Mixtape Methodology

"A mixtape should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us." -Franz Kafka

[mixtapemethodology]

Someone Once Told Me

Fiction by Chris Campanioni

That anyone who likes Talking Heads is by nature a good person but the person who told me that was a dickhead, so I didn’t believe him at first, or at all.

At least he is right about one thing, I thought, as “This Must Be the Place” crackled on the vinyl and fire wavered or whistled over David Byrne’s warbling croon. Talking Heads is the best thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe that isn’t true, not really. But if I told you this, you would believe me.

Music has always been beside me. We used to stand around the kitchen and put our hands on one another’s hips and dance and sing, making our own music as my mom made carne con papa or picadillo with white rice and black beans and a mound of tostones. We were hungry.

It was a kind of survival.

Without music, I would not write. And every book I write has its own soundtrack, a playlist I’m indebted to from entry point to Acknowledgements.

I’ve always had a playlist. I’ve always wanted to hear music, all the time, in my mind.

I remember pausing Ninja Gaiden, and Castlevania, and Mega Man 2, and especially Double Dragon, which may have had the best music, and sitting on the couch with my eyes closed to listen. To really hear it. Our Nintendo Entertainment System would overheat and freeze and I’d have to blow on it until my lungs burned.

I think I liked the music better than the video game it belonged to. Later, long after I stopped playing video games, I fell in love with music that sounded like it was made for video games. Crystal Castles, CRIM3S, Pictureplane, Com Truise, Neon Indian, Futurecop, Adventure. The bands themselves sounded like video games too. The 8-bit kind. The kind consoled in gradients of gray. We inevitably play homage to the things we adore. The things we can’t do without. In name or in form, or in the form of something we cannot name.

Whenever I meet anyone I want to know and whom I want to know me I make them a mixtape. I think you can learn so much about a person by the kind of music they listen to, the songs they like to hear in private and in public but always on the inside.

Music makes me want to press pause and close my eyes again to listen. To really hear it and to hear it differently each time.

☊

Chris Campanioni is a first-generation Cuban- and Polish-American. He has worked as a journalist, model, and actor, and he teaches literature and creative writing at Baruch College and Pace University, and Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2013 for his collection, In Conversation, and his novel, Going Down, was selected as Best First Book for the 2014 International Latino Book Awards. He lives in Brooklyn and co-edits PANK. Find him in space at www.chriscampanioni.com.

[mixtapemethodology]

LEARNING TO PLAY THE GUITAR

Poetry by Megan Merchant

for Max, age 7

Begin as if there is no                     wrong way—

slap the strings,            rushthem,

slow-pinch    one/two    at a time,

make the whole body crackle.

(Note moments where the sounds come at you as music).   Then erase.

Let it chirp and blaze and slither and wail.

Then begin thatching the cage of repetition and time.

Learn how to tune and measure, how to read the script and symbols, the precise grooves for your hands up/down the long wood neck.  

You’ll never know how hungry the soul you are trying to feed until you strum the ribs with your bare hands.

Megan Merchant is a 2015 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poems have most recently appeared in publications including Red Paint Hill, Rat’s Ass Review, Mothers Always Write, Crack the Spine and First Literary Review East. Her poem, “Filling Station God” won the Las Vegas Poets Prize, judged by Tony Hoagland. Her book, “The Dark’s Humming” was the winner of the 2015 Lyrebird Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2017). She is also the author of Translucent, sealed. (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), In the Rooms of a Tiny House (ELJ Publications, October 2016), and Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, Spring 2016). She has a children’s book forthcoming through Philomel Books.  You can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.

[mixtapemethodology]

Victoria Theodore and the Musical Life

Interview by Rebecca Laclair

Photo: Jay Julio

When Victoria Theodore began taking piano lessons just before her twelfth birthday, one of the first songs she learned was “Overjoyed,” the 1985 R&B single by Stevie Wonder. The song came naturally to her—as natural as the environmental percussion track in the hit’s background, layers of sound emanating from crickets and birds, ocean waves, and pebbles dropping into a pond. “I had just started studying piano,” Theodore recalls, “and since I'm a strong reader, I bought the sheet music and the album.”

They say those who wish to sing always find a song, but Theodore’s choice led the chanteuse to find her mentor. In 2007, Theodore joined Stevie Wonder’s world tour as keyboardist and background singer. She accompanied Wonder and other musical icons around the world, and performed for President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth.

“Whenever I perform ‘Overjoyed’ with Stevie, I experience pure euphoria and magic. I think to myself, ‘I'm playing one of the most beautiful songs ever, with the man who composed it. Pretty amazing.’” The song is her personal anthem—her inspiration for creating music, and helping others to find their voice. As Ella Fitzgerald said, “I sing like I feel.”

Theodore’s debut album of original music, Grateful, was released on September 1, 2015, after seven years performing with some of music’s greatest legends. As a freelance musician, she has accompanied Sting, Prince, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Tony Bennett, Esperanza Spalding, John Mayer, and Bay Area legends like Sheila E., Ledisi, Dwayne Wiggins (Tony! Toni! Toné!), and Tony Lindsay (Santana’s lead singer).

Living what she calls “the musical life” has given Theodore a passion and deep affinity for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of songs. Tasked with the momentous challenge of choosing her all-time top ten, she narrows her selection down to the singles that served as milestones in her life, and best speak her truth.

“There are songs by Bonnie Raitt, Chaka Khan, so many others I want to include. Naming only ten is a near impossible task, as my favorite songs shift constantly,” says Theodore. Her list is diverse, and in many places playful. It illuminates her roots in R&B, a life of faith, and her openness to a variety of musical genres.

The musical life is a shared phenomenon among people who have a song inside that wants to be heard. Theodore hopes her music blesses others, explaining that her new album is a message of gratitude. “It’s about inspiration and love. It’s about perspective,” she says. “Like many people, I've been through some challenges that forced me to look in the mirror and make a decision to learn from, rather than resent, the experiences.” The word “grateful” was the clear choice for her debut album’s title. “Expressing gratitude is one of the ways I can do that.”

The first release from Grateful was an original composition titled “Human.” The lyrics are raw, emotionally driven, and show Theodore’s unwillingness to turn her gaze away from race-influenced police brutality. “I was extremely frustrated by reading about yet another unarmed black man being shot by an officer,” Theodore says. “A few of my family members are officers, so I wanted to write a song that expressed my frustration, but that also encouraged empathy, connection, and compassion.”

Listen to an acoustic version of “Human” here.

Victoria was featured in Stevie Wonder’s 2009 DVD Live At Last, and included in the 2013 documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom. In 2013, the Arsenio Hall Show hired her to perform as the keyboardist and singer for Arsenio's Posse 2.0. When she set out to write, record, and produce her first album on her own, it was an act of growth and self-determination. “I had to let go of my self-image as a support musician,” she says. “I consciously went offline, and made a commitment to completing my album. It took nearly seven years, but I finally did it because I refused to let myself procrastinate any longer.”

Given an opportunity to learn from the masters, Theodore has been inspired to give back what she has gained. She encourages others to make their own music, too. “Start writing. Write daily if you can,” she says, advising novice songwriters to put aside self-doubt. “Have no expectation of brilliance, because most first attempts at songs are terrible. But that's irrelevant. The point is to just write, and through that process you will improve.”

