𝐈 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃! 𝐑𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐨, 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐎𝐟 𝐂𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫🗡️
Featuring music from Injury Reserve, Joe Glass, Radiohead and more.
Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.
If you think this is about you, it probably is.
I have yet to feel worse than the day my closest friend betrayed the trust I had in her. (Woah getting personal today aren't we). I find it funny I started making these mixes for my friends and she was the first one to get one, and now almost two years later am doing much more with it.
Beginning with the first three songs, I tried to capture the three main themes throughout the set. "The Inflated Tear" by Rahsaan Roland Kirk was used in the movie "Judas and The Black Messiah" which I find fitting to start a set about betrayal with a song that was used thematically throughout a movie about betrayal. My feelings about everything, to this day, confuse me. Half of me tries to move on, while the other one is still angry. Although the song "u" is about Kendrick Lamar's own internal turmoil. If you turn the second verse onto someone else, or the beginning of the third verse, the verses mirror the same turmoil I felt when I heard about all the things she told my friends. Everything I do, I do with intention. With these sets, I often recontextualize music, and give it new meaning. Which sounds like a pretentious way of making playlists, but I don't see it that way.
It was around September I was able to get over everything that happened. There was this vulnerability, which is expressed in "Time" by George Riley, that I began to feel.
"I'm very protective over my space
I don't let no one in unless I'm satisfied they're good and humble
Don't like to mingle with the fickle and fake"
I love how this song starts, there's a lot of rock/indie songs in here with guitars/strings being the main instrument. It helps with the cohesiveness of the whole set itself. I'm not an avid Radiohead listener, but the song, even with its clear message of finding real friends, these particular set of lyrics, remind me of the stupidity of it all.
"They brought in the CIA
The tanks and the whole marines
To blow me away
To blow me sky high"
I saw Joe Glass preform "Slither" live last week on Two Faced Radio. (Thursdays from 3PM-5Pm right after my show ;) ) Seeing his fingers dance on the neck of his guitar in person really cemented my love for this song.
"Was there nothing he could Do to make her stay?"
There was a point where I didn't really care about what happened. I was more caught up in salvaging the friendship then realizing how bad it was. Looking back at it now, it was her way of ending our friendship, maybe out of spite, or maybe something else. It was about half a year of uncomfortable conversations that made me feel worse.
The downside of becoming so close to someone, is how intertwined they become with your own life. Our lives began to intersect everywhere. For a long time I wondered what would I say when I would see her. I realized after a while, I really didn't want to say anything. They probably would not mean the same to her anyways.
My American Life, Brockhampton
"And I got nothing to give, that's why I made you this tape
I been climbin' this wall, how much more can I take?
Sometimes I think about dyin', but then I think of those days
Sometimes I wish we could speak, but I have nothing to say"
"I thought of so many things
To say to you, to you
But what were they
What were they
What were they to you, to you"
Reflecting back on it all. What happened, and our friendship. I began to realize that it wasn't as healthy as I thought it was. Ironically, I put this in a mix I made her right after everything happened. But I realize now what Clairo meant in "Little Changes" by singing:
"He loved me good enough to calm me down
But tried to trick me into little changes
I see the end before it begins"
I have a photo wall in my room. With pictures of my friends and family. She's in a few. There's a few with other friends that have faded. On a call once with my friend, I asked him, "I should take these down shouldn't I?" What he said to me has stuck to me even till now. "You can still be happy with the good memories you have."
"But white noise comes from nothing at all
And finally I feel
Good
Good to fall between
The ones I love and the ones that faded"
The vulnerability I'm trying to express, where I'm trying to figure out how to express is hard to put into words. I feel like it's just plain corny. But sometimes the most clear way to express is just being honest about.
"Too many people I don't see no more
Too many feelings I don't feel no more
'Cause I really don't wanna be here alone
Too many people I don't need no more
So many doubts that I stop keeping score"
I could go on and on about "Glory", from the way Hodge censors himself, to his mention of Jesus. But I own three frogs, and so all I have to mention from this song is this line:
"Dissecting my life apart like a frog with no ribbit"
I just recently got into beabadoobee, "broken cd" repeats the whole mixtape theme I have going on. Though I'm the only one who really understands that with the way I make connections in these playlists.
I go back in forth with my feelings about the whole situation. But for the most part I kept quiet about it.
"I let them crucify me
I kept my head down, humble
Some people get their kicks just steppin' on your dreams, I know it"
I remember when “Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare” was released, Caroline Polachek had announced it saying it was out of character for her. It doesn’t surprise me she can sing opera so well. (Its to my understanding an opera about Kurt Cobain’s last days.) The translation of the title is “I Never Want to See the Sun Go Down.”
“Outside” by Injury Reserve is the opening track for the album By The Time I Get To Phoenix. Setting the scene for the feeling of the album. Theres a line where Ritchie with a T raps,
“Got my skeletons, you've got yours
But let's be honest here
This, this don't end with agree and disagree
That ain't possible
There's just some things
There's just some things that ain't right"
There was this one conversation I had with her, trying to understand why she switched up on me so suddenly and I realized there was no way it was going to end with us being as close as we had been just a week before.
“The Wake Pt. 3 & 2” by Slauson Malone calls back to the trumpets from “The Inflated Tear” and the strings heard throughout the set like in “Slither”. Though the lyrics remind me of one of the last real conversations I had with her.
“I know, you know I'll be at your wake, in the waves”
After writing this all, I realize this is not about a friend betraying you. Rather it's a set that encapsulates the aftermath of it all. The painting I chose for the Apple Music cover, "The Death of Caesar" by Jean-Léon Gérôme, captures not the assassination of Julius Caesar itself, but rather the immediate aftermath. It seems like a much more fitting cover now.
When Caesar was murdered, his killers say they murdered him because they feared his dictatorship was undermining the Roman Republic. But they were unable to restore the institutions of the Republic.
I find that parallel to my own life. As her actions led to the end of our friend group. Ending much more than she anticipated.
