The Twelve Mixtapes of Christmas have got nothing to do with Christmas (beyond being a gift to you) and they’re not actually mix tapes, or CDs for that matter – just mixes, each 49-minutes long, one posted to Randophonic’s Mixcloud for each day of Twelvetide (aka the Twelve Days of Christmas).
The mixes are in fact remnants of an unfinished project from a few years back that had something to do with compiling a playlist for an alternative to Alternative Rock (or whatever) radio station. To be honest, we’re not one hundred percent clear about any of it because somebody spilled (what we hope is) red wine on the official transcript, thus rendering key parts illegible.
Bottom line: it’s five hundred eighty-eight minutes of music covering all manner of ground, from David Bowie to Bow Wow Wow to Tuxedomoon to Claudine Longet, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Captain Beefheart, Aphrodite’s Child, Tom Jones, Marilyn Manson, Ike + Tina Turner, anything and everything, as long as it’s good.
Part Two of Randophonic’s three part celebration of the 40th anniversary of 1974 aired December 6th, on CiTR.FM.101.9.
Here it is in two Mixcloud streams.
And the Movie of the Week — Queen – Modern Times Rock + Roll
The podcast of the full program is available for download here …
Think of it as an at least halfway cool radio program from forty years ago playing not the popular stuff from the year, but the important stuff — the true wild and innocent sounds that kept the flesheating robots at bay for another three hundred days or so. Brian Eno gets a lot of play because he released his first two solo albums in 1974 (and they, of course, changed everything forever). Otherwise, it’s a whole lotta everything, legendary and cool.
Brian Eno – needles in the camel’s eye
It hits you like a wall of solid pop. Powerful and beautiful.
A smart, sophisticated rocker from the band Eno had just left. Which raises the question. What would have happened if he’d stayed? What wouldn’t have happened? Would Richard Nixon even have had to resign?
Where was David Bowie in 1974? A decade ahead of things in the year of the Diamond Dogs. Big Brother is supreme. Everybody loves him. And why shouldn’t they? Even monsters can be beautiful.
A single that didn’t really chart anywhere yet went a long way toward inventing the future sounds of punk, new wave etc. And it has yodeling.
Brian Eno – Third Uncle
It starts as a direct rip-off of Pink Floyd’s One of These Days. By the time it’s over, it’s found an entirely other galaxy
Badfinger – just a chance
From their last album before the suicides started — the one that’s jammed with solid pop rock gems, but for whatever reason, got yanked from all the stores almost immediately after its release.
Strawbs – hero and heroine
Title track from another one of those shoulda-woulda-coulda-but-didn’t albums. Maybe Dave Cousins voice was just too weird, because you can’t blame all those mellotrons and angels amped way high in the mix.
The groove’s a killer. The production is pure drama. The lyrics don’t seem to be about anything. Where’s John Lennon when you need him?
Can – chain reaction
They’d just lost Damo Suzuki to the ozone or wherever. But they didn’t seem to mind, just kept working the infinite groove, pretty much inventing techno trance more than a decade ahead of schedule without realizing it.
Van Morrison – you don’t pull no punches but you don’t push the river
The true heart of Celtic soul gets laid bare here, epic and wise. You gotta learn to spot the difference between a foe you can knock down and a force of nature you best just go with, bound for great oceans and who knows what treasures on distant unseen shores?
Gram Parsons – 1000 dollar wedding
About as sad as sad songs get. And then he OD’ed on heroin.
Mr. Zimmerman enters the truly good part of his 1970s, and he’s definitely in a mood.
Anne Peebles – I can’t stand the rain .
It always rains too much. Why should 1974 be any different?
QUEEN – MODERN TIMES ROCK + ROLL (the Movie of the Week)
An almost one hour mix of Queen at the very beginning of their muchness. Their first album (Queen 1) was released in 1973 but nobody heard it until 1974.
And by the end of 1974, we had two more to perplex and astonish us (Queen II + Sheer Heart Attack).
And confusing indeed it all was — a strange zone where Led Zeppelin and the Beach Boys seemed to hold equal measure, and everything in between. Or as Philip Random puts it. “Strange wild changes, absurd operatics, serious raunch, nymphs and ogres, black queens, white queens, Jesus Christ himself, fathers and sons, tenement funsters, lilies of the valley, tatterdemalions and junketers. Bohemian Rhapsody was still over a year away and who needed it anyway? It was all there already. And if you were fifteen year old me, you ate it up. Because it NEVER got any better than those first three albums and their Modern Times Rock’n’Roll … for lack of a better term.”
Randophonic 