My Favorite Concerts and Livestreams on YouTube

I really only like listening to certain live albums or performances. I often get annoyed at the loud crowd screaming over the songs and singing along badly, and the singer changing up the lyrics, encouraging the audience to sing along or showboating too much, and all too often the sound quality is awful like it was recorded on someone’s cheap smartphone, and makes your ears bleed. I typically prefer studio recordings above all else. But there are some live performances that sound as good as or even better than the studio versions. It can be nice to hear slightly different versions of the songs you love too, just to add some variety. So when I am in the mood to stream a live performance on YouTube, these are the videos I most often listen to. This list is destined to grow of course. Some are bands performing in front of a sold out arena, others are low budget affairs recorded in the artist’s home. It’s a long list, spanning many genres, so I’ll just say a few short things about each choice.  

Light Asylum - Live on KEXP

Light Asylum is a band I miss a lot. They burst onto the scene around 2013, put out one album and some singles, and nothing since. This was a performance they did for the radio station KEXP. It sounds just as good as the studio versions, but with the added character of being played live. “IPC” is still such a danceable tune that I’ve never tired of after all these years.

Kraftwerk - Minimum Maximum 

This one is a long one, a two-parter. Here Kraftwerk plays the biggest hits of their discography, accompanied by a lot of good production value. By the 21st century Kraftwerk finally had the technology to make fully realized versions of their songs they probably would have made if they could back in the 1970s. And rather than becoming quickly outdated updates like what George Lucas did to the original Star Wars trilogy, these versions improve on many elements, and exist alongside the originals rather than attempting to replace them. Also helping is that Kraftwerk concerts don’t really lend themselves to mosh pits and screaming crowds, so you can focus on the music like a studio version.

Omnia - Pagan Folklore 

This is a relaxing concert that’s nice to put on as you’re going to sleep. If I’m in the right mood for it I do like listening to new age pagan folk music like this. This is another one that has a high production value, like it was produced for a DVD. It’s inter-spliced with little introductions to each song by the singers, giving the whole thing a certain charm. 

System of a Down - Live in Yerevan

I was at this concert, and I’ll be telling my grandkids about it one day. In April 2015 System of a Down came to Armenia for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, and put on probably their best concert ever. It was a magical night. They set up right in Republic Square at the center of Yerevan, and as they played a powerful thunderstorm started and just added to the epicness. I just happened to be in Armenia doing my internships teaching English with Birthright Armenia at the time, and got to go to the concert. I was out at the edge of the crowd, so I’ve never been able to find myself in this video. But I was there, I promise. 

Ministry on Broadway, Chicago, Il. (1982) 

Synthpop Ministry is best Ministry. Here’s a pretty good quality recording of one of their earliest concerts in 1982. I find that not most live performances from before the internet age have the best sound quality unless they were being purposely recorded for an album or home video, but this one sounds good. And despite Al Jourgensen’s distaste for his own early work, he recently remastered the audio of this concert and put it up on Bandcamp. It’s a worthwhile purchase. 

Glaare - April 17, 2018

I really love the sound of this band. They only had one album at the time so this concert is short and sweet, but it sounds as good as if not sometimes better than the studio versions. The singer puts more passion into tracks like “My Love Grows in Darkness”, one of my favorite songs. It’s music you can escape with. 

Mortiis - Live at the Place, September 11, 2018

This concert was from shortly after Mortiis returned to playing dungeon synth. I went to one of his concerts in early 2020 and it was more or less exactly like this, so when I want to relive that night I listen to this. It’s darkly relaxing. Great background music at least. Especially if you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons or something like that. Or even if you just want to do a dark meditation. 

Hante - Live at St. Vitus August 7, 2018 

Hante is a French coldwave solo act by Helene de Thoury. In this performance she plays in front of a small audience, but it’s professionally shot. She plays all my favorite Hante songs in this performance. It’s impressive in this performance that she does everything herself, both sing and work the synthesizer. She makes it look so natural and easy. It’s a bit similar to the Mortiis concert above, since he did all the work himself in that video too, although he wasn’t also singing. My neurodivergent brain wouldn’t be able to multitask like that. 

Minuit Machine - Sainte Rave

On a related note, here’s a concert by Minuit Machine, another band featuring Helene de Thoury. This was a virtual concert that was live streamed in December 2020. The audio alone rivals that of the studio versions of the songs, but the dark, ominous setting of the concert just adds to the whole atmosphere, like they set up a rave in an abandoned cathedral. In fact it was so good that they’re selling a recording of the concert on Bandcamp too. It would definitely be cool to have this on vinyl. 

Theatre of Tragedy- Last Curtain Call (2010)

This was the final farewell of the legendary gothic metal band Theatre of Tragedy, the last concert they played before they split up. So you can imagine they were giving it their all for this one, and it was professionally recorded due to its importance. It’s very emotionally-charged. You even see some of the audience members tearing up at a few points, as they witness the band’s swan-song. But it was a high note to go out on. 

The Cure - Trilogy (2002)

You can’t go wrong with The Cure playing all of their best albums live in their entirety. They play Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers. I also have this one on DVD, a super lucky thrift store find. It’s over three hours, but well worth listening to, even if only in parts.

Alice in Chains - Live at the Moore, 1991

This is a great showcase of early Alice in Chains, from after the release of Facelift but before their most famous album Dirt. They were less dark at the time, and as you can probably guess I prefer their darker stuff on later albums, but there are some top notch renditions of  “Man in the Box” and “Love Hate Love” here, a couple of my favorites. It’s nice to hear Layne Staley be conversational with the audience, it feels like he’s talking to you. Sounds like someone who would be great to hang out with. 

