The Portrait Mix

You can paint a picture of someone with more than just a paintbrush. You can also use words, or in this case music, which is part biographic, part contemplative and part evocative of my own personal feelings. Here's the liner notes:

1. William Shatner - Common People
Common People was one of the songs he latched onto during his Brit pop phase and was specifically referenced in his London Calling script. I wasn't familiar with the song at the time. Jarvis Cocker of Pulp was one of the male sex symbols he fetishized (after Prince). I'm still not terribly familiar with the song but I really enjoy this Shatner rendition.

edit: I just watched the Pulp- Common People video. I am sure I had seen it before. But this is the first time I noticed that he was trying to emulate the look of Jarvis Cocker. That's obviously what inspired his long bangs.

From Aint it Cool News:
Hey folks, Harry Knowles here... I don't do this often. Fuck, I never do this. I'm pretty damn sure I've never written up a "pop" album in the history of Ain't It Cool News... about a week ago, my girlfriend, an aspiring music manager... happened to say that the best produced Album she's heard in forever was William Shatner's HAS BEEN. I'd never heard of it. How the fuck is my girlfriend introducing me to something SHATNER? I'm the geek. I'm supposed to introduce her to his sweaty pudgy chest as his shirt was ripped repeatedly and as he kissed alien women of a rainbow of colors and eyebrows and ear-shapes.
I'm not a music critic... and a great many of you would call my ability to critic or recommend anything is suspect beyond words. BUT... ya know what? I don't fucking care. I know what I like, I know what I love... and this Album... well...This album has soul dripping out of every track. Its amazing.

2. Bryan Adams - One Night Love Affair
This song was on the Trash mix... or maybe it was Crap, I don't know. It was also featured in Real Genius in the scene where Mitch is at party.

3. Erasure - Respect
This was definitely feature prominently in one of the aforementioned DJ mixes

4. Big Country - 13 Valleys / Broken Hearts
This is a song that gets stuck in your head. It has emotional resonance. And a sad end to the talented Stuart Adamson.

5. James - Laid
I remember being in the Black Cat, surrounded by beautiful hipster chicks, who all started jumping up and down and singing along to this song. It made me wish I was a part of this world.

6. Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
I first heard this on the SNL Sketch "Dear Sister" which parodied a scene from the OC. I thought it might have been Justin Timberlake, but a little searching and I found this song. The lack of instrumentation and the layering of vocals creates a haunting effect.

7. Fountains of Wayne - Sink to the Bottom
Was the suggested opening music for Flying Solo

8. Less Than Jake - Swear its the Last Time
The suggested end credits music for Flying Solo. Also a popular band among my friends.

9. Mindless Self Indulgence - Masturbate
Not my favorite MSi song, but its grown on me. It was the one he singled out as being a favorite after I loaned him the album. The note inserted into the liner notes was funny.

10. Johnny Cash - Hurt
This song carries so much emotional weight and pain.

From an Amazon review I liked:
I am the least capable person to review this album. This man had been writing and singing songs for forty years and all I'd heard of him was "Ring Of Fire". I knew the song. I did not know who sang it. It was all but another one of these inevitable songs on every compilation, and one of these songs every channel my parents loved so much would play. I never noticed. Today, I still know hardly more.

One late-summer evening as I was zapping through the music channels here in The Netherlands, my thumb froze over the remote. On the screen singing was, not the usual parade of lewd, crafted, playbacking little mouths seemingly right of production lines, not good capable singers only better than the rest because of management and advertisement skills; it was a man dressed in black, looking old as death, with a voice raw as a crow's. I did not know it was he, if it had mattered. It was Cash, singing "Hurt". I looked, listened but then more. It was so unspeakably sad, so unfathomably melancholic. How can I describe the emotions hearing that song? Haunted and moved don't seem adequate.

Enchantment. I was a youth with a passion for music: metal, symphonic, classic, techno. Give it to me, give it to me every day, all day long. I'll be satisfied. I was a youth, looking at an old man, singing for me, singing of his life and emotions. Music moves me always, but it was this music, barely more than a voice and an acoustic guitar, that drew a tear, dropped into my heart - then another and another. Silent, invisible tears filling hollows, and all that showed on the outside, were a sniff of the nose and a blink of the eyes. I was a youth.

Then, as I sat there oblivious, and wishing I had seen the whole thing, the clip ended and I saw Cash's name. I turned off the set, stood, and hoped I would hear it again. Weeks later, Cash was dead. Today, I still know hardly more.

11. Prince - Purple Rain
If you are going to include only one Prince song, it has to be this one. Another song about the pain of regret and loss.

12. The Gayness - Pink Tanktop Heaven / Gayness Out.
on a cd of mostly remixes, this was one remix that crossed the line into the realm of original composition. He specifically pointed it out as the track he was most proud of, creatively.

13. John Williams/London Philharmonic - Indiana Jones
The perfect music for embarking on an adventure.