Writing music is only the beginning. For a song to come to life there must be a relationship between performer and listener, an invisible tether between the music and the audience. Theodore says that budding musicians should seek opportunities to perform original music publicly. “Perform whenever and wherever you can. Be determined and never give up. The musical life is not easy, or for those who are ultra-sensitive or easily offended. Stay strong and magic can happen.”

Compassion and connection are the threads tying together all of Victoria’s musical endeavors,the reasons she is stepping out from the background to sing the lead. Theodore has a message for the world, beginning with her listeners: “You're beautiful, capable, and worthy. I hope my songs lift spirits and inspire joy.”

A solid musical education provided Theodore with the tools she needed to enter the professional music industry. She received her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Classical Piano Performance and Computer Music from Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music, and her Master of Arts degree in Classical Piano Performance from Stanford University.

Going solo and recording an album is a journey of faith and hard work. Theodore wanted her debut album to express the rich sound and authentic feeling that only live musicians can provide. However, while she is an experienced background singer and pianist, managing her own career and hiring musicians and audio engineers posed several challenges, including one that many budding artists will relate to. “Budget!” she exclaims. “It's very expensive to record an album, especially since I insisted on hiring live musicians.” She continues, “I was only able to complete the album because I did a fundraiser. People really supported me. Words fail to express how grateful I am for every single person who made this album possible.” There’s that word again: grateful.

☊

LISTEN UP: Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/victoriatheodore Website: www.victoriatheodore.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VictoriaTheodoreMusic Instagram: VictoriaTheodoreMusic Twitter: @VictoriaTheo Pinterest: VictoriaTheo iTunes: Victoria Theodore ReverbNation: https://www.reverbnation.com/victoriatheodore

☊

Rebecca Laclair is author of the novel RADIO HEAD. She has published short stories and band interviews in Gravel, Wordhaus, and Mixtape Methodology. Get acquainted at www.RadioHeadBook.com.

[mixtapemethodology]

Prince: On Alchemy and Architecture

Essay by Nat Tracey-Miller

Photo: Scott Penner

After a rattled day trying to regroup, I’ve cobbled together a few of my thoughts on the death of The Purple One. The feeling of loss here is not just because Prince made some of the greatest music of all time (although he is certainly high on that list), but because he carved the world around him to fit his own vision. Out of all the rock and roll greats I could list off, only Bowie and Prince crafted entire solar systems to their fit own specifications, because the boundaries of our own weren’t big enough to contain their imaginations. In each case, what should have logically been outsider music became universally adored canon, performed on the biggest stages in the world and influential to thousands of artists who came after, and now they’re both gone within three months. We didn’t just lose musicians; we lost alchemists and architects. Even their worst records were self-confident sojourns into the unknown, worthy of adulation just on the merits of their ambition.

I picked up Purple Rain early in high school, followed shortly thereafter by Sign '☮' the Times, only about a year after I started playing guitar. Learning to play his songs offered a whole new realm of possibility outside of the relatively staid bounds of classic rock: maj9, sus2, 9sus4, big, hopeful, wide-open chords that were the foundation of his thick, strutting funk. He obviously didn’t create those voicings, but he certainly reinvented how to use them. His omission from Rolling Stone and Guitar World’s Greatest Guitarists lists only proves the comical irrelevance of both publications. I say this in no uncertain terms: there was never a better guitar player than Prince. Hendrix was up in those latitudes, but Prince was on his own. He knew the instrument inside and out like nobody else, combining passion, virtuosity, dexterity, and an unimpeachable ear for melody. His blitzkrieg solos defied explanation or transcription, all without seeming showy or superfluous. Each jaunt up the fingerboard had a purpose, an emotional target which he hit on the mark every single time. He had the lyrical soul of Jimi, the dissonant fire of Neil Young, and the cold precision of Van Halen all in one. And he did it on a fucking fixed-bridge Telecaster. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that he could play over thirty instruments before his 20th birthday, and on several albums he’s the only musician credited. ?uestlove called him “bar none, the best drum programmer of all time.” He could seemingly do anything, and probably do it better than anyone else.

So from when I first picked it up, his music was an indelible part of my life. Prince soundtracked innumerable summer drives, dorm room dance parties (planned and otherwise), banged-out essays, and quiet days at home. You can find something for any occasion, any mood, any life event, joyful or tragic. I can always, always, always turn to Prince. And what a stage presence. I never saw him, and I will regret that forever. His last visit to Cincinnati came 12 years ago when I was still in high school, and the $80 “cheap” seats were a bit too steep. He barely ever skimmed this part of the country again. But what I’ve seen on bootlegs, the immortal First Avenue sequences in Purple Rain, and TV appearances is a performer without equal. He was manic, tireless, and unpredictable. That oddball Foo Fighters cover thrown into the Super Bowl Halftime Show was par for the course: he played what he wanted when he wanted for as long as he wanted. Four hour surprise show starting at midnight with 100 people in attendance? Fuck it, it’s go time. And he had a flawless ear, taking charge of his own live mixes and studio engineering. In 1987, he ditched an already-pressed album and in only seven weeks replaced it with the immaculately rendered Lovesexy. Regardless of compositional quality, even his abandoned castaways stand with the best-produced music of all time.

In the wake of his death, much is being made of his patches of late-career homophobia, the result of his disappointing conversion to Jehovah’s Witnesses. While unfortunate, this is not his legacy, and to say otherwise is a cheap dismissal of what he accomplished during the 1980’s. Prince was the unabashedly Black antidote to the whitewashed culture of the Reagans and Tipper Gore, a gender-bending, sex-positive, self-acknowledged freak who, like Bowie, embraced a queer identity even if he didn’t live it. He instantly championed the Black Lives Matter movement, giving them a shout-out during the 2015 Grammy Awards. And throughout his career, he was an advocate and booster of women in rock and roll, releasing their albums packaged with his own and often performing with all-female bands. The weird, erotic cultural Revolution he forged three decades ago will continue to make positive waves that offset any misguided statements made towards the end.

On top of everything, he was just the coolest. Where Bowie was a canny chameleon, Prince was always just Prince (or, you know, The Artist, two sides of the same coin). He appeared on the scene fully-formed, and knew exactly what he was capable of and who he was. He also came from and remained in the Midwest, and that made it feel like he was somehow within grasp. I will be mourning the loss of Prince for a long time, but I’m comforted by the knowledge that, however rarely, we will see his kind again. She (let’s be real, the heir to Bowie and Prince will not be a cisgendered male) will have her own ground to break, crashing through cultural and musical barriers we haven’t even recognized yet. St. Vincent and Janelle Monáe are legitimate contenders, but maybe somewhere a fevered mind is crafting young galaxies of its own. Keep an ear out.

☊

Nat Tracey-Miller is a professional library guy and amateur cartophile based in Cincinnati, OH. He also writes for CincyMusic and Tome to the Weather Machine.

