It's the most self-indulgent time of the year, for me, when i write this long post that four people read if I'm lucky. This is certainly not the most self-indulgent of the PACs, since I've included bonus discs twice; it's not even my most self-indulgent project this year, since i started that hiking vlog. But the vlog is an exercise in brevity. This is where i get really long-winded.
2020 was an awful fucking year and everyone knows it. Covid. Uprising. American politics. The uprising being prematurely sated by a disaster of an election which replaced our evil, shoot-you-in-the-face dictator president with an evil, stab-you-in-the-back sock puppet president who has already refused to do anything about the conditions that caused the uprising. Good job america.
On a personal level, Amanda got cancer. Two of our cats died. Our toilet leaked and we didn't find out until our floors rotted out from under us. We got infested with bedbugs for months. Disibility insurance fucked us. Unemployment fucked us. Our renters back in Wisconsin moved out with only a few days notice and damaged the house, which we were already renting to them at a loss because they were friends. We got sucked into a death spiral most days of watching the election and Covid coverage.
And on the plus side...we have an amazing support network. Our friends came out in force to support us through it. One of Amanda's teammates started a GoFundMe for us which pulled in enough money to pay most of our bills throughout the worst of the lockdown. We've had regular video calls and online games with friends and family in Wisconsin, Missouri, and Indiana, and received letters and postcards from many more. Even though we've been bad about reaching out to people this year, as we've been emotionally and mentally drained almost constantly, they've kept in contact with us, and it's meant everything.
This year i have felt everything more deeply than ever before.
Love you all.
Anyway am i gonna talk about music or what???
1. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
https://www.petshopboys.co.uk/home
There was a day early on in the pandemic when Amanda was still working that i ended up staring out the window and listening to West End Girls on repeat for over an hour. See, I've finally gotten around to working on editing our Europe footage, and i was looking for London bands for the London scenes, and i. Just. Stopped. For a while. Later in tbe lockdown i would be waiting for my takeout at a ramen place and this would come on the radio and give me pandemic flashbacks...even though i was still in the pandemic.
2. D/A/D - Ce Jeu (w/Yelle)(D/A/D remix)
https://dadmusic.bandcamp.com/
https://yelle.fr/
It's a ten-year-old remix of a 13-year-old French pop song littered with samples from a 38-year-old Heaven 17 song...and it is my absolute favorite find of the year. Many nights i would be coming home late from set with this song on repeat as loud as my car speakers would go without distorting horrifically. And I'm always happy when a piece of music I'm really into rubs off on Amanda to the point where she recognizes and requests it. (For those who are new here, hi! Amanda only knows nine bands and most of the time doesn't care what music is playing. She enjoys music, she just...does not remember artists, titles, or frankly, usually, songs.)
Hunting down the original artist was a bit of a challenge. D/A/D lists it on their Bandcamp page as though it were an original composition, and i suppose it is, but usually when something is sampled so heavily as to call it a remix, you should definitely credit the original performer and/or writer. It took me a few hours to pull the name Yelle out of the internet, since i had almost no idea how to search for it.
This is the first of four tracks in French this year.
3. Dance with the Dead - The Dawn
https://dancewiththedead.bandcamp.com/
Dance With The Dead has been literally my favorite band for a couple years now, and this year i finally broke down and bought their entire discography and some shirts...and stickers, and a pin...rather than subsisting on whatever could be found free on the internet like i do with most new artists. It's not that i don't want to support them, far from it, I'm just still so attached to physical media and paying for digital downloads still seems like a scam to me. But their CDs are hard to find, and i don't have space for them anyway, and they had a nice summer sale...so i bought uhhhhh...(checks notes)...everything.
This song comes to us from their new EP, Blackout. I love it.
4. Hollywood Burns - Black Saucers
https://hollywoodburns.bandcamp.com/
Speaking of pillaging Bandcamp for all i could set my grubby hands on for free, since leaving my punk and metal roots behind a few years ago when i discovered Dance With the Dead and by extension the entire synthwave genre, i...literally did that, the thing at the beginning of this sentence. Twice, once ladt February right before i moved to LA and once this February to refresh the pile. Almost all of last year, when i was alone in LA, i had my iPod in the car, shuffling that great synthy bounty with my Feminachos playlist you may remember from years past, and it was all i needed, every day. I think the shuffle topped 2500 played songs before the iPod overheated one day and reset the playlist.
Anyway. I've continued shuffling those playlists in the car, and it's helped me discover which synthwave artists i really like snd which i can live without. Like how i used Napster in high school to decide which CDs to go out and buy. And I've ended up investing in several of these artists as a result, since that subtle mental hangup about buying digital files has been weakening.