Alice in Chains - MTV Unplugged

This was mainly going to be one entry per band, buuuut these two concerts are both so good, and different enough from one another. This legendary performance came right at the end of Layne Staley’s tenure with the band, giving them a larger discography to draw from than the other live performance I included, and in many ways represented the end of an era. Alice in Chains would go on to release two more songs before Staley’s death, but this concert really did seem like the last hurrah. Not long after this Layne Staley was in no condition to tour. You get a very different energy from the acoustic versions of many of these songs. Dark, relaxing, and beautiful. And when Staley flubs his lines during “Sludge Factory” and yells out “FUCK!”, only to be consoled by his bandmate and friend Jerry Cantrell, it actually kind of puts a human face on the band. I probably would be flubbing my lines left and right if it were me.

You have to find a playlist to watch the whole thing on YouTube, no one has it as just one video. 

Nirvana - MTV Unplugged

Can’t mention Alice in Chains Unplugged without mentioning Nirvana Unplugged too. Hits a lot of the same energetic notes that the Alice in Chains one does. Most people who listen to alternative rock will have at least heard Nirvana’s rendition of David Bowie’s “The Man who Sold the World” from this concert, which received a lot of radio play in the 1990s as I recall. It is interesting that Kurt Cobain chose to include a lot of covers, and throw some folk and blues songs in there, while “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is nowhere to be heard. My favorite performance here is “Something in the Way”, with that dreary cello in the background. Much as it would for Alice in Chains, this concert ended up being something of a final farewell for Nirvana too, recorded less than a year before Kurt Cobain’s death.

Type O Negative - Symphony for the Devil

I actually have this one on DVD too. It starts with a bunch of funny clips from Type O Negative fans, and also includes the humorous antics of the bandmates. Type O Negative has a certain brand of humor you’re either going to get or not get at all. If you just want to put a live show on and listen to music in the background of whatever you’re doing it might not be the best since the songs are inter-spliced with the band goofing off backstage, but it’s entertaining if you feel like watching the band. The music itself is great too, of course. It’s performed in front of a huge audience. A bit heavier sometimes than the studio versions. But Peter Steele’s soothing baritone voice is just as good live. 

Statiqbloom- Live for Strict Tempo, July 9, 2020

This was the livestream that got me into Statiqbloom. I had heard the track “Thin Hidden Hand” before this, but the livestream was what made me a fan. It is best listened to from beginning to end as one single work. The songs all blend into one another, maintaining a consistent dark energy throughout. I also like some of the extra voice samples that were added to the songs that weren’t on the studio versions. It has more of a raw feel than the studio versions too. 

Grey Gallows - Luna Negra/ Cold Transmission 

Grey Gallows is along my favorite Greek bands. This performance is just the duo performing in what looks to be their home, but that just leaves no interference from a pesky crowd. I like these simplistic performances. You still get a different feel for the songs. For example, the singer puts a little more passion into his singing at some points, such as in the song “Enemy”. At 20+ minutes it’s on the shorter side, but they manage to squeeze in their best hits. 

Skinny Puppy, Halloween 1986

It’s kind of hard to find live performances from this long ago that sound good, but it was produced for home video, so it passes the test. I was less than a year old when this concert happened. To think I could have been listening to Skinny Puppy all my life, but only discovered them a few years ago. Pity.

Carnal Machinery - Luna Negra Livestream

This livestream is short and sweet, with three songs packed into a little over thirteen minutes, but it’s the perfect sampler of Carnal Machinery, a dark and aggressive synth-punk act. I especially love this version of the song “Voices”, with those voice samples at the beginning adding a layer of schizophrenia to the track that is missing on the studio version.

Molchat Doma - Taksirat Festival 2020

This performance perfectly encapsulates the gloomy post-punk sound of Molchat Doma. Here they go through all their biggest hits, and since it was produced for TV and wasn’t in front of a big crowd it has optimal sound quality. As a result though it doesn’t really differ heavily from the studio versions, other than being a bit more echoing. Still a good mix to put on. 

My Cassette Album Collection

 

        I threatened to do this post earlier, and here it is, for all five of you who like looking at other people's collections of things! These are the "official" cassettes I own (plus one bootleg tape). Now I have literally hundreds of formerly blank mixtapes, but these are the comparatively few tapes that are actual albums. Some of them came from my parents, a couple actually came from my grandmother, the newest ones were purchased straight from the artist either at a concert or online, and the rest were lucky thrift store finds (and that's rarer than you think; almost every thrift shop I've been to either has country music, religious music, or Christmas music in their cassette section, hardly ever is there anything I would like). I mostly tried to group the tapes that were similar to one another, but I wasn't always able to do that for each picture.

Kraftwerk - Autobahn (bootleg)

        I'll get this one down first. This isn't an official cassette. Now a long time ago in my early teens, when I was in the Boy Scouts (which I largely loathed but that's another story), the father of one of the other kids in my troop found out I liked Kraftwerk after I wore my Kraftwerk t-shirt on one of our camping trips, so he actually made this for me. He somehow printed out a very convincing cover, but the cassette itself is one of those TDK D90 tapes that I have a bunch of. It was nice of him; I suppose it's thrilling when you're middle-aged and you find out a kid is into the music you liked when you were younger. I'm closer to being middle-aged myself now so I kind of get it. I'd heard the remixed version of "Autobahn" on Kraftwerk's The Mix album before, but the first time I heard the full version (over twenty minutes long) was from this tape. There was a lot of blank space on the tape since the actual album isn't that long, which I filled with more Kraftwerk songs.