[mixtapemethodology]

The Day Ziggy Died

Poetry by Justin Karcher

It is 7:15 AM in Buffalo a Monday Morning after the 73rd Golden Globe Awards And I’m hung-over smoking on the back deck And the snow is softly falling like kites with no fight left in ‘em A winter weather advisory has been issued for Western New York

And I have to go waste away in an office somewhere north of the city Where there’s a picture of the Virgin Mary on my desk and her bright eyes Like dinosaur lighthouses are always shining a spotlight on my complacency And it’s sad because rebellion used to live in me somewhere but it’s gone into hiding And I know the Virgin is trying to tell me it’s gonna be okay that there’s a meteor In the sky with my name on it and one day it’ll crash into me and wow extinction So I should live while the living’s kinda alright and do all I can to make my mistakes Look immaculate while I’m still fertile enough to be knocked up by other people’s mistakes

And yeah I know the Virgin is trying to help and that’s really cool but sometimes I think that I think too much and that’s why I chain-smoke stardust Because my head’s always in the clouds and by now I’m on my third cigarette Because time takes a cigarette and puts it in your mouth and it is no longer 7:15 AM And that should alarm me because I still have to shower and comb my hair And appear presentable like my office north of the city is the Golden Globes All glitz and red carpets but I don’t care because the Thin White Duke is dead

Because I’m scrolling through Facebook on my phone and all I see are pictures of him And people crying through their Wi-Fi quoting song lyrics looking for the way out As if their tears are lost in a deaf labyrinth with no more songs left to be sung And suddenly I feel the tickle of a spider’s legs across my hand then the flood Of get-up-and-go hormones and I look up at the sky see the sun machine coming down And I’m gonna have a party because I feel invigorated I want to breastfeed the sun To feed it my leftover dreams while it burns me with its vampire fire I’m hungry for heat To be a hero just for one day to travel where meteors wear mirrors on their faces Where they force us to reflect on the most self-destructive things we’ve ever done

Because looking at all those pictures I feel the same way about his eyes As people who claim to see angels or the Virgin Mary Different colored eyes alien eye dinosaur lighthouses warning us of dangerous areas Reminding us we need to be larger than life and oddly beautiful Because everything could become extinct at the snap of a finger And by now I’m on my sixth or seventh cigarette because time takes a cigarette And puts it in your mouth and since I’m not sure what to do I lay down on the cold ground and make a snow angel and it is immaculate And I whisper into each ear “I, I will be king, and you, you will be queen” And I’m thinking that I’ll never go to work again because I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me and the world is still a weird place despite our best efforts and that’s a good thing

☊

Justin Karcher is a playwright and poet living in Buffalo, NY. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Theater Jugend as well as its Playwright-in-Residence. He is the author of Tailgating at the Gates of Hell from Ghost City Press. Recent works have been published in 3:AM Magazine, The Buffalo News, Plenitude Magazine, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. He is the winner of the 2015 Just Buffalo Literary Center members' writing competition. He tweets @Justin_Karcher. 

[mixtapemethodology]

This is the Best Part.

Fiction by Chris Campanioni

The moment before it begins. Holding the door for you like a lover would.

Everything has to start somewhere and somewhere begins on my palm. Your shirt smells of you and I hold it to my face and through your smell I feel my lips and now I exist. Sweet sugary water on my tongue, over my mouth and lips. Sweet syrupy river of blood and flesh, of breath and spit, and what there’s not a name for.

You turn the music on and draw the blinds and feel real good. Anything can happen, you think, except you know what will happen and you’ve planned it out that way.

Open your eyes then close them. Open your eyes and turn it up higher and hear the tremble on your walls, hear the tremble coming through the windows and the door. You feel real good and you think you could even bear the sight of yourself in the mirror; you could even look at yourself for hours on end so long as there’s music to be made and a mirror. To be made and marched to. Death, death, death and life, death, music and its notes which carry their own death within themselves as they ebb toward conclusion, completion, another song, the track switching, one finger on a key.

This happened so long ago, you think, as the voice rushes toward you, as the cymbals gyrate and the synth drum rolls, as the vibrato finds its way into your limbs and your limbic. This is still happening, again and again, every time you listen, every time you hear the recording, recorded somewhere else, in a different room. So far and so close at the same time. Death, death, death and life, death.

The air, the light. They shifted.

I remember the first film I saw in HD. We’d just bought something bigger than my outstretched arms. We brought it home and we put it up in the sitting room and it sat like a black mirror. All the lights were off and the screen was lit like a rocket. Names rushed by and then a title, or a title and then the names. We sat in the sitting room and we stared. It was like looking into another world, and I wondered if the camera would pull back to show the other cameras, the people in the back, the director at his chair, if he was sitting, the kind of hat he might have worn on the day they’d filmed this. Unless they were still filming this.

These moving images existed all the way. Things had gone too far. Never to return. I would have liked them to remain only images, flickering in the luminescence of a flat box. But they were sharp. Sharper than my own hand when I looked at it and I thought to myself, This must be wrong. This must be off. The smile on the package, the smile in the air-conditioned stillness of the sitting room. The smile, each smile close to my face like a dream, hands reaching toward the sky catching me from behind and lifting me up like a wave to be sitting across from my girlfriend at an overpriced restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, telling her this. Or I’m only thinking about this evening, which amounts to the same thing, because as I think, so do you. That’s how this works. That’s all there is.

I would so like to forget myself, let myself go, leave my mind. I would so like to turn it off, I tell her. Wouldn’t that be nice? I ask, as a basket of bread arrives and a person in a black button-down disperses. Wouldn’t that be nice? To let me leave myself, from time to time, to not always be writing, to not always have the words in my mouth and to not feel how they feel on my tongue, the texture and the taste. But then I tell her, I think that’s stupid, that’s the worst thing in the world, the worst thing I could ever wish for myself and even as I say this I write it down. And she agrees, she puts her hand on my hand on the table, she looks at me softly, she agrees, mouth half-open like a dreaming child.

It is I who have been dreaming all this time, dreaming and thinking and writing all this time, and speaking, saying something, half-intelligible but intelligible enough to be met with affirmations, faint gestures, a nod of the head. Stop making sense, I think.

Half of life is pretending. The other half is pretending.

I pretend that I’m following directions, turning 180 degrees, shifting weight on my hips, even speaking in response to a question they’ve just asked—coffee? Sushi? Butter? (that can’t be right)—but really, I’ve been writing all this time. Writing as you’ve been reading. Mouth half-open like a dreaming child or a child dreaming.

Unless that’s you.

At C-IN2, where we actually are, right this moment, they pay me so much money to do things that anyone in the world can do. Turn in profile, switch feet, twist one leg, hands on hips, hands on chest, hands raised above the head. Thinking of you all the time makes this easy.

Taek is the stylist and he has the most difficult job of them all because he’s got to do it on his knees. Any time I move, a wrinkle appears, like a little whisker across my thighs or crotch. The smile on the package, the movement, the wrinkle. And his job is to make it disappear. To make things disappear, to make them appear. So much of life is understanding there is no difference between the two. Appearing, disappearing. Appearing.

These people know more about my body than I know about my body. I shoot, on average, nine times a year. Three times for each season (in the world of underwear, winter does not exist). And each time I arrive, in body or on the 56-inch Apple iMac, from a connected camera that is capable of a 24.2 megapixel photo from an all-in-one wide angle and telephoto lens, you can see every crease and contour of my skin, my pulsing body gone static for a flash. Taek would tell me about my twisted salamander torso or the slight droop in my left shoulder, or the width of my right thigh, which is almost half an inch thicker than my left. On the C-IN2 website you can scroll through eight years of me. I look the same. It makes me dizzy to actually do it, to scroll through eight years of me. I look the same. It scared me. It always scares me. Aging, not aging.

I can’t tell which scares me more.

Only this is the best part. The moment before it begins. The pause in a song. The delay between tracks. The gap between holding the trigger and seeing the flash erupt. Seeing the photo on display. Displaying. You slide a record on or you slide your finger over a touch screen. You turn the volume up real slow and you feel real good in this moment that is yours to hold and keep.