This song came up in the grand shuffle at some point this year, and i liked it for obvious reasons (long-standing obsession with classic sci-fi movies and tropes; i was raised on Star Trek and consequently as a kid branched into lots of sci-fi from the 40s/50s/60s). It got tagged, and i started paying more attention to Hollywood Burns. Good stuff.
Also. In searching for their web site to include under the heading here, i've just discovered that Hollywood Burns is also from France.
5. Ex-Machina - Night of the Rottweiler IV (Main Theme)
https://ex-machina.bandcamp.com/
You can take everything i just said about that Hollywood Burns song above and apply it to this one, but replace "sci-fi" with "horror," because you bet your ass i was into that too. I would watch MST3K, and then seek out those films and similar fare to also watch without the commentary. My favorite old-school sci-fi/horror flicks were 10,000 Years to Earth and The Omega Man. So these two tracks really hit that nostalgia button for me, a child in the 90s, pining for the 40s.
6. Run the Jewels - Walking in the Snow
https://runthejewels.com/
"Protest record of the year." Uh. Yeah. Yes. That.
One of the very few physical CDs i went out and bought this year, truly haunting stuff. An unflinching view at 21st century America.
This song was actually written about the murder of Eric Garner, but was released just after the murder of George Floyd, which sparked the nationwide uprisings we saw this year. The details are eerily, disgustingly, and predictably similar.
This is history in the making.
7. Dan Terminus - Death By Distortion
https://dan-terminus.bandcamp.com/
Alright we took a break with that one fantastic rap track but now we're back to more of that synthwave shit that i keep swimming in lately. Dan Terminus is another one that i got really into just from having his songs come up constantly in that shuffle. His songs are heavier and hit with more power than most of the synthwave i listen to, sidling up more nicely with Dance With The Dead than, say, Mitch Murder. There's a nice sci-fi/action vibe to them, and the song titles really get me. Death By Distortion is okay as a title i guess but it's names like Stratospheric Cannon Symphony (included on last year's PAC), Universal Declaration of Cyborg Rights, Dirge of the Ancient Machines, and such that really get me.
8. Apollo Zapp - Abruzzo Hills
https://apollozapp.bandcamp.com/album/synthetic-flower-fields
Not much to say about this one really. I just like it. Another one from the shuffle that just stuck out in my mind for some reason. Makes me feel like i'm playing an old Sega game. Maybe it's just because the title sounds like a Sonic the Hedgehog level.
9. Mitch Murder - Of Below
https://mitchmurder.bandcamp.com/
As i alluded above, Mitch Murder is one of my go-to synthwave artists; also, frankly, one of the biggest names in the genre. I think. I don't really have a lot of friends that are into this stuff that i can talk to about it and i don't listen to the radio or follow news, uh, magazines or...m..t...v? Is MTV still real? Anyway. Last year i felt like i kind of gave Mr. Murder the shaft by sticking a 90 second transition track from the Kung Fury outtakes on the PAC, awkwardly jammed into what little sliver of space i had left over, just to get one of his songs in. I don't feel really bad about it though, because that track still slaps. Just maybe not as much as his more longform, more intentional creations. So here's a much better representation of Mitch Murder's work, Of Below. I feel like the bulk of his body of work is a little less heavy and rock-oriented than this though, so...maybe still not an accurate representation of his oeuvre. I don't know. I'm just typing words at this point. Listen to Mitch Murder.
10. Garth Knight - Video Hallucination
https://soundcloud.com/garth_knight
Okay when i was looking for a Garth Knight web site, i couldn't find a Bandcamp page featuring the album this track is from. His Facebook lists his official site as Soundcloud, so i guess i'll point you at that one. But i'm not seeing this song there either. Did i hallucinate this entire EP? Oh that's the title. I swear i wasn't making a joke. Probably.
This song is from his EP The New Flesh, which features samples from the movie Videodrome on all three tracks, a film which the record will show that i enjoy. I know there was another song called Torture and Murder but the internet has no record of that in any place that i'm willing to search.
I am finding that i need to look up more of these synthwave artists on Soundcloud rather than just Bandcamp though, because several of them have had treasure troves of free remixes and b-sides, just sitting there for the taking.
11. Icona Pop - I Love It
https://www.iconapop.com/
Hey remember that Very Good Joke™ i told earlier about how Amanda only knows nine bands? That's an old version of the joke, she's probably up to fifteen by now. And Icona Pop is one of them! I'm not sure what i did but a couple years ago i got her hooked on this song. She's been using my Pandora account more often lately, since it's logged in on the smart TV, and built a station around Icona Pop. Since this is their biggest hit, that Pandora station tends to frequently rotate through several remixes of I Love It, so we hear versions of this song a lot.