My German Polka Tapes

        Every now and then, I like to put one of these tapes on as background music. It's very happy and relaxing music. The top two tapes were both lucky thrift store finds, but the bottom two, titled Es Singt und Klingt im Ganzen Land ("it sings and clings in the whole land") were two of the only things I inherited when my grandma Olga died in 2003 (I also got my own copy of my grandfather's memoir). She grew up in Austria and lived there until after World War II, so this was her type of music. I don't have a whole lot to remember her by, but I do have these cassettes. So I have a lot of sentimentality wrapped up in these tapes. 

My Big Band Jazz and Swing Tapes

        These were all thrift store finds. The top two are part of a set of music from the 1930's and 40's called "This Was Our Music". It's the soundtrack of a generation that by and large is gone now. This was their music. Jukebox Requests of the 1940's is the same kind of music for the most part. And we have The Hits of Judy Garland. My favorite Judy Garland song, "Never Been Blue", isn't on it unfortunately. But I snatched it anyway for like 25 cents. 

 

Paula Abdul - Forever Your Girl

        Yes, one of my sort-of guilty pleasures. I was into Paula Abdul during my early childhood. This has all her best songs; "Opposites Attract", Cold-Hearted Snake", "Straight Up", and some other lesser-known good ones. 

Some Good 80's Bands from Thrift Stores

Here we have The B-52's with Cosmic Thing, an impulse buy at a thrift store for dirt cheap. It has "Love Shack", "Roam" and "Channel Z". some old favorites of mine from that band (which I was into when I was younger).  Please was the 1986 debut album from the Pet Shop Boys, with their hit "West End Girls". This tape is in great shape, sounds as clear as a CD too. Journey's Greatest Hits was something I grew up listening to on a CD my mom owned, so it was good to find that again. And Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark is another good New Wave band which I had to snatch up when I saw the tape among all the bland country music tapes. 

Lesser-Known Guns n'Roses and Pink Floyd Albums

The Guns n' Roses tapes belonged to my parents. I grew up listening to that band. These are the albums Use Your Illusion and Lies. The Pink Floyd tape is of their album Animals. It says it was copyrighted 1977, and if the tape is actually that old it's amazing it still works. I wish I had Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall. These three tapes are linked by the fact that they're not the more famous albums of either band.

Weird Al and MC Hammer

  These are both tapes I've had since childhood. Don't ask why I have an MC Hammer tape. It's been following me around for decades now and I can't seem to get rid of it. I'm really not a fan of hip hop, but if I'm going to listen to it, I like the stuff from the 80's better than anything later. That Weird Al Greatest Hits tape accompanied many a road trip when I was a kid, and I have fond memories of it. I need to get it a new plastic case, as you can tell. I could always switch the case with a crappy country music tape from the thrift stores.

Faith No More and Korn

The Faith No More tape was definitely my mom's, she loved that band. It's my only tape with a Parental Advisory label on it. I'm a parent now and I will always think those labels are stupid. The album is Angel Dust, it doesn't really have any of my favorite Faith No More songs on it like "Epic" or "Last Cup of Sorrow", but it is what it is. Korn's Follow the Leader was an interesting find at this record store in the San Francisco Bay Area I liked to frequent when I lived there, Rasputin Records. It seems rare to find rock music from the late 1990's on cassette, as that was solidly the CD era. 

Classic Rock. And The Church.

These were tapes I remembered at the last minute when I was digging through my collection. The Black Sabbath and AC/DC tapes were from my dad. They might just be the oldest tapes in my collection (along with the Pink Floyd one), actually from the late 1970's. I only rarely listen to them, but that keeps them in good shape I suppose. I'm really not that into classic rock. Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne are some of the better ones that still hold up today, got to give them credit for their contribution to the metal genre. To me though almost all of AC/DC's songs sound the same. The Church is a misfit here, another New Wave band. Alas, it isn't the album with "Under the Milky Way" or "Reptile" on it, my favorite songs from them. 

Mortiis

I did a blog about the concert where I purchased these cassettes, two of Mortiis' dungeon synth albums. See I actually attended a concert in 2020! It was right before the coronavirus, of course.

Online and Concert Purchases

These are probably my favorites, along with maybe the Kraftwerk one. The top left one is The Midnight's album Nocturnal. The Midnight is one of the best synthwave bands out there, a revival of 80's music. To the top right is from the band Glaare, the album To Deaf and a Day. Glaare's music is amazing, I have to say. They are out of these tapes on Bandcamp page but you can still get the mp3's. I recently acquired Slow Danse With the Dead's debut album, as I mentioned in my Top 3 Songs of the Month for August. And finally I have Boy Harsher's album Careful, which I purchased at a concert last year in Tampa. 

Not Pictured

I wasn't able to dig them up, but somewhere I have the soundtrack to the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on cassette (missing the booklet sadly), as well as the soundtrack to Jurassic Park. I'm sure they're around somewhere, in a box in my closet. The Ninja Turtle soundtrack in particular has a couple good songs on it, and is a relic of my childhood.The Jurassic Park one is just instrumental, but there was a time I would buy anything with a Jurassic Park logo on it.

Anyway, that's the collection! Thanks for being bored enough to read about it. 