Until the next one.

☊

Chris Campanioni is a first-generation Cuban- and Polish-American. He has worked as a journalist, model, and actor, and he teaches literature and creative writing at Baruch College and Pace University, and Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2013 for his collection, In Conversation, and his novel, Going Down, was selected as Best First Book for the 2014 International Latino Book Awards. He lives in Brooklyn and co-edits PANK. Find him in space at www.chriscampanioni.com.

[mixtapemethodology]

Songbird

Poetry by Ophelia Leong

It is a toss up between

A smoky dive and a midnight bar

Pouty puckered pomegranate lips perfect the scene

As she steps out of the sleek car

His sweet mistress songbird opens her mouth, begins

He closes his eyes, lost in an amber haze

Her voice is lacquered with the gloss of sins

And he licks his lips, hoping for days

In which to explore the depth of her brown eyes,

Stroke her almond smooth throat

And deftly evoke her fluttering sighs,

As he sits and trembles in his coat.

Tendrils of her voice around him languorously pass

As he sits, aching under the spell she has cast

☊

Ophelia Leong is a wife and mother who loves to write and Irish Dance in her spare time. She has been published in Mothers Always Write, Eunoia Review, Allegro Poetry, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, EXPOUND Magazine, and others. In 2015, she won the Mothers Always Write Holiday Poetry Contest with her poem, "Christmas With Little Ones." Check out her blog here: ophelialeong.blogspot.com and follow her on Twitter: @OpheliaLeong. 

[mixtapemethodology]

Possible Reasons Why Dan Thought I Would Like Rickie Lee Jones’s Album ‘Pirates’

Poetry by Jessy Randall

because of the line “the girls like to touch it just to find out if it works”

because of the line “if you promise you won’t make so much … noise”

because of the cat-in-heat howl sound of her voice in some places in some songs

because of the line “we should move to the west side, they still believe in things, that give a kid, half a chance”

because of the line “the only ones” repeated in Living It Up, foretelling the title of a book my son would one day recommend to me, which we would both love and which is about time travel

because Dan can time travel

because Dan is magic

because he knew that over the course of my life I would never stop listening to these songs and finding new things in them

because he wanted to give me permission to be myself

because it was a fair trade for me introducing him a few years later to the woman who would be his wife and the mother of his children

because the cover illustration looks to me like me and Steve Kotok and Dan is magic and knew that Steve and I would go out

because of the way Rickie says “it’s been a pleasure being here in your wonderful city,” which is a good thing to yell in a loud voice on a long car drive

because he thought my voice sounded like hers?

because he thought her voice sounded like mine?

because of the beautiful harsh dissonance in some places and the sweet tenderness in others

because of the sound of the second time she sings “so long Lonely Avenue”

because of “cuz I did a foolish thing, a real, real stupid thing, I told him I love him”

☊

Jessy Randall's poems, poetry comics, diagram poems, and other things have appeared in Asimov's, McSweeney's, and The Best American Experimental Writing 2015. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.

[mixtapemethodology]

Radio Head (Excerpt)

Fiction by Rebecca Laclair

CHAPTER ONE

Shelby

White-coats say I’m crazy.

I never met anyone else who can do it, get an earful of everything that makes up a person just by touching them. It’s a one-sided conversation, a blind confessional, listening to a stranger who can’t hear me. And lonely.

Music is my only friend. How’s that for crazy?

The westbound bus going under the freeway and into Laguna Beach is a good long ride. Three full loops should fill the time until Mom goes to her night shift. I dump my backpack in the next seat to block anyone from sitting there and put my headphones on. Out the window, the early morning traffic rushes to change lanes. I wish I had somewhere to go. I can’t stay at Mom’s apartment much longer. When I was little, I thought I’d enlist like Daddy. We always had a decent place to live and food to eat. And we moved a lot, which I really liked. It seemed we were able to pick up and leave just when the county social worker got wind of my bruises, the kind a kid gets when her parents are falling down drunk or when one finds out the other is getting a little side action.

I try to ignore the noises from my stomach. There isn’t much to pick from at the apartment. A lot of things don’t agree with me anyway, but I don’t find out until my tummy starts that deep ache, a sharp stab right in my center. 

We lumber on through traffic, lurching occasionally to a stop. New passengers shuffle on, an immigrant mother pushing a baby stroller loaded with groceries, surrounded by two silent children not yet old enough for school, and an older lady in a maid’s uniform, clutching a lunch box. The women are careful not to meet each other’s gaze yet they both scowl at me. Next on, a guy with a 12-pack in a grocery bag who eyes me hopefully. I hate Mom’s clothes. Between the silver tunic and the heels—too big, and too high—they probably think I’m either hooking or on my way to dance at Mom’s club. I swear I never will. The manager tells me no one will ever pay me as much as I could make dancing. This sniffs of a lie. Seems to me it’s Mom who pays to dance. Maybe not in cold, hard cash, but she’s definitely paying something cold and hard. 

I thumb the dial on my radio and close my eyes, rolling the tuner back and forth, dusting the last few specks off a station that plays music without words, by people with extraordinary names like Tchaikovsky and Haydn. Their music fills me more than I can bear, saturating and stretching me from the inside, like when I think about what happened to Dad, or that time when I threw up and the school nurse stroked her fingers in my tangled hair for almost an hour. She wasn’t mad, and she didn’t wish I would just go away.

They call it “classical,” which cracks me up, because the instruments and melodies sound so unlike the other classical stations: Classic ‘80s, Classic Rock, and Classic Oldies. Sometimes static interference becomes the DJ, broadcasting stations at the radio frequency’s whim. But it has to be music. Any music. I don’t listen to people talking, talking, talking about stuff that happened to someone somewhere, or the weather, or the Bible. I already know the story they’re going to tell because I hear it in music. Songs are all about those things, even when the lyrics aren’t. The rise and the fall of the tempo and the melody tell all the talkers’ stories of troubles, of triumphs, of people hurt or lost, or reunited. There’s nothing the talkers can say that the music hasn’t already told me.

As the bus edges closer to the coast, I people-watch for a half-dozen stops or so. There is a change to the mood of the passengers the closer we get to the beach. The listless stares at the scuffed, black-matted floor become far-off glances out the window into the salted, marine air. Conversations shift to plans for the weekend, excitement grows. There is buoyant hope for the possibility of fun. 

A couple squeezes up the steps of the bus, hip crushed against hip in the narrow entrance. The only double seats available are next to me. I turn my gaze away as they approach, whispers toppling one another as they exchange ideas for how best to spend a day by the water. I can almost feel the warmth of their regard for one another when I realize I’ve been holding my breath, longing for my own connection, a hand to hold mine that won’t let go.

“You mind?” the woman asks, standing over me. I pull my backpack into my lap and she plops down, her thigh wedged tightly against mine. Through her touch I can hear her, the song she holds inside, the rhythm of her selfish assumption, “If no one finds out, no one gets hurt.”

They’re cheaters. Truants, I can tell. Escapees from marriages no longer joined at the hip.

I replace my headphones to my ears and turn up the volume, singing to myself to drown her out, and stare hard at the asphalt scudding by below. I need to keep moving forward. When I get some money I’m moving away. Old enough to live on my own, Mom says.

I wish Dad was still around; he’d point me in the right direction. I figure it’s no coincidence that all I have left of him is his old AM/FM radio. I think he meant for me to have it. 