When it came time for her to pick her song for the final Reservoir Dolls mixtape she would contribute to, as she retired from playing roller derby with them last year, she chose this song after very little debate. Her teammates mailed her copies of both the 2020 Res Dolls disc and a very special mix that they put together just for her after her cancer diagnosis. Both of them spent a lot of time in the car this year, prompting lots of California interstate high-speed shout-alongs to throwing your shit in a bag and pushing it down the stairs.
So this one's as much for her as it is for me. I love it.
12. Betamaxx - Punks in the Disco
https://betamaxxmusic.bandcamp.com/
Betamaxx is usually more on the synth end of retrowave, but this one dropped into that shuffle one day and god damn is that bass line catchy. It should come as no surprise that this is from their B-Sides collection. Some of their more mainline work steers a little too far into 80s pop ballad territory for my tastes.
Which is why, when looking for their web site, i god damn near got tricked into posting the homepage for an identically-named 80s cover band operating out of San Diego. Don't be fooled! We are looking for the one from Pittsburgh.
13. Dessa - Fighting Fish
https://www.dessawander.com/
Building off of what was said about Track 11 up there, this is from one of the mixes that the Reservoir Dolls sent over. I was unaware of Dessa. This is one of two songs that they included, and it really hooked me in an unexpected way.
Got a lot of imperfections but i don't count my ambition in em
14. Pellep Pellep Pellep - Juicy Party & Drinks Fruités (Elektro-Boy Breakfast Club remix)
https://twitter.com/PellepX3
Here's another song in French.
I don't know where i found this one. It was in my Bandcamp shuffle but it's the only Pellep Pellep Pellep song in there, and there's no Elektro-Boy.
I don't know what he's saying but i really like the way he delivers it. Although, when i was briefly considering putting this year's PAC out as a Spotify playlist per David's suggestion, all i could find of this song was the original version, and it just doesn't hit as nicely. Remix or nothing. Give me those synthy synths.
15. Caravan Palace - Je M'amuse
https://www.caravanpalace.com/
Okay when i said before there are four songs in French, i was cheating a little and including this one. The title's in French and the band is based in Paris, but the only lyrics are really "ba da ba da da bum, baaa ba dada!"
I think i was introduced to Caravan Palace from another one of the Reservoir Dolls' mixtapes a couple years ago. If not directly, i must have come across them while investigating Parov Stelar, from a Res Dolls mix. But as they relate to this year, it's again from while working on that pesky, 7-years-overdue Eurotrip movie, trying to come up with bands i know from Paris or at least France to score those scenes. Unfortunately i've been stuck on the Paris stuff for months and haven't picked the edit back up, so it will definitely be at least 8 years overdue by the time i get there, but i definitely still plan to use this song!
It's a little funny how into synthwave i am now, looking back on the electro-swing phase i passed through briefly a few years earlier. One of those should have led to the other.
16. Beatbox Machinery - Miles Away
https://beatboxmachinery.bandcamp.com/
One of the first big purchases of digital music i made this year was when online record label Werkstatt Recordings put up their e n t i r e discography at an exorbitant discount. As if you had to ask, yes, this is a synthwave/retrofuture label. I don't remember the exact numbers but after stacking two or three discounts it came out to over 300 releases for something like €25. So, i, um, bought that. Bandcamp, unfortunately, does not have an option to batch download your entire purchase, so i had to go through and download each album individually. That did, however, give me a good opportunity to inspect the contents of my bundle. And i quickly realized that many dozens of these albums were by a single artist. "Well," i said to myself, "i sure hope i like Beatbox Machinery."
As it turns out, they're...okay. But perusing their discography drives home an important point that i picked up from a tumblr meme. Pablo Picasso created over 50,000 known pieces of art in his lifetime. How many are celebrated as masterpieces today? Less than 100. Art is a numbers game. Get creating. Your failures and mediocrities are as important to success as your masterworks. And you usually don't know which are which until they're released.
So as expected, this massive body of work, which i ended up pretty lukewarm on overall, contains a few gems. Like this one. That main synth riff would get stuck in my head constantly this summer.
Plus i just really liked juxtaposing this title next to the following song. The title, and the overall spacey feeling of the two.
