of mixes, playing the sequences on either my iPod or right on my laptop, fine-tuning the tracks until I have a sequence that a) flows well, and b) fits within the limitations of an 80-minute CD-R. That last parameter is of utmost importance – I’ve lost track of how many cassette mixes I’ve done back in the day where the tape ran out just as my carefully-chosen closing track was prematurely ended by the sudden appearance of the cassette’s plastic leader. Of course, if one could still find blank cassettes and the machines to record and playback with, one could pre-master their sequences on CD-R’s and then transfer those to cassettes – but unless one was being a retro hipster, why would you? (Hmmm… maybe I should do an eBay search for a good stereo reel-to-reel recorder and some blank reels… that would really be retro!)

Anyway, since this is the IntlWota Summer Refreshment Program we’re dealing with here, I’m contractually obligated to display both the refreshment that this program funded for me (in this case, a can from case of Arizona Green Tea – about the only goddamn thing I drink regularly thanks to being both straight-edge and lactose intolerant) and the tools that helped put this article together – my loyal laptop and one of my two iPods. Wait a minute, you’re asking: Two iPods? Yeah. They’d both be in the shot, but I had to use the other one just to take the picture.

I should explain about the two iPods – the one in the picture is a 160GB iPod Classic; a 64GB iPod Touch that is basically used like a miniature iPad/phoneless iPhone is what I took the picture with, and it’s been a rather handy device. I was on a first-anniversary weekend trip with my wonderful wife Tara and was using the hotel’s free WiFi to catch up on e-mail with the iPod Touch, when I got the go-ahead from International Wota to do this. I immediately started putting together the initial sequence right in the iPad Touch, sequenced it, and even gave it an initial spin via a very useful and very fun DJ app – wherein I discovered that my original track sequence was over 90 minutes long. Barely OK for a cassette mix – but we’re dealing with CD limits, so at least ten minutes of music had to eventually be chopped.

Summer, itself, was the basis for picking out the tracks. If it came out in summer, had a summer memory attached to it, or just reminded me of or even sounded like summer in some way to me, it went in. And, befitting this blog’s general ethos – that ethos basically being putting J-Pop and Western music on equal footing – I didn’t restrict my choices to just J-Pop material.

Once I was back home, I got myself the aforementioned fresh case of tea (I’m already halfway through it as I write this – it’s been one of those fucking hot weeks up here in Pennsylvania), sat down with the laptop, and got to editing and resequencing. Below is the final result: My soundtrack for the rest of the Summer of 2011.

1. WHITEBERRY “Natsu Matsuri” – A no-brainer of a logical choice to kick off this mix. When I started to get more seriously into Japanese music, it was Whiteberry that led me on my current path. I owe them a great deal of gratitude for that. I’ve long since heard the Jitterin’ Jinn original and I must say, Whiteberry’s version has the upper hand. Yuki Madea’s voice reminds me of J Mascis as far as her somewhat raw delivery goes; her post-Whiteberry recordings, first with the band Yukki and currently with The Husky have seen her get better with age.

2. REINA TANAKA “Manatsu No Kousen” – Yep, the idol who drives my wotahood (to paraphrase something Ray said at American Wota a few years back). It’s probably no surprise that all of her recently released solo singles are on my hard drive (thank you, US iTunes!) – the surprise is how well she pulls off her solo rendition of the early MoMusu summer classic.

3. HUSKER DU “Celebrated Summer” – Another no-brainer of a selection and the first representation of Western music in general and classic punk/indie in particular on this track list. It was probably my reading Bob Mould’s recent autobiography See A Little Light as well as a book about the Huskers from earlier this year that spurred me to include this choice a lot quicker than I otherwise would have. But then again, I miss the Huskers big time and wish they’d never split up in 1988.

4. BUZZCOCKS “What Do I Get?” – Yes, this is one of those tracks that reminds me of summer – specifically, one time back in the summer of 1994 when I found a copy of their box set in a used CD store in Bloomsburg, bought it on sight, and listened to it in the car on the way home. Plus, I’m starting to make some serious plans for getting a new band together – first time for me since 1997, first time back on guitar since my first band split up in 1984, and first time ever singing lead vocals full-time – and this is one of a long list of candidates that are going to be on the prospective band’s set list.

5. MORNING MUSUME “Souda! We’re Alive!” – Throwing one of my favorite songs by my favorite band of all time into the mix, specifically one from a classic lineup of the group. Gotta love those big powerchords in the intro/chorus/outro.

6. ROKY ERICKSON “Bermuda” – I threw this classic in – specifically this superior version from the Don’t Slander Me album – to add a bit of travel-related paranoia to the proceedings. Yes, this is another selection from my soon-to-be band’s list, too.