Maybe he’d put back a few too many, but he told me he bought it for my grandma, who passed around the time I was born. “She really got into pop and electronic music back in the early ‘80s,” he said, a far-away admiration warming his drawn face. “She just wanted to dance.” He didn’t sleep for several days; the radio exhumed a glimmer of the boy he used to be, held him afloat a while. Like a stupid kid I told him he should have gotten an MP3 player so he could load Grandma’s favorite songs. He shook his head, a dense load of nostalgia weighting the simple gesture. “You got to tune in to the pulse of the moment. It’s a chance encounter, Shelby, that’s what she used to say.”

There is a sudden sting where a few caught strands of my hair are yanked from my head. My music is stripped away in one motion, like pulling a Bandaid left too long over a wound. I gasp and cover my ears where my father’s headphones should be.

 

CHAPTER TWO

Zac

A stout guy with a nearly indiscernible neck leans over the high counter to chat up Dr. Gibson’s receptionist. One thing about LA, every damn front desk girl could pass for a model, a freak phenomenon I binged on when I first moved here. 

Lots of girls offer “you-get-what-you-pay-for” hook-ups, fun and done. Good genes will get you so far, but as aphrodisiacs go, cash and publicity incite an inelegant madness. I get it, every conquest is a stepping stone. But there’s always another guy, richer and more famous than me. They say no one walks in LA. Truth is, no one settles in LA. I’m glad I figured that out fast and hooked up with Ashtynn Kingston. 

The waiting room’s carved wood door swings open and the guy at the counter swirls his stocky body away from the receptionist. I glance up, surprised to see Dr. Gibson stroll through carrying a cardboard tray with four coffee cups. He was Ashtynn’s doctor when she O.D.’d. It was only eighteen months ago, but I barely remember him, like a distant uncle or second-cousin I met once at a family reunion.

It’s one thing to make me sweat it out in his waiting room, but showing up late? Who’s the rock star here, bud?

“Coffee boy this morning, eh, Roland?” the guy teases him.

I begin to reach for my phone to text my manager, Berger, about Gibson rolling in late, but freeze. Dumping me in the lap of some shrink who doesn’t give a crap looks a lot like step one in a not-so-covert plan to finish me. 

Dr. Gibson grabs my frozen hand and shakes it. “Good morning, Mr. Wyatt. Nice to see you again. I look forward to working with you.” 

I shake his hand and size him up, searching for sincerity behind his veneered smile.

Gibson turns and nods to the other guy and the receptionist, “Zac Wyatt, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Elliott Rachman, and our assistant, Carly.” 

That burly dude is Elliott Rachman? The so-called, “Counsel-ebrity,” and director of this practice? I’d always wondered why Ashtynn didn’t choose him as her therapist. Now I get why she picked Roland Gibson. He’s the PR-friendly pretty-boy.

“Take my word for it, Roland’s all about serving his flock,” Elliott says with a wink. “Just be glad it’s only coffee. He might offer to wash your feet.” 

I appreciate Rachman taking a few jabs at the man who’s got my balls and my future at the mercy of his professional opinion. Gibson thinks he’s Jesus, that’s funny. 

“It’s an Americano,” Gibson says, handing me a coffee. Rachman grabs his own from the tray, takes a sip and winces. 

“That was Carly’s chai tea. It wasn’t your mocha.” 

Rachman spits the tea back in and hands it to Carly, grabbing the last cup. He adds three packets of sugar and works the stir stick like he’s already had his share of caffeine. Yeah, Rachman would make Ashtynn barf.

Gibson places his hand on my shoulder and asks me to join him in his office. Anxious to get on with it, I follow him in, sliding into a broad leather chair. He closes the door and takes his seat behind a heavy, polished desk, big enough to garage a vintage convertible. 

I stroke the side of my chair, reclaimed leather, and swivel to face the floor-to-ceiling abstract art installations behind him. Fuck, now I’m getting a little worried. Is he going to ask me what I see in them, like some lame Rorschach test? How do you pass one of those things?

Folding his hands, Gibson takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Keeping them lightly shut, he starts to speak. To himself.

“I immediately release all thoughts belonging outside this room, and allow any judgments I may have to drift away,” he breathes. “I provide an open, safe environment for growth. I am ready to listen. I—”

“This is bullshit,” I say, shaking my head. 

Gibson’s eyes open leisurely, not the least disturbed by my interruption. 

“Let’s get one thing straight right now. I’m here because I have to put on an act for all my fans who’re afraid I might fall from grace. Ooh, drugs are bad.” I need to chill, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Changing gears, I level with him: “I don’t have a drug problem. I can pretend to get past one for the public if you want to play that scene, but the truth is I’m no fucking junkie.”

Gibson says nothing for a moment, then surprises me with a grin. “It must be easy for scouts to spot raw talent. They just look for the person who is, for no one reason, larger than life. Certain people fill the room with an energy and light the average individual simply cannot muster.”

Rising from his chair, Gibson walks around to the front of his desk and leans against it, only inches from me. “We’re all observers of people, students of the human condition, aren’t we, Zac? It’s how we navigate the social arena, and realize the truth of ourselves—within the context of our interactions.” “You of all people, a shrink, shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” 

Gibson lets out a big, hearty laugh. I’m glad one of us thinks this is a good old party.

“Nearly everyone who walks through my door issues the ‘Non-Junkie Declaration,’ Zac.” He is quiet for a moment, then adds, “More than 4.6 million people in America meet the criteria for needing treatment, but don’t recognize they have a problem.”

I shift in my seat, contemplating whether to walk out. I’m not a junkie. It was nothing, just one fucking time. I still have bad dreams about the hospital, the night Ashtynn went into ER. Gibson was there, he ought to understand that I get it. I get what can happen. 

What if I walk out, tell this fucker I don’t need him, that I don’t belong in rehab? Everyone forgives our guitarist, Stanford. Getting wasted is just part of his persona, his goddamn brand. There is no forgiveness for Zac Wyatt, no way. I’ve got to play along until the whole miserable episode blows over and is forgotten. You want to play, Doc? 

I turn it on, gazing at him with what Amp’dTeen mag called, “Silvery turquoise eyes crackling with life and lust and liquid hope,” a far cry from the lifeless stare of some random heroin addict.

“All my rehab patients are required to submit to a physical and blood test, and your evaluations are scheduled for this afternoon. It’s standard protocol, Zac,” he continues. “Your skin tone, eye clarity, and healthy, muscular build support your assertion. But more importantly, I’m here to listen. You tell me what’s true and what isn’t. Let’s begin our partnership with a shared goal of trust. Are you with me?”

I don’t have much choice.

“Right on.” I grip Gibson’s outstretched hand in a loose cycle of gang-inspired handshakes. The old guy manages to keep up. His fingers are as smooth as Ashtynn’s.

Sliding into the matching leather seat next to me, Gibson doesn’t waste any time. “Why don’t you tell me how you landed here, then. What series of events lead to an entertainment attorney asking me to help rehabilitate you from drug use,” he asks. “Should be an interesting story.”

In fact it isn’t. My management prepared an official statement in rebuttal of the photo leak. I’m supposed to recount it verbatim. But I guess I should give him the unscripted version.

“There isn’t much to tell. Me and Stanford—”

“Stanford?” 

