What You Should Have Heard #75

My Mix CDs

I’ve got a lot of music but limited space to hold it in, especially in my car. So I’ve gone the old tried-and-true way of making mix CDs to have access to as many bands as possible while driving. I’m going slightly old-school since I’m a bit backwards and have no iPod.

Most of the songs will be more upbeat, with probably only the occasional ballad or slower song included. I like to sing in the car, and the more upbeat songs are more fun to sing.

I’ll be going in alpha-numeric order with these, so if you’re wanting to argue with me about what Weezer songs should be included, you’re going to be waiting for a while.

My only limitations are that I use 80 min. discs, and I’m only going to use one disc per band/artist. I will make exceptions for only my most favorite bands with huge playlists (Foo Fighters and Self, off the top of my head), but I’d really like to boil everything down to just one disc.

Here’s the list guide:

Track # - Song Name - Album Name [Artist if album is by a different artist]

                                                                

Silverchair Mix CD

Disc 1

1. Across the Night – Diorama
2. The Greatest View – Diorama
3. Without You – Diorama
4. One Way Mule – Diorama
5. Tuna in the Brine – Diorama
6. Too Much of Not Enough – Diorama
7. Luv Your Life – Diorama
8. Lever – Diorama
9. After All These Years – Diorama
10. Horror with Eyeballs – Dissociatives [Dissociatives]
11. Thinking in Reverse – Dissociatives [Dissociatives]
12. Israel’s Son – Frogstomp
13. Tomorrow – Frogstomp
14. Findaway – Frogstomp

Disc 2

1. Freak – Freak Show
2. Abuse Me – Freak Show
3. Anthem for the Year 2000 – Neon Ballroom
4. Ana’s Song (Open Fire) – Neon Ballroom
5. Miss You Love – Neon Ballroom
6. Pins in My Needles – The Diorama Box
7. Asylum – The Diorama Box
8. Hollywood – The Diorama Box
9. Young Modern Station – Young Modern
10. Straight Lines – Young Modern
11. If You Keep Losing Sleep – Young Modern
12. Reflections of a Sound – Young Modern
13. The Man That Knew Too Much – Young Modern
14. Mind Reader – Young Modern
15. Insomnia – Young Modern
16. All Across the World – Young Modern

A few notes on Silverchair:

• Listening to Silverchair throughout the years is a great way to listen to a good example of muscians growing. They rose to popularity in the mid-‘90s with the release of their first album Frogstomp. The comparisons to both Pearl Jam and Nirvana are accurate and easily apparent, but Silverchair had no place competing with these superior bands. They were kids, for Christ’s sake, and that made them a bit more accessible to me. Lead singer Daniel Johns was (and still is, I guess) a year-and-a-half younger than me, so listening to Silverchair change over the years is a little like listening to my changing tastes.
• Right now, I don’t like Frogstomp all that much. “Tomorrow” and “Israel’s Son” still hold up and “Findaway” is still fun, but it’s really not that great of an album. It’s very grungy without any of the style of Ten, Nevermind or Superunknown, but it doesn’t hold up as a complete package today.
• With the release of each consecutive album, they get farther from grunge and more firmly planted into alternative rock. Freak Show still had that hint of grunge to it, while Neon Ballroom starts moving them to where they’ll end up with Young Modern.
• Between those two is Diorama, which is a beautiful album, but the lyrics seem, let’s just say poetic. Calling them weird might be a little too mean for such a beautiful sounding piece of music. When I worked upstairs at The Great Escape sorting and alphabetizing comic books, I’d pull a used copy of this off the shelf and put it in heavy rotation. While I wouldn’t say it’s their best album, I do believe it is my favorite.
• Young Modern, on the other hand, is their best album. This is the culmination of a career. Take the youthful energy of Frogstomp and Neon Ballroom and add in the creativity and maturation of Diorama (and stir in a bit of experimentation from the Dissociatives) and you’ve got Young Modern. This isn’t an album by a few 12-year-old kids who decided to start a band but some men 15 years later who have learned and grown. It’s a wonderful album, and while I hated to learn about the indefinite hibernation announced earlier this year, it’s a great way to go out.

Silverchair Official Site

Silverchair Wikipedia entry

Silverchair AllMusic entry

Silverchair MySpace page

Silverchair Facebook page

Silverchair Twitter feed

Silverchair YouTube channel

Probably for the rest of the month I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit it out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But my experiment this weekend proved to me that I actually AM making a spot of cash whenever the ads are clicked. So I’m going to put this little disclaimer on the bottom of all my posts for the next month or so, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. Thanks so much!