Mixtapes #5: Geoff Parkes
The best of lists that pop up at the end of the year are often hobbled by chronology or genre. It suggests that listening begins in January and ends in December or that people are experts in only one kind of music. People never really only listened to that which was made in one year, and the modern rock crit area was birthed by professional nostalgists and crate diggers. In asking a variety of professionals to mark what they were really listening to while maintaining the concept of an annual I didn’t want to engage in that act of crate digging, but I really did want to get a sense of what people were listening to. Think of it as the games people play with mix tapes, if mix tapes where really about what people listened to in 2006. The entries, comments (if offered) and biographies (if offered) are written by the critics (with their own eccentricities) themselves and they are arranged by their arrival in my inbox.
Geoff Parkes:
Bio:
geoff parkes is a former writer/reviewer who now dedicates himself to pilates, rescuing sheep, and decorating his abyss.
Singles/songs
damien rice - cannonball - O - Warner
"Still a little bit of your taste in my mouth"... this song gave me permission to crySandy Denny/Judy Collins/Eva Cassidy/Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet - Who Knows Where the Time Goes
when your heart i given to young men in florida and you dream of possibilities, all these versions made me cry with joy. of course, that joy didn't last. but the memories of possibilities have.mountain goats - get lonely - get lonely - 4AD
"And I will get lonely and gasp for air/And send your name up from my lips like a signal flare" funny how comforting this can be on bus rides from nowhere to beyondpet shop boys & the bbc concert orchestra - rent - concrete - emi
with sweeping strings and neil tennant's soul bleeding, the sweetest song ever about johns and their sugar daddies. "I love you, you pay my rent". A man can dream - can't she?dresden dolls - coin operate boy - preferably live
"I want to, I want to..." - contemporary cabaret that you can masturbate toastrud gilberto - train, boats and planes - I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do - verve
perhaps the most sultry version of this torch song with a divine tuba haunting the fragile linesliza minnelli - maybe this time - the capitol years - capitol
camus's hopeful hopelessness meets liza's torn, battered torment seeking redemption...dusty springfield - breakfast in bed - dusty in memphis - universal
dusty knows he ain't gonna stay, but like liza, she keeps on offeringryan adams - like a virgin/expressway to your soul - live acoustic - internet archive
what nick cave did to kylie, ryan does to mads, then turns it all upside down and inside out to channel thurston and kim on a crappy 6 string
albums
Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell Pt 3 - Universal
"in the land of the pig, the butcher is king"... 'nuff said.Devendra Barnhart - Live KCRW
a dreamland of comfort when composure is requiredRainer Maria - Catastrophe Keeps Us Together - Grunion
because young men can often introduce aging ones to delicacies of the sublimeKaren Dalton - in my own time - Light In The Attic Records
so blessed to hear this voice, broken, betrayed, bluesy...laura nyro and labelle - gonna take a miracle - sony
as introduced to me by "a home at the end of the world" and an album no self-disrespecting queer boi should ever be withoutjohn coltrane - a love supreme live - impulse
listen to the drums... the drumspatti smith - live, cbgbs final concert bootleg
history, caught, fleeting, triumphant over 3 cdsMorrissey - Live at Earls Court - attack
could this be Morrissey making peace with his past? not bloody likely. career spanning, he's never sounded better than when issuing his lost lament for Hector, the first of the gang with a gun is his had...