Seriously? This guy hasn’t done any homework on me? “Stanford Lysandre, Grounder lead guitarist. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?” 

“Of course. I only ask for clarification, and invite you to do the same, Zac.”

“Right. We were hanging with a group of girls—some fans of the band, you know—just kicking it at our producer’s place while he was in Munich, when Stan and one of the girls decided to do up.”

“Do up? You mean, inject diacetylmorphine intravenously?” 

“Yes.” I hate having to talk about this. “Dude, c’mon.” 

Better him than go to court. He motions me to continue. 

“They were all into it, and I decided ‘what the hell.’ If I was worried about anything, it was about getting sick or shitting my pants.”

That would have been worlds better than the mess I’m in now with my management, my label, and my fan base. I’m not even speculating what my band might do about it.

“You were worried?”

“I’m pissed off. You’ve probably seen the photos--they’re on every website, and in every magazine. One of the girls took them with her phone, making I don’t know how many thousands of dollars without ever revealing her identity.” I inhale after that mouthful of words, and add, “That bugs the shit out of me, but damn if I can’t remember her name to call the sniper out.”

“So from your perspective, this is her fault?”

“Yeah!” 

He doesn’t say a word in response. 

“Well, not entirely,” I back-pedal. “I just fell under a negative influence,” I assure him, recalling the lingo of mandatory high school drug awareness programs. Exactly who that “negative influence” was shouldn’t require any stretch of Gibson’s imagination. Stanford is a notorious addict.

We’re both quiet. Gibson can wait for me to ‘fess up.

I need to take some control here. “You a music fan?” 

“Yes, of course,” he says. “I’m a big fan of Ray LaMontagne. He’s from my hometown. I also dig Van Morrison, Jeff Buckley—” Gibson demonstrates his affinity for acoustic rock with an air guitar impression. Fuck, there ought to be a law against air guitar.

☊

Rebecca Laclair is author of the novel RADIO HEAD (February 12, 2016). She has published short stories and band interviews in Gravel, Wordhaus, and Mixtape Methodology. Get acquainted with her work at www.RadioHeadBook.com.

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[mixtapemethodology]

Of All the Suburban Dreams

Poetry by Daniel M. Shapiro

You start each sentence with before, a nod to the nostalgia of people who act like they didn’t win. You picture a city without crime, a city with more people who speak your language. In books, the hardest choice used to be what hat to wear, which vegetable paired best with which meat from a once-living being. You love the highway bypass high above the city, the route that avoids check cashers, tax preparers, furniture rentals. There’s so much to skip between work and home. Twenty minutes from the city, the city, your neighborhood comforts you with dogs that roam the streets, dogs that feast on unfinished business. You retire to the safety of home, the living room surrounded by boxes you won’t open. The downtown you boarded up, the communities you filed under after, they know everyone by name, know whose backs to watch.

Title from “Suburbia” by Pet Shop Boys (#8 on UK Singles Chart, 1986).

☊

Daniel M. Shapiro is the author of How the Potato Chip Was Invented (sunnyoutside press, 2013), a collection of celebrity-centered poems. His recent work has appeared in Across the Margin, Menacing Hedge, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Hermeneutic Chaos, Newfound, and elsewhere. He is a special education teacher who lives in Pittsburgh.

Web site: Little Myths (http://littlemyths-dms.blogspot.com/)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daniel.m.shapiro.7

Twitter: @DanielMShapiro

[mixtapemethodology]

Chainés

Poetry by Sarah Clayville

It begins with the slow unwinding of the melody,

When she throws her dance shoes

Over the barbed fence

Preferring the barefoot notes of the pebbles

Under her calloused toes.

He unlaces her skin-toned slippers

As if working at the small back

Of her lingerie.

Draping the satin straps through his precise fingers,

A cat’s cradle punctuating how out of rhythm she’s become.

And when he instructs her how to dance

With his mouth and his muscle,

She shivers and forgets to pivot

To hold her center tight.

She loses her balance again and again.

Curling her willowy fingers into pits

Planted beneath her ribs in the hollow absence

Of skin, she revives herself

Sucking in the cool air and rolling it across her tongue

Like cotton candy, wondering how she never knew

That the world tastes sweet.

☊

Sarah Clayville’s fiction and poetry have been featured in The Threepenny Review, StoryChord, Literary Orphans, Central PA Magazine and a number of other journals. A teacher, author, and editor for Mothers Always Write, she is currently at work on a novel and collection of poetry for young adults . Visit Sarah at SarahSaysWrite.com or follow her @SarahSaysWrite.

[mixtapemethodology]

A Brief Examination of High and Mighty Low’s “Blackbird”

Interview by Rebecca Laclair

What’s your jam? Maybe you heard your latest fave last night at the club. Or is your best-loved song an old favorite? Many music fans create playlists or vinyl collections featuring songs marking a significant time, or a rite of passage. The beginning of a relationship. Or its end. A song played on repeat in the privacy of headphones or on your morning commute is, for that moment, yours alone. What you listen to forms a lens calibrating your worldview. When one powerful song becomes “my jam,” it’s the manifestation of your own anthem.

  Singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler says “Fake Plastic Trees,” a song from Radiohead’s The Bends, marked a musically significant point in her life. “The Bends came out in 1995, and I was 14 and just starting to learn the guitar.” Nadler wanted to sing “Fake Plastic Trees.” “It was the first time I really successfully played barre chords,” she said. “The Bends, along with [Nirvana’s] In Utero, and even [Hole’s] Live Through This, these were albums that soundtracked the teenage years for me.”

It’s kind of freakish to think about the ingredients that go into an original song. Assuming the band gets along and every member contributes his or her best material, a song comprises the amalgam of the group’s talent. It conveys an image and philosophy using lyrics, and a melody that carries its own story. A song sets a tone and illustrates an atmosphere, combining instruments that both harmonize and counter. Arguably, a song is only an idea, rhetoric perhaps, until it is performed. Musicians and singers come to the mic with a personal aesthetic, an inborn message and style, and the restless desire to share their creation with an audience. The final production includes the input of accompanying musicians, producers, and audio engineers (and possibly Yoko Ono types).

But what about when a band chooses to cover another performer’s song, recording and releasing it alongside the group’s own original offerings? What’s the significance--a shoutout to the original song-writer? Or perhaps it’s a revelation, a keepsake or a snapshot holding a truth about the performer covering it?

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana once remarked, “When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band. Or at least in a Pixies cover band.”

Like all music fans, musicians are drawn to songs that mattered to them, for whatever reason. Maybe their favorite marks a milestone. Maybe it left a lifelong scar, rendering that chosen song a souvenir that must be shared. A covered song allows listeners to know a given performer on a deeper level than even his or her own creations might reveal. Call it trickle-down mastery, the artists who came before established and reinforced the foundation of modern music. A student’s mastery of an instrument or a vocal style is influenced by the teachers who lead the way, who shone light on the path. For professional performers, those teachers were often their favorite songs.

Los Angeles-based rock band High and Mighty Low is gaining a strong following with their debut album, Bones, released earlier this year. The group is comprised of John DiBiase (guitar, vocals), Matt Boehm (guitar), Jeff Mallow (guitar), Scott Schneider (drums), and Rick Zaccaro (bass). Bones covers a broad field of guitar-heavy alternative rock, from the howling guitars featured in “Taken” to the blazing and energetic “The Tragedies We Hold,” to a melodic nod to popular music with “Half The Time.”