17. Cosmo Cocktail - Gagarin! Don't Look Back!
https://cosmococktail.bandcamp.com/
Another one that i really got to know only from the figurative needle randomly dropping on it in the shuffle. I do love the atmospheric space this song puts my head in. Like i can really feel like i'm moving through infinite space, into the vast unknown, almost to the point of agoraphobia. And when you listen close, there's a lot of stuff going on in the background here. It's your starship's engines firing.
Although, if i'm being, really, truly, brutally honest...the title of this song is really what gets me. It's a good song, sure, but when i started with my list of 29 tracks and started paring them down, this one probably could have been easily cut, but i couldn't be parted with a song called Gagarin! Don't Look Back!, especially in a year when escaping the fucking Earth is the only thing on my mind. Or anyone else's, frankly.
18. Nouvelle Vague - Voilà les anges (f/Cœur de Pirate)
http://nouvellevaguemusic.com/
A French lounge/new wave cover band from Paris, Nouvelle Vague is a band my former coworker Robert had tried to get me into a few years ago. Probably because i liked Cat Power and Richard Cheese. And because they're named after one of the most influential film movements of the 20th century, the French New Wave.
So it should come as no surprise that i rediscovered them this year while working on that damn Europe movie again. Not that i am complaining! I've found myself really enjoying their covers, including another Eurotrip soundtrack choice, Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon and some of my own perennial favorites like The Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen in Love and New Order's Blue Monday.
This song is from their fourth album, Couleurs sur Paris, which is their first to be primarily sung in French and consists largely of covers of French new wave songs from the 70s and 80s...which i've never heard of. This song was originally by Gamine and translates to "Here Are the Angels," and is perfect for the Notre Dame scene in my travel movie that no one will ever see.
Huh, i just noticed they use a different lead singer on each song on the album, and one of them features Yelle. Oh and Soko!! There's a French singer i'm actually familiar with and quite like.
Alright apparently i am learning this year that i need to study French music. And maybe get back on those Rosetta Stone lessons i started in 2014.
19. Ike Reilly - Duty Free
http://ikereilly.com/
Wow that dude does not look at all like i expected.
A third and final selection from the Res Dolls mixtapes, this one speaks to the overpowering wanderlust i've been desperately trying to sate by making hiking vlogs this year. Our last international excursion was five years ago. Our last big one was the aforementioned Eurotrip seven years ago.
I gotta get out of the U.S.A a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a.
You fucking said it, Ike.
This will be the theme song to my next big vacation video.
20. The Beatles - Two of Us
https://www.thebeatles.com/
I put the frigging Beatles on the Poor-Ass Christmas?
Yeah. I guess i did.
This is of course in relation to that Eurotrip movie.
After a very brief layover in Dublin, our first proper stop on the Europalooza was Liverpool, England. We landed at the John Lennon International Airport. The bus ride immediately following brought us across Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. We stayed at the Eleanor Rigby Hotel, a block away from the famous Cavern Club. We toured The Beatles Story, a Beatles-centric museum. We saw many Beatles sites. So of course i was going to use Beatles songs to soundtrack that scene. I used about four of them but this one forms the backbone of the sequence.
I felt like it really fit the trip thematically anyway. This was a big vacation that Amanda and i took, just the two of us, with no Alyssa and no dogs and no family and absolutely no one else. The two of us on our own on an unfamiliar continent.
Two of us riding nowhere, spending someone's hard-earned pay
You and me Sunday driving, not arriving, on our way back home
Two of us sending postcards, writing letters, on my wall
You and me burning matches, lifting latches, on our way back home
You and i have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
We're on our way home
We're going home
---
The B-Sides
Okay here are the songs that got cut. It's a lot more of that more-or-less obscure Bandcamp synthwave stuff, so unless you're in that scene, it may be unrecognizable. Honestly i thought the cuts this year were more obvious and less painful than they have been in years past, so i don't feel too bad about losing any of this stuff. It's still good, for sure, but the stuff i kept was honestly much more relevant to me. To this autobiography-as-a-mixtape that i'm writing.
Pilotpriest - Green
melodysheep - The Good of the One (Spock)
Cartridge 1987 - Chase
Dan Terminus - Angelus
Dan Terminus - Giant Golden Naked Woman
Garth Knight - Overdrive
Jordan F - Final Flash
Lost Years - The Hunger
AWITW - Childhood (Tim Hutton remix)
Small note about that last one. I actually ended up buying AWITW's complete discography as well, which at the time was 130-odd releases, for like five bucks. I haven't listened to all or frankly very much of it yet, but honestly i'm not super into it. Which is unfortunate. Maybe by next year i will have plumbed those depths a little more thoroughly.
Also i just now noticed that AWITW is also from France.