7. SAN NIN MATSURI “Chu! Natsu Party” – I had to throw in at least one of the Hello! Project Shuffle Units, and this classic collaboration between Ai Kago, Rika Ishikawa and Aya Matsuura was begging to be heard.

8. BORIS “Hope” – Attention Please and Heavy Rocks 2011 – both reviewed a month or so ago here at TGML – came out just as summer was unofficially starting. With lead guitarist Wata singing in a fragile manner over her own driving Jesus And Mary Chain guitar riffing, the song is a perfect fit.

9. SCANDAL “Koi Moyo” – That opening chord sequence sounds very summery, even beachy. I find myself playing it on guitar a lot when I’m warming up.

10. 11WATER “BE ALL RIGHT!” – the second representation of the H!P Shuffle Groups in this mix. Eleven H!P members take on some Bosstones-esque ska punk. Love this one even though I’m a little more used to MiniMoni’s version from their second album.

11. THE BEATLES “All You Need Is Love” – This one is here for a very personal reason: The day Capitol Records put this 45 out on the racks is also the day I was born.

12. THE MINUTEMEN “Search” – When I got into my first semi-pro band after graduating high school – this was the Summer of 1985 – one of the tapes I frequently carried was the My First Bells compilation tape of all of the Minutemen’s releases prior to Double Nickels on the Dime. I find myself associating that tape with summer weather and car travel a lot.

13. SCANDAL “Secret Base” – The Osaka Four covering the Zone classic. Sometimes I think the basic story line as seen in the Zone PV reminds me of a summer romance that never got off the ground any more come September. The keyboards, however – no matter whether it’s the original or SCANDAL’s retake – remind me of early King Crimson. And I got my first King Crimson records in the summer of ’81, too, if that counts for extra credit…

14. JUNIOR MURVIN “Police and Thieves”
15. MAX ROMEO – “War in a Babylon”
I’ve been in a serious reggae mood lately – the recent Peter Tosh reissues are partly to blame – and so, rather than slip 7nin Matsuri’s “Summer Reggae Rainbow” into the set list, which would have been a little too obvious, and even though I love the song, I opted for putting some more authentic classic reggae in instead. And one can’t get more authentic and classic with reggae without gravitating towards the Bob Marley canon, than by culling from the work of the great Lee “Scratch” Perry. Both tracks sourced from the great box set Arkology – do yourself a favor and find a copy.

16. AKB48 “Heavy Rotation” - One of the best things AKB48 did last summer, if not, all of last year.

17. BUONO “My Boy” - This single might have come out a month early for the Summer of 2009, but by the time the last weekend of May rolled around, it was a perfect fit and stayed that way for the whole season and then some, making it one of Buono’s best ever singles to date.

18. BERRYZ KOUBOU “Waracchaou yo BOYFRIEND” – Likewise, this came out while there was still one month of summer left in 2006, but the 50’s style musical arrangement never fails to evoke summer nights, car hops, crusing, and the like… even if, at the time the song was recorded, most of the girls weren’t even old enough to get learner’s permits.

19. THE SEX PISTOLS “God Save The Queen” – Another deliberately personal summer memory creeping in here, this time of more recent vintage: When Tara and I were finalizing our first-dance and bridal-party song selections with the DJ we hired for our wedding reception last year, he told us to feel free to e-mail him if there were any specific songs we wanted him to play that night. Tara didn’t think of anything, but I asked for this song – admittedly, my favorite song of all time, period point blank – and got it, and got Tara to dance with me to it near the end of the night. Afterwards, our wedding photographer came up to us and said, “I never thought I’d ever hear the Sex Pistols at a wedding reception – that was fucking awesome!!”

20. THE BEACH BOYS “All Summer Long” – Yes, picking a Beach Boys track is pretty obvious for a summer mix, but I needed a good closer, and since this track closes out the American Graffiti soundtrack double-album (a favorite album since I was 7!) it was the perfect track to use. Also, there’s another summer memory attached to this song and the entire soundtrack album – the movie was available on an early pay-per-view hotel system when my family and I stayed at the Inn On The Park hotel in Toronto in 1974 (Around the same time Glenn Gould was using one of the other rooms in the building as a makeshift tape-editing studio for his recordings, I later found out), which is when I first saw the movie and heard most of the music from it. Ironically, while the movie takes place in 1962, this song didn’t come out until two years later. Go figure.

Have a good summer, everyone!

BONUS: Here’s a streaming version of the mix as I originally did it with the dJay app on my iPod Touch, before I discovered that I had to chop at least ten minutes off of the track sequence. Can you pick out the songs that didn’t make the final cut?

IW Summer Refreshment Test Mix 1 by TGML/IW Summer Refeshment