A bus stop in An Unfamiliar Place
01 Juno - Non-Equivalents
02 Gaze - X-Real
03 Galaxie 500 - Strange
04 Unwound - December
05 The Carpenters - Yesterday Once More
06 Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk
07 iji - To Figure Out The Party
08 Refrigerator - From The End Of The World To Your Town
09 Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy
10 His Hero Is Gone - Like Weeds
11 Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
12 Terrors - Walking Low
13 The Velvet Teen - No One Gets The Best Of Me
14 Blink-182 - Waggy
15 Archers Of Loaf - Backwash
I've been thinking a lot about how this summer I'll be leaving Los Angeles on tour again from July through to December, and how having some music to listen to is going to be essential to maintain what's left of my sanity for half a year in such varying environments. Not just for driving in the van, but for those moments when you can steal yourself away from all the people, cars, sounds and stimuli. For sitting alone in a park or at a bus stop in an unfamiliar place and putting headphones on for a little while, or wishing you could.
For my last mix on workin' nights, I only picked songs by people that I've met and become friends with doing this, people who meant something to me on a personal level because of our relationships and interactions. But this time I wanted to do something really different, and pick songs by 15 bands that I would definitely need to have an album from with me on this trip. For the most part, these are just bands whose albums are pretty essential to me in some way.
Maybe it's a weird mix. A lot of this stuff wouldn't really be considered essential to some people, or maybe some would, but is strangely juxtaposed with other songs or styles that might not make sense as a whole. Nothing here is actually even really representative of the sort of music I make, or most of my friends, or possibly even what I listen to regularly. They're not related, they're not willfully obscure, they're not revered classics, they're just what I'd want to hear. I think that's what matters most.
Here are 15 songs by bands I would need to have albums by on a long trip.