Mixtape Reflections: Work For Love

            So I’ve talked about the job I enjoyed having in my last post. Now I’m afraid it is time to discuss the worst job I’ve ever had; working at a call center for a furniture and bedding department, which I stayed doing for the health insurance for my pregnant wife. It was a little over a year ago that I was finally fired from this job for using too many sick days; not that they cared that my wife had just given birth and needed extra help, nor that what pushed me over the limit was actually coming down with the flu. I guess they wanted me to come to work and get everyone else sick! To them, I was a defective cog in their machine and had to be removed. But being fired was one of the best days of my life anyway. Fortunately, it’s all behind me now. I’ve talked about it on here before, in my post about how the Oz books became my main coping mechanism at a job where I was belittled, berated, dehumanized and yelled at 40 hours a week. Another thing I did between calls was keep a journal. This was allowed because we weren’t handling any confidential personal information. This journal chronicles my downward spiral into madness, but more importantly for this blog post, an entry in it chronicles my decision to make a mix tape out of the whole experience. Songs that popped in my head a lot on the job, songs that were relevant to my experiences. This is an example of how I use mixes and playlists as a form of memoir.

One of the saner couple of pages, trust me.

            Why make mixtapes about bad times in my life? Is it strictly healthy to go back to tapes like this and mope over things that happened years ago? It’s not as if I go back and listen to tapes like this that often, mind you. I guess I just don’t like forgetting eras of my life, bad or good. Like all human beings who don’t have unusually strong photographic memories, I have a mild case of amnesia. I have only the vaguest sense of what I was doing more than two days ago on any given day. Let alone five, ten, fifteen years ago. And I don’t know if my memory has been getting worse as the years go on. It’s a little scary. But I retain memories in songs. It’s important to remember the past so you can learn from it. Those who don’t are doomed to repeat it, as the cliché goes. I also think a part of me feels triumph in overcoming past hardships. I survived working this horrible job. Never again.

            Included on the tape are samples of songs from the hold music I was tormented with, day in day out. How I grew to despise these songs. They’re on here as a reminder, lest I ever forget. Of course, it’s not the full songs. I would be on hold often, either to speak to a team leader for help, escalate Karen the Furious Soccer Mom to a supervisor, call in for NPT (non-phone time, I think is what it stood for; basically permission to be off the phone so I could finish processing a refund or whatever else). The songs were “Stockholm Syndrome” by One Direction, “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, “That’s the Way it Is” by Celine Dion, “Chariot” by Gavin DeGraw, and “Everlasting Love” by Howard Jones. These are my least favorite songs in the world, and to this day if I hear them somewhere, I get horrible flashbacks. The people who made these songs and sold them to a call center company to be used as hold music deserve to be strapped to a chair and forced to listen to the song they created on loop for 40 hours a week.  I remade this tape as a Spotify playlist, but did not include these songs, not only to spare the ears of whoever reads this blog and wants to listen to my mix, but because I heard the artists make a tiny bit of money when their song is played on Spotify, and I wouldn’t want that.

Work For Love - Spotify Playlist

Ministry – Work For Love

            The mix starts with some hold music before transitioning into “Work For Love” by Ministry, the tape’s namesake. Love was the only reason I kept working at this call center, so it is fitting in that sense. It makes me think back to my early days starting the job, before I became traumatized by it.

Type O Negative - I Don’t Wanna be Me

Next is a song that often pops into my head when I’m trapped in some horrible situation I don’t want to be in. This job really did make me not want to be me anymore.

Brotherhood - Damned

This a song that often came to my mind on the job. The chorus “I’m damned if I do, I’m damned if I don’t, there is no hope” spoke to me at the time. Being at the call center did make me feel like I was damned. Surrounded by broken souls, in Hell.

Weird Al Yankovic - “Callin’ in Sick”

This is a little break from the doom and gloom on the tape, a triumphant ode to faking sick to take the day off from work, sticking it to the man. There were days where I could call in sick in order to get a three-day weekend. Other times, I just mentally couldn’t handle being there that day. Yes, this probably contributed to my being fired for taking too many sick days, ultimately. I guess I’m just not as good of a worker as a soulless robot.

Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence

            The next song on the mix is “Enjoy the Silence”, which lyrically reminded me of the silence between phone calls. On Sundays I could go a good twenty minutes in between phone calls sometimes, so I would purposely try to work on Sundays. On holidays, there could be even longer between calls. But more normally the calls were back to back all day. Eventually, the silence would end with a horrible beep in my headset. ”Words like violence, break the silence”. You’d never know when that beep would come and words would break the silence. You never knew if you were about to get someone fairly nice, or someone who was about to scream at you. The anxiety builds and builds. It’s like Chinese water torture.

Mortiis - Marshland

            I’ve discussed in length Mortiis’ song “Marshland” before. It's kind of strange how often he comes up on this blog. I suppose he is one of my favorite musicians, as well as a bit of a role model for me. The next few songs follow the theme of “the machine”. That is what the corporation is like. Cold, unfeeling, only caring about profit, not people. “Nothing that I say or do, matters to the big machine. Nothing that I think or feel, matters to the big machine. And if I’m dead when tomorrow’s gone, the big machine will just move on.”

Kraftwerk – The Robots

The next song, Kraftwerk’s “The Robots”, continues the theme. The Russian lyric in the song translates to “I’m your slave, I’m your worker”. I think this song is about capitalism. When you work at a call center, you are just a number. A statistic. Completely replaceable. They're listening in on your calls, they can check what's going on your computer screen, your bathroom breaks are strictly timed, and you will be lectured and derided by your team leader in coaching when none of their statistics are satisfactory. They own you. No privacy, no freedom. Paid the barest minimum the company can get away with paying you. The only reason there’s health insurance is so that you’re so terrified of getting fired and losing that insurance you’ll be their completely loyal robot. Why do you think there’s no universal healthcare in the United States? Because then no one would be stuck doing these shitty jobs, that’s why.

The Cure – Cold

This song is here mainly because I listened to it a lot at the time I was working at the call center. It conveys the depression I felt. I felt dehumanized and hopeless. Its here more for the energy of the music than the lyrical content.

Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine

This song came to me again one day as I was writing in my journal and waiting for the next terrible call to come in. I was here because my wife was pregnant. Here in this Hell. Is this the world I was bringing my son into? Where people are raised from the cradle up to be brainwashed and exploited? Turned into obedient workers? That’s the whole point of school in this country after all. And am I supposed to lie to him for his whole childhood about how horrible the world really is? This song is about doing just that I think. It’s about giving your son a sheltered childhood, and then introducing him to the soulless real world when he reaches adulthood. I still struggle with these questions, even if I’m in a somewhat better place now.

Sadie Killer – The Working Dead

This is where Side B starts, Side A ending with a sample of crappy hold music. So yes, I’ve watched the cartoon Steven Universe, and that’s where this song is from. An anthem to those who hate their dead end jobs, it is all too appropriate for this mix, and a song I came to listen to a lot during my short breaks. Steven Universe is an unexpected source for music that speaks to me, but here we are I guess. And Spotify even had it. 

The Kovenant - Mannequin

This song reminded me of my poor, broken co-workers, drowning in a sea of cubicles, especially the ones who had been there for years, for whom any hope of a better life had dissolved, any dreams they once had, pulverized to dust. “You’re just another faceless mannequin, you’re just another fallen star.” You lose your identity, your very sense of being, working in a call center. You are merely the face of the company. Merely a recording. A robot. I could have become one of them. I almost did. The journal entry I posted up above shows you the moment I realized it should be on this mix.

Gwar – Sick of You

And the next few songs are dedicated to those horrible customers. Oh, how sick I was of them. Their entitlement. Their first world problems. The ones who just would not shut up. I would sing this song to myself sometimes after putting them on hold and transferring them somewhere.

Twiztid – Kill Somebody

I would get this mad sometimes. There’s only so much abuse I can take. Some people forget they’re talking to human beings. I’ve been yelled at, called a retard among other things, treated like shit. Working at a call center is like being a urinal. You’re just there to be pissed on by random people. You’re not a person, you’re an object, there to serve the purpose of being pissed on. Sometimes people will throw a wad of gum in there or something even worse. They’re not supposed to, but who’s really going to stop them? When I reached my limit, I would sometimes hit the phone or the computer screen. One time I tore my stress ball into tiny little pieces. And that’s what this song is there to illustrate.

The Sweeney Todd Soundtrack – Epiphany

“There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit and it’s filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it. But not for long. They all deserve to die…” This song illustrates well the darkest depths that this job pushed me to. This job made me hate humanity. It made me long for an asteroid to just smack into the Earth and wipe everyone out.

Faderhead – This is Your World

The second song that bashes the world which led me to be trapped in this job, at least until I was finally fired. “This is your world, I don’t wanna live here.” And I really didn’t, when I worked here. I wanted to go live in Oz. Or at least Armenia.

White Ring – IXC99

This song is kind of a calm down song after the previous two. A song I liked while I was working at the call center. It’s still dark, but a little calmer. Save for the shotgun blast in the background.

Audiotherapie – Devil’s Mind

“Consumption, is that enough to satisfy your needs? All the things you learned, he is going to earn. Money is your religion, money rules your world.” This is a song about the kind of world we live in, where corporations and the rich rule, all that matters is money, and we’ve all been brainwashed into consumerism. The kind of world where, even though I wanted to be an author and artist and got a Master’s degree in Creative Writing, I was still trapped in a job I hated, stripped of my dignity and pride, berated, and nearly destroyed. The artist has no place in this world, where everything has to be quantified, and if it is not useful to the billionaire class it is discarded and treated as if it has no worth. Money is a religion, especially in the United States. Money is God. Money is how the powerful stay powerful. I hate money. I hate, to my very core, whoever it was in history that came up with the idea of money. Hate them. Let's go back to bartering. 

This one isn’t on Spotify or YouTube as far as I can tell. I first heard it on the Communion After Dark podcast. So, I’ll just link to their Bandcamp page.

https://audiotherapie.bandcamp.com/track/devils-mind

Switchblade Symphony – Sweet

This, like “Cold” by The Cure, is kind of only here for the energy of it. But lyrics like “Broken people, hollow and feeble” describe the people who worked at this call center. So it fits. The song reminds me of when I would just give in to the despair. I would lose the energy and will to be angry or sad. I would stop feeling anything, and just accept my fate. Become the robot. A faceless mask. A bard no more.

Voltaire – Underground

“Six walls of wood, to keep them out. The smart remarks, the screams the shouts. They scream, they shout. There’s only one way to drown them out.” Yes. There were days, when the job pushed me to these depths of sorrow. Days where sleep was my only escape from the nightmare that my waking hours had become. Days where…I wished I could have stayed asleep. Just to drown out the smart remarks, screams and shouts.

David Bowie – I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday

This song to me represents the dreams that I had and still have, which kept me alive for those months I worked at this call center. I wasn’t going to be one of those people stuck working there for ten years. I couldn’t give up. I didn’t know when I was going to get out of there, but I knew it would happen eventually. Just like I don’t know when I’ll be a successful author and cartoonist, but I know it’ll happen one day.

So there’s a takeaway from this mixtape, even though it chronicles a very bleak, hopeless time in my life. Nothing bad lasts forever. Every storm runs out of rain. Your present situation isn’t your final destination. All those feel-good slogans you can think of that mean that the torture will eventually end.