High and Mighty Low chose to release its debut album with a bonus track, a cover of The Beatles’ “Blackbird.” A song you’ve likely loved too at some point, “Blackbird” is listed among the top ten most covered songs, from a wide spectrum of performers in several music categories, from folk-infused Sarah McLachlan to an extraordinary arrangement by Alicia Keys, with only her piano as accompaniment. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl have often favored “Blackbird” at live shows.

Photo: Inked Magazine

“Blackbird” first appeared on The Beatles’ White Album. Written and originally performed as a solo effort by Paul McCartney, “Blackbird” is credited nonetheless a Lennon-McCartney collaboration.

“Blackbird” is frankly a weird outtake from High and Mighty Low’s overall sound esthetic. Frontman John DiBiase offered some insight about why the band selected that particular song. “Blackbird” was recorded on June 11, 1968 (released November 25, 1968), decades before any member of the band was born. How does “Blackbird” speak for High and Mighty Low, building a bridge beyond the lyrics, melodies, and arrangements they’ve crafted for themselves?   “I love how stripped down that song is,” says DiBiase. “And the guitar playing is obviously fantastic by McCartney.” Stripping down seems to be a hot topic for the DiBiase and the band. The word “bones” happens to appear in a few tracks he wrote “Considering how stripped down some of the album is, I just felt Bones was an appropriate title,” DiBiase added.

According to Rolling Stone, McCartney recorded “Blackbird” on his own. George Harrison and Ringo Starr were across the pond in California, and John Lennon was recording the song Revolution 9 in another studio. When they were school boys, Paul McCartney and George Harrison attempted to learn a Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Bourrée in E Minor,” a song, like Nadler’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” which marked a significant period in their lives and on the journey to learning their craft. It became, essentially, their jam. McCartney carried that musical souvenir into adulthood. He said that “Blackbird”’s fingerpicked guitar lines, written at his Scotland farm, were based on “Bourrée in E minor.” “Hearing him tap his foot is something,” says DiBiase, referring to the distinctive background sound many believed was merely a metronome. Audio engineer Geoff Emerick mic'd up Paul McCartney’s foot tapping, and added recordings of a singing male blackbird. McCartney told Emerick he wanted the song, “to sound as if he were singing it outdoors.” Emerick said, "Then let's do it outdoors.” “Blackbird” was recorded outside Abbey Road Studios' echo chamber.

The whole production flows in the vein of a busking folk singer in the decade of discontent. The lyrics portray McCartney’s response to US race relations in the 1960s. Sir Paul was in good company. Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez were also driving forces for grass roots change. But what is it about “Blackbird” that has endured, enough to inspire a bunch of L.A. dudes in their 20s to resurrect the old favorite?

“The song itself is both simple and complex at the same time,” explains DiBiase, “which is difficult to pull off. And the lyrics and melody are as good as it gets.”

Aside from its significant and long-standing message, John DiBiase says the song “is fun to play, on or off stage. I really do love it.” McCartney would have to agree. Paul McCartney felt compelled to perform it for fans camped outside his house. His inspiration? It was the first night his future wife Linda Eastman stayed overnight. Perhaps that’s what transforms a good song to a classic--it reminds you of a time you’ll never forget.

☊

Because it’s nearly impossible to choose only one favorite, the author invites music fans and musicians alike to send their top ten all-time favorite songs to the RADIO HEAD book Fan Playlists page, here. Your top ten matters, share it with the world.

☊

BLACKBIRD: Written by Paul McCartney, John Lennon Copyright: Sony/ATV Tunes LLC

Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these sunken eyes and learn to see All your life You were only waiting for this moment to be free Blackbird fly, blackbird fly Into the light of the dark black night Blackbird fly, blackbird fly Into the light of the dark black night Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise You were only waiting for this moment to arise You were only waiting for this moment to arise

LISTEN UP: Check out High and Mighty Low on Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/high-and-mighty-low Website: http://highandmightylow.com Twitter: @HMLband ReverbNation: https://www.reverbnation.com/highandmightylow

EXTRAS: Fun fact: "Blackbird" is one of the top ten most recorded covers of all time. Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6JaUplB5JE ☊

Rebecca Laclair, author of RADIO HEAD (Feb 2016) has short stories and band interviews published in Gravel, Wordhaus, and Mixtape Methodology. Get acquainted at www.RadioHeadBook.com.

[mixtapemethodology]

It’s Great to be Home

Poetry by Justin Karcher

It’s music to my ears Drunk on Ballantine’s and machete moonbeams And choking on my own swordfish trombone Across the street, there’s a hooker chasing after another hooker Like it’s the carrying of the Olympic Torch The clicking of their heels on the pavement is like some Morse code of loneliness

Next door there are pantless hippies playing with fire Like they’re some kind of dreadlocked Prometheus Meanwhile I’m up all night because the air smells better Not full of crony capitalistic Axe body spray as the day does Basically my life is turning into a Tom Waits song before my very eyes The best I can hope for is to come back in one piece when the war is done

☊

Justin Karcher is a playwright and poet living in Buffalo, NY. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Theater Jugend as well as its Playwright-in-Residence. His recent works have been published in 3:AM Magazine, The Buffalo News, Plenitude Magazine, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. He is the recent winner of the 2015 Just Buffalo Literary Center members’ writing competition. A book of poems, Tailgating at the Gates of Hell, was released in October from Ghost City Press. He tweets @Justin_Karcher.

[mixtapemethodology]

How to Attract Hummingbirds on the Last Day of Your Life

Poetry by Justin Karcher

Last night at a party, Naomi displayed her cleavage In this strapless low-cut little black dress I think I’m still turned on and bacteria is clinging to the mind Looking out the window, morning seems beyond repair Abandoned cars, electrical workers wandering in the dark Hungry hummingbirds crawling on their hands and knees The howling of Soviet space dogs two yards over The canine cosmonauts are caught up in a torrid infatuation with Taylor Swift She barely knows they’re alive, but the stage-struck beasts can’t shake it off

I see no options left in this anxiety so I chug an entire bottle of nectar And pour some socialist sugar on me – hopefully if all goes well I’ll sink into sweet uncertainty, into the arms of a shipwreck who loves me Set sail for a land where hummingbirds are more like vultures Circling overhead and grunting, and when the time’s right They come swooping down to feed on our candy-coated bodies Set sail for a land where canine cosmonauts dig up our bones And drop them at the feet of electrical workers wandering in the dark Set sail for a land where our bones are more like flashlights Guiding those in need through the abyss and into the driver’s seat Where Taylor Swift is always playing on the charismatic radio She’s right, you know: the heart always has enough space for one more mistake

☊

Justin Karcher is a playwright and poet living in Buffalo, NY. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Theater Jugend as well as its Playwright-in-Residence. His recent works have been published in 3:AM Magazine, The Buffalo News, Plenitude Magazine, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. He is the recent winner of the 2015 Just Buffalo Literary Center members’ writing competition. A book of poems, Tailgating at the Gates of Hell, was released in October from Ghost City Press. He tweets @Justin_Karcher. 

[mixtapemethodology]

Guides

Essay by Jill LaBrack

On a recent Sunday night my wife and I drove north from New Haven, Connecticut to Northampton, Massachusetts to see the singer-songwriter Tanya Donelly. She was participating in Robin Lane's Songbird Sings, a benefit for women subjected to violence. After a tough New England winter that paired eternal snowfall with freezing temperatures, this early May evening was thankfully on the warm side.

