Mental Death Transmission

Someday You Will Be Dead, and Everyone You Know Will Be Dead, and There Will Be No One Left to Remember You

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1. Intro
2. Cherry Red (The Groundhogs)
3. War Song (The Fugs)
4. Like an Atom Bomb (The Pilgrim Travelers)
5. Satan Is Busy In Knoxville, Tennessee (Leola Manning)
6. What Did You Forget? (Alan Watts & L. Hollis & the Mackadoos)
7. My Home Town (Tom Lehrer)
8. Intro to "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (The 180G's)
9. I Want My Baby Back (Downliners Sect)
10. Lavender Coffin (Joe Thomas)
11. Six Feet Down (The Bad Livers)
12. Gary Gilmore's Eyes (Pine Valley Cosmonauts)
13. Why Don't You Kill Yourself (The Only Ones)
14. When I Stand Before the King (Blind Joe Taggart)
15. Death at the Bar (Kitty Wells)
16. I Just Want To Look At You One More Time (Merle Haggard)
17. Side of the Road (Lucinda Williams)
18. No One Will Miss You When You Burn (The Palace Brothers)
19. Careless Love (Daniel Johnston)
20. The Last Day Of Jimi Hendrix's Life (The Mountain Goats)
21. Down to Earth (The Bee Gees)
22. Memories (Daevid Allen & Robert Wyatt)
23. Lost (Van der Graaf Generator)
24. Funeral Home (Daniel Johnston)

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The title doesn't really fit, maybe. When I came up with the title, it was all depressing songs like #14-20, But that would have been too dreadful, so I decided to lighten it up a bit.

Several friends, relatives, and neighbors have died in the past year or so. The most jarring of these was my friend Sarah, who decided she'd had enough of this World last summer. And there was Bill, who died a couple weeks ago of No-health-insurance disease. I'd list the others, but you never met them, either.

Cherry Red is vicious. I thought it was about love and murder, but I couldn’t understand most of the lyrics. After I added it to my list of songs for this disc, I found the lyrics, and it turns out that it's just about love, as murderous as it may sound. It qualifies as a death song anyway, though, because it's partly based on a Big Joe Turner song with the same title which is (sort of) about murder; and also because I used to sit around with my late friend Howard (heart attack: cocaine) listening to the Groundhogs' Thank Christ for the Bomb. Love T.S. McPhee's guitar.

War Song - I could have put more war songs on here, but I didn't. The Fugs have to be on every mix I make, because they're one of those '60s bands people have heard of, but rarely heard. It's impossible to pick one song that typifies their sound.

Like an Atom Bomb - The Pilgrim Travelers were a big group on the gospel circuit in the 40's and 50's. They liked to bust up the churches they played at, and sneak off with the women. Lou Rawls sang with them in the '50s.

Satan Is Busy In Knoxville, Tennessee - I couldn't dig up much on Leola Manning. It was recorded in Knoxville in 1930. The stories in the song were apparently true.

What Did You Forget? - No, he didn't really make a record with the Mackadoos. By the Miracle of the mash-up, now he has. I was going to do the whole disc like this, and I did about ½ hour of it, but then I decided no one would want to sit through it. It ended up sounding like Negativland, but harsher. The Mackadoos song is actually called Bui Bui. This may have been the only thing they ever recorded. It's from a compilation called Eccentric Soul: The Big Mack Label.

My Home Town provides some comic relief.

Intro to "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is by the a cappella Negativland cover band (!!) the 180G's. There was no thematic justification for including more than this. Well, I could have included Christianity is Stupid. Ah, regret. If you can try to imagine the Pilgrim Travelers covering Negativland, with full gospel harmonies, ...

I Want My Baby Back - Like the Pretty Things and the Groundhogs, the Downliners Sect are one of those late-'60's bands that won't die.

Lavender Coffin is a good follow-on. Lionel Hampton and Buster Poindexter also did versions of this song. Joe Thomas played sax in Jimmie Lunceford’s jazz orchestra in the '40s. In 1950, he started recording R&B records under his own name. In 1951, he retired from music to take over the family funeral business.

Six Feet Down - I saw the Bad Livers at CBGB in the early '90s (opening for Gaye Bykers on Acid, I think? Hey, now that I think about it, GBOA might have fit here). The Bad Livers also did a bluegrass cover of Lust for Life, which could be a good song to put on a life-themed compilation.

Gary Gilmore's Eyes is the old Adverts song, given the country treatment by Jon Langford's boys. The Pine Valley Cosmonauts have actually done three albums of death songs, if you want more.

Why Don't You Kill Yourself is another one that speaks for itself.

When I Stand Before the King - Blind Joe Taggart wasn't actually totally blind. He was supposedly a really scrappy sonofabitch. He also recorded under other pseudonyms (Blind Joe Amos, Blind Jeremiah Taylor, Blind Tim Russell, and Blind Joe Donnel) to avoid having to observe the recording contracts he was always signing. Captain Beefheart should have thought of that. Or maybe he did? Hmmm. Tom Waits did start getting more beefheartish around the time Beefheart retired from music. Hmmmm.

Death at the Bar – because whiskey is devil-juice. Kitty is still alive, by the way.

I Just Want to Look at You One More Time is obviously a song about lost love.

Side of the Road isn't really a death song, but I guess it feels like one to me.

No One Will Miss You When You Burn is kind of depressing.

Careless Love is more depressing.

The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix's Life is even more depressing.

Down to Earth sounds like proto-art-rock to me. I guess it's the mellotron. “Down to earth, my merry men. There's some help needed here and you're there. You can see if you stand on your chair. That there's millions and millions and millions and millions of people like you.” Yeah, the lyrics could have been written by (gasp) Jon Anderson. I'm sorry. I can't resist the Bee Gees.

Memories is a Robert Wyatt/Hugh Hopper song that was recorded a couple times by the Soft Machine in the '60s. This version is from Daevid Allen's 1971 solo album Banana Moon. The band here is Gong, with Gary “Dream Weaver” Wright on piano, and Robert Wyatt on vocals. Dom will recognize the song from Damon & Naomi's More Sad Hits. This song isn't really about death either, but close enough.

Lost might be I Just Want to Look at You One More Time, part 2. The Van der Graaf Generator is one of my favorite bands. They make big noise, for a band with no guitarist. Peter Hammill has written a million deathly depressing songs, and here's one for you.

Funeral Home - because Daniel is right.

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Exciting contest! Win big prizes! Come up with a narrative yourself! A man gets mad at his girlfriend and decides to join the army, and gets sent to Viet Nam. In Nam, he has a religious awakening, and decides to go to Knoxville and try to save souls. Then he realizes Christianity is stupid, and returns to his hometown, where he gets into an accident in which his girlfriend is killed. He is grief-stricken, he tears out his own eyes, and they give him new ones. He becomes suicidal and starts to hallucinate, and has a series of visions of sad scenes and situations. He begins to come out of it, but while separating seeds out of his weed on a gatefold Van der Graaf album, he decides there’s no hope after all.