Now the day I got fired, I knew I’d used up my attendance credits. I wasn’t going to say anything; I was going to make as much money as I could before I was canned. My team leader wasn’t there for a couple days, so I actually worked a couple more days before she arrived; forty-five minutes into my shift, she called me up, let me know I’d overused my credits, and told me to clean out my desk. I grabbed my stuff, and left. It took a while to sink in that I was finally free. I went home, laid in bed, and just tried to come to grips with it. I checked my subscriptions on YouTube, and the synthwave channel New Retro Wave had just uploaded the song “Let Go” by Kalax. It seemed to fit the moment. This tape had already been made and is only 90 minutes long, but if it were possible to add to it without recording over another song, I’d have had this as a bonus track. The song signaling the final end of my time at this awful call center. It was time to let go of all of that negativity and move on with my life. I worked in two other call centers after this unfortunately, but neither of them were as bad. I’m still haunted by the experience but I am in a much better place now.

Mix CD Reflections: Cold

            One night I was looking for the song "Cold" by The Cure on my computer. I typed the word “cold” into the search bar on Windows Media Player, and it came up with a list of songs that had the word “cold” somewhere in the title. I started listening to the list, and realized a lot of the songs went well together. Each has a unique way of using and defining the concept of cold. I then started a playlist and added songs that use the word “cold” in their lyrics somewhere too. I probably should have been doing something more productive with my time, but, that’s how the idea for this mix came about, as well as others I plan on making centered around other concepts. I may do an extended cassette version of the mix later on, but for now, it’s a CD mix.

            The Cure – Cold

“I was cold as I mouthed the words, and crawled across the mirror. I wait, await the next breath, your name like ice, into my heart.”

            This song is darkly beautiful. As far as my tastes in music goes I prefer The Cure’s darker albums, such as Pornography and Disintegration. Their pop music is okay, but a bit more shallow, in a way. "Cold" in this song is more of a feeling, an emotion, than literal cold. Perhaps it’s a song of lost love. The lyrics are hard to comprehend, but I think that’s what it’s about. What would it take for someone’s name to be like ice into your heart? Like being stabbed in the heart with an icicle? If even the mere mention of a name brings such an association to mind you’d have to have very strong feelings, either negative or tragic. Perhaps of a lover that left you or died. Or perhaps not of a lover at all, I could be way off. The singer doesn’t have to be singing about a woman, or even a person. 

           

            Ornamenti d’Oro – Humedad 72% ( A Cold Wind)

            I can’t find the lyrics to this one anywhere, and since the title is in Spanish, I probably wouldn’t understand them either. But this is a very atmospheric track, the last one on Obscura Undead’s UnObscured 2019 compilation, which I’ve discussed numerous times already. The description that came with the digital album suggests this song wouldn’t be out of place in a fog-shrouded cemetery, and I have to agree. Although the image that I get listening to this song is a desolate, frozen tundra, lit only by moonlight, whipped by freezing winds. It continues the energy of the previous track.            

            Coldwave Kids (South Park Goth Song Cover) – Accumortis

             

This song may be cheating, because it has no lyrics, and “coldwave” refers to the musical genre. But it has the secret word in the title!

"It's the secret word of the day! AAAAHHHHH! HA-HA!!"

 This was made by the Youtube user Accumortis, and is a cover of the song that the goth kids from South Park listen to. However, let us consider for a moment why the genre of coldwave has that name. The genre was apparently first applied to Kraftwerk, yet another of the dozens of genres they helped launch, and came to refer to music which uses minimal synth,usually with sparse, monotone vocals. Listening to music in this genre, for some reason I do feel a certain coldness. A robotic, emotionless type of coldness, perhaps. I can’t properly articulate why coldwave in general, and this song in particular, elicits thoughts of coldness. The song makes me think of a clear, starry winter night. It also makes me ponder why we associate coldness with the things that we do. We associate it with emotionlessness, to be unkind, unforgiving, even cruelty. And we associate warmth with kindness and love. It’s strange if you think about it.

            Mortiis – Marshland

“I’m stuck and cold, I’m stuck and cold in Marshland. I’m stuck and cold where life is plentiful but nothing lives.”

            Perhaps the marshlands of Norway where Mortiis is from get cold. They’re not cold in Florida or California, really, which are the only marshlands I’ve ever been to. I’ve written about this song on this blog before and dissected its lyrics. The use of the word “cold” in this song goes along with what I’ve mentioned; emotionless, lifelessness, cruelty. The chorus goes on to talk about the machine”, which doesn’t care what you think or feel and will keep moving on if you die. To me, the machine represents our society, where materialism is valued over people. Thus, though the word “cold” only plays a minor role lyrically, the associations that it brings permeate throughout the whole song.

            And One – Years

“Years are getting colder, just memories left behind.”

            This is another song I’ve previously discussed. Lyrically the song doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but I like this particular line. It reminds me of becoming more jaded and cynical, i.e. “colder”, as the years go on and you lose more and more of your innocence. Cold here can mean jaded, depressed, bitter, hardened, as the dreams you had when you were young seem more and more unattainable as soon as you start to grasp the cold reality of how the world works.

            Ministry – Cold Life

“Earth gets colder every day, if scientists could have their way, they’d study us from far away and watch as people’s minds decay.”

            An early Ministry track from their synthpop days (but it never made it on With Sympathy, so Al Jourgensen can't really claim the record companies forced him to make it), although this one has more of a funk sound to it, like early Red Hot Chili Peppers. The use of “cold” here is much as I said in the previous song. I don’t know if I agree with him on scientists. Maybe some scientists are that “cold” and detached from sentiment. The ones who do animal testing probably are. The song is about a cold, pessimistic outlook on life, and the world. Later in the song we have lyrics such as “Earth is such a filthy place and humans such an awful race.” In actuality the world is overall becoming warmer every day due to rampant climate change that’s going to doom us all pretty soon, but metaphorically, I think it is becoming a colder place as well. Of course, that said, the world has always been a harsh place, and humans have always been an awful race. The “good old days” are an illusion. The world is a colder place for those of us entering adulthood.