Our first stop was supper. In my youthful days attending club shows, I never bothered with the triviality of sustenance if arriving less than two hours before the first act went on stage. I wanted to be stationed right up front, so I prepared by anxiously smoking cigarettes in the growing line outside. Now, I eat regularly and eschew cigarettes for vitamins. I also reluctantly had to admit that smoking was not quelling my nerves, as cool as I tried to play it back then.

After our meal, we headed a block over to the club. It hadn't opened yet but people were standing outside. Baby boomers in line were talking concerts, Neil Young (expected) and Girls Guns and Glory (unexpected). I didn't see anyone close to my age. I wondered if my generation of grunge and alt/indie fans would start heading out to see bands again, maybe once less sleep-deprived after years of raising children. I myself do not have children and don't attend many shows anymore. In the late 1990s, I grew tired of the time and money sacrificed for bands that didn't seem to have bothered practicing. Now I pick and choose: Wild Flag, Marnie Stern, Lucinda Williams, Kacey Musgraves, Ted Leo, Angel Olsen, The Decemberists, Sonic Youth, Amy Helm, and Low. These are the artists I've seen in the past ten years. For comparison's sake, that might have covered one month in 1995.

Through an open window, we were treated to soundcheck. I stared at the cement sidewalk and basked in the last hour of sunlight. When we were let in, my wife and I took a table at the front of the room.

Tanya Donelly co-founded the band Throwing Muses before co-founding the Breeders, left both of those to start Belly, and has been a solo artist since that band dissolved in 1996 after only two full-length records, Star and King. Between 1993 and 1996, I saw Belly play live sixteen times in five different states plus the District of Columbia. Had there been more opportunities, my attendance surely would have increased. Belly's bassist, Gail Greenwood, would add me to the guest list in areas she knew I was near ("Don't pay for tickets!" she admonished me once. We met outside the club Cat's Cradle when it was still in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at my first Belly show.). Whenever I was invited backstage, Donelly and Greenwood were always chatty and kind. I adored them; I loved the band's music.

The last time I saw Donelly play was 1997. She was in New York City for her first solo album tour. Out of sorts, I forfeited my usual spot to stand near the back. I was there with someone who had recently dumped me but still insisted I attend the event with her. I was 40% sad sack and 60% refusing to give up my stake in Donelly. It's easy now to say it was 100% a mistake. In my post-breakup state, the music merely was loud background, and I stood there wishing I had stayed home.

For several years after that show, I listened to Donelly's work regularly. In February 2001, my parents were diagnosed with cancer within three weeks of each other. I began driving back and forth from my apartment in the Bronx to my hometown of Southington, Connecticut every weekend at first and then, once I became a casualty in the dot-com bust, once or twice during the week as well. I frequently tuned in to the numbing blandness of Top 40 radio: lots of Sublime, Sugar Ray, and unnecessarily hyped-up DJs. When I felt up to active listening, the voices of Donelly and Magnapop's Linda Hopper were the ones that comforted me most.

My father beat the cancer quickly. My mother died the night before Memorial Day, a holiday she had teased me about only a week prior. "You'll be in charge of grilling," she joked, acknowledging both the illness that left her and my father weak, and my then poor culinary skills.

In early 2002, I turned 33. I was living in New Haven, having made a commitment to return to Connecticut the morning of the day of my mother's death. Her tradition was to call my sisters and me on the minute we were born and sing "Happy Birthday" in a voice never meant for song. I dressed that morning listening for the phone. In a grieving, grasping state, I was looking for signs from the great beyond. I wanted my dead mother to make the phone ring. I wanted proof that she was okay somewhere, anywhere. Of course, what I really wanted was for her not to be dead.

Later that day, a needed moment of grace came at my job. My co-workers at Cutler's, a now-defunct independent record store, surprised me with a card and an advance copy of Tanya Donelly's second solo album, Beautysleep. I waited to play it for the drive home and, as Donelly's voice drifted out of the car speakers, I cried.

Not long after that - three or four years - I was barely listening to her at all. It was situational and inevitable: my access to music and ability to research grew exponentially with technology and, simultaneously, a higher salary allotted me more spending money. Honestly, I acquired more than I listened. I pointed to others to justify my obsession. Even those friends with fewer years spent collecting were amassing digital libraries of more than 20,000 songs. How could I call myself a music fan if I wasn't actively digging for obscure gems at every opportunity?

☊

A few weeks after my wife and I saw Tanya Donelly, we went to a play, The Children, written by Phillip Howze. In it, a motley crew of homeless teenagers who exist across the sexual- and gender-orientation spectrum try to figure out who they are and where--or if there even is--a place they belong. As the characters sang their stories of hardship in coming out, I thought of my own story, my wife's, and those of my gay friends. In our shared past is the reality, and terrified imaginings, of rejection. This twisted into a self-hatred that manifested itself in myriad unhealthy behaviors. I can't think of one person who wasn't abusing something. Distance uncovered a pattern many of us had of pushing people away, keeping ourselves safe. One of my soundtracks while mired in this period was Belly's King.

Most of us made it out on the other side. Now we are in our late thirties and forties, with careers and houses and healthier habits. Not all of us are still in contact but that's okay. We fought the initial discrimination from outside and inside ourselves that kept us closeted for too long and then moved beyond it, blurring the rearview mirror. The Children made it all crystal clear. The play made me realize how hard I had worked to hate and hide my true self and how hard it was to stop. Even now, the self-sabotage can creep up and startle me.

When Donelly took the stage, time collapsed and eighteen years became a minute. I don't mean I figuratively became 25 again, wearing cut-off shorts, a Helium t-shirt, and black Doc Marten boots. I mean that her voice brought me back to a state I once inhabited regularly. I went to see my favorite artists live because it was frequently transcendent. The best shows I saw then - from Belly to the Geraldine Fibbers to Jawbox - lifted me out of the day-to-day, out of my mortal coil. I found meaning in them until I could forge one in my own life.

Seeing Tanya Donelly alongside The Children felt like a one-two punch. If I must echo a Motley Crue classic, I will: it kickstarted my heart. It helped me to reclaim some things I had lost, or maybe just laid down for a bit. I believe in moving forward, in not dwelling in the past, which has led me to the habit of erasure and thinking each day can be as simple as flipping paper on an easel. I am quick to forget or ignore the impressions that have already been made, these markings to use as a guide.

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I recently packed up 500 compact discs that I will sell to a local record store. It's a good collection but one in which I was more intellectually than emotionally attached. In the library of more than 700 discs and records I kept, Donelly's sit safely. Tomorrow I plan to get in touch with a friend from the old days, to see when we can hang out again.

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Jill LaBrack's writing has appeared on PopMatters.com, StylusMagazine.com, and in The Fairfield County Weekly.  She resides - along with her wife, four cats, and dog named T. Riggins - in New Haven, Connecticut.

[mixtapemethodology]

Michete: Strolling Rap’s Left Hand Path

Interview by B.R. Yeager

Call your girlfriend / Tell her that it's over / Got you switching teams / So they call me Red Rover. Synthetic pep-rally kick drums and hand claps intermingle with pins and needles arpeggio, while rapper/producer Michete spits line after line about “targeting a straight man and persuading him to come to the dark side.” I'm the type of bitch to make you lose your religion / Going all night trying every position. It's all a gloriously queered, devil worshipping take on ratchet music.