            Bella Morte – Break this Cold

“Walk this winter mile, under the snow, knowing the sun won’t ever break this cold.”

            At long last, a more literal meaning of the world “cold”. Days like this are sadly very rare where I live, in Florida. But this song is about those winter days where it’s sunny, but paradoxically, still bitter cold. Not even the sun is enough to warm the day. I sometimes wish I lived in an area where it snowed. But everyone I talk to who does seems to hate it. Yet snow gets romanticized every year around December even in areas where it never snows. When I lived in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, everyone would get so excited when little Mt. Diablo (just under 4,000 feet high) got snow. In Florida people make “sandmen” instead of snowmen. The bigger cities in both states will often have parades or events where fake snow is generated from machines. Ice skating rinks can be found in both states, even in the town which I find myself in now, Rockledge. Snow is one of those things. Those who don’t have it, want it. Those who get it, don’t want it. As for the song, it’s about a winter cold that defies even the sun. A cold that I miss and long for. Especially when it gets over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in December here in Florida.

            Hante – In Cold Water

“And I’m scared I won’t survive tomorrow if I let myself sink deeper. You can’t go back from the abyss of sorrow. How could I keep breathing in cold water?”

            Hante is a coldwave band (insert Pee Wee Herman scream here) from France, that I’ve been a fan of for a couple years now, ever since I heard the song “Empty Space”. In the lyrics to this song, the singer is walking along the beach and is drawn toward the ocean, walking deep into the cold waters, and wondering how deep they can go before they drown. I think the “cold water” here is a metaphor for depression, the clue being the reference to the abyss of sorrow. How deep can they sink and still survive? As someone with depression, I definitely relate. It can give you a sinking, drowning feeling when it becomes overwhelming. The word “cold” isn’t overall very important to the lyrics as a whole; in fact, it may only be there to make the number of syllables add up. But its inclusion does bring with it its own implications. She could have substituted “warm”, “blue”, or “deep”, but the song writer chose “cold” for a reason. Likely because of its nonliteral interpretations, all of which I’ve mentioned.

            Le Matos – Cold Summer

“In the forest, why does it feel so cold? Feels so cold in the summer. In the forest, I’m growing cold, feels so cold in the summer.”

            Having it be cold outside in the summer sounds amazing. Especially in Florida. The only places I’ve been where it can get cold in the summer are Monterey, California, Vanadzor, Armenia (as well as anywhere on around Lake Sevan), and maybe up in the mountains anywhere. All places I wish I lived. Anyway, as for the song lyrics; no one expects it to be cold in the summer. It doesn’t sound like the singer is happy that it’s cold (like I would be). So here, cold symbolizes an unexpected disappointment. If taken literally, maybe this song is about a summer camping trip that went awry due to unexpected weather. But if you look into the alternate implications which the word ”cold” has in the English language, you can make your own metaphorical interpretations from there. Perhaps this is a metaphor for being treated “coldly” by a loved one from whom you expected “warmth”, or affection. It could mean any number of things.

            Hoffen – Cold Tears of an Angel

“Cold tears of an angel, are devastated with treason and lies.”

            This one isn’t the easiest song to interpret, but I found the full lyrics on Hoffen’s Bandcamp page. Tears are generally warm, coming from the body which is a steady 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps angels are different? It’s a song about being betrayed by someone, and if angels are generally seen as pure and innocent (though they aren’t always in many myths), the lyrics give the sense of a loss of innocence. The betrayal of someone who is not used to shedding tears. Someone who is now “cold” on the inside, and therefore so are their tears.

            Paula Abdul – Cold-Hearted

“He’s a cold-hearted snake, look into his eyes. Uh-oh, he’s been telling lies.”

            Oh goodie, time to admit to a guilty pleasure. I spent much of my early childhood watching MTV in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, where I inevitably became a fan of Paula Abdul. She was probably my first crush. I never stopped liking her music, even after I got into metal and then goth music. Pop music in the 1980’s is still way more tolerable than pop music from the late 1990’s onward. Singers still had to have some degree of musical talent back then. In any case, the usage of the word “cold” in this song is related to its use in the previous song. The singer is warning others about their ex-lover who cheated on them. To be “cold-hearted”, by this song’s definition and in the general sense of the idiom, is to have the ability to betray the love and trust of someone who loves you without any remorse. I’ll be doing another mix like this with the word “heart”, where I can discuss the implications of that word in its literal and metaphorical senses.

            New Order – Blue Monday

“Tell me how does it feel, when your heart grows cold?”

            People have analyzed the meaning of this well-known song already in the past. It seems to be about being in some kind of a relationship (whether romantic or not isn’t stated, but somewhat implied) with someone who is manipulative and controlling. This made it a very good break-up song for me with my first girlfriend. Ah, fun times. The last line in the song is the one above. Again, we have the “cold-hearted” idiom, which can only be taken metaphorically. The person being sung about in the song is unfeeling and unsympathetic, and the narrator wonders how it feels to become that way, to no longer care about others. This is what it means to be cold, or cold-hearted.

            Kamelot – On the Coldest Winter Night

“On the coldest winter night, this moment is our right.”

            Let’s look at a song that’s not about a failed romance now (well okay, the romance does fail in a major way later in the album, which is a concept album based on the story of Goethe’s Faust, but nevermind that). This song just makes me feel all warm and toasty inside. It’s all about cozying up with your true love on the coldest night of the year and having a moment of passion with them. The world outside is cold, maybe in both the lyrical and metaphorical senses, but love warms this couple in spite of all that. I’ve always loved this album, Epica. I suppose Kamelot is a melodic power metal band, but you’d never be able to tell with this song, which is mainly soft piano and vocals. If more people only listened to this album it would be more popular.

            Serj Tankian – Garun a

“My sweetheart has become cold. Akh, I wish for my rival’s tongue to dry up.”

            Serj Tankian covers an old Armenian folk song popularized by Komitas Vardapet in this track. The full lyrics aren’t very long. It’s spring yet still snowy, the singer’s lover has ”become cold”, and it seems to somehow be the singer’s rival’s fault (if the final line is connected to the other two at all). I have an intermediate understanding of the Armenian language, but I can’t say I know if the word for cold has the same several meanings it has in English. The word specifically in this song is սառել, meaning “to become cold”, as the act of becoming cold is it’s own one-word verb in the language (nifty, isn’t it?) Has she become cold because the singer is in a love triangle with their rival, and she’s choosing the rival over him? Or is she literally cold, perhaps even dead, and the rival is to blame? I can’t really say for certain, unfortunately. Wishing for someone’s tongue to dry up must be an old-world curse, I take it. Maybe someone else knows the correct interpretation of this song. I’ve heard renditions of this song that are upbeat, danceable even, but this one sounds tragic and heart-wrenching. It’s a tear-jerker. I remember it best because I listened to it on repeat on my last day in Armenia and moped because I was leaving my beloved country. This song brings me back to that last day. I’ll blog about that day on its anniversary this October.

Dishwalla – Counting Blue Cars

“It’s getting cold, picked up the pace. How our shoes, make hard noises in this place.”

            Following the sentimental tear-jerker theme this mix is now on, we have this gem from my 1990’s childhood. It’s hard to say what this song is really about when you look at the lyrics. “Tell me all your thoughts on God, because I’d really like to meet her.” Having God be referred to as a female is kind of interesting.  Maybe the singer is Wiccan. Anyway, the word “cold” isn’t doing a whole lot in this song. Perhaps if I find a song more centered on cold I would eliminate this one from the list. Not that I don’t like it, of course. It’s a song from when I was pure and innocent, before Middle School destroyed it all. But yeah, if I make a mix of songs about God I’ll have more to say about this.

Eisbrecher – Eiskalt Erwischt

“You smell me, you chase me, you have me, captured ice cold.”

            And now for some German. We’re kicking it up a notch now after the last several songs to a speedy industrial metal song. Maybe I should have put more of a mid-level heavy song between this one and the previous as more of a buffer. But, I consider this mix kind of a work in progress anyway. The band, “Eisbrecher”, translates to “ice breaker”, and the song roughly translates to “Captured Ice Cold”. Coldness is a common theme in Eisbrecher’s songs, unsurprisingly. The band sounds a lot like Rammstein to the untrained ear, making it even more amusing when he says “Du has mich” several times throughout this song. The song is very carnal, about being chased down and captured by your lover and enjoying it. But with lyrics like “I tear the cold heart from your chest every night with lust”…yeah, maybe it’s more than just sado-masochism. As long as it’s consensual, whatever floats your boat I guess. I’m unsure if “eiskalt erwischt” is a common German idiom. My last German class was a long time ago now. I’m better at Armenian at this point. Maybe it means something akin to being “caught red-handed” in English. That would be my guess. If true, that would be an altogether different way to look at the word “cold”.

The Kovenant – Through the Eyes of the Raven

“My tears no longer turned to frost, my eyes they gleam no more. Triumphant pride forever lost. King Winter, where’s thy cold?”

            I’ve discussed at length Covenant/The Kovenant’s debut album In Times Before the Light, an important album of my formative years. This song is almost like a prayer, or a summoning. A summoning of the cold of winter. Later on in the song the singer even makes offerings (“Make me frozen cold as ice, I give to thee my blinded eyes”). King Winter here is kind of a representation of winter, like a God of Winter. This is sung by someone who misses winter and hates summer, but is also steeped in dark fantasy. They want winter back. Their glory and pride depends on it being winter again. At least they don’t live in Florida. I found this to be a suitably grand finale to the mix. An ode to coldness and winter.

Honorable mention:

            Clan of Xymox – Under the Wire

“So tired, so cold, as stone I’m told.”

            Missing the boat on the CD mix was “Under the Wire” by Clan of Xymox, because I only realized after I’d burned the CD already that it had the word “cold” in it. It will have to be on the cassette version, whenever I make it (I may wait until next winter). Or if I have to remake the CD Mix (which is inevitable after a couple years when the CD eventually gets too scratched up) I’ll put it on there, possibly instead of “Counting Blue Cars”. If I were to keep “Counting Blue Cars”, this may be the track I was looking for to bridge between that and “Eiskalt Erwischt”; and this is what I did for the Spotify version of this mix. Anyway, looking at the lyrics for this one, it seems like a depressing one, about having reached your limit, being fed up with everything, close to the brink. Maybe I should add happier songs to my music library? Eh, that’s what my synthwave music is for.  “Cold” here is used as part of the idiom “stone cold”, as popularized by the wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. It can mean literally cold (as in “your tea is going to be stone cold if you don’t drink it soon”), or it can basically mean the same thing as cold-hearted, more in the sense of being emotionally stoic than a heart-breaker.

Anyway, as I said I did my best to reproduce the playlist on Spotify, although of course, Spotify doesn’t have the really obscure ones. For that there’s YouTube. Who knows what songs I may have missed, they’ll probably turn up over time and the playlist will get longer. In the meantime, my next mix will have to do with the Moon.

Cold - Spotify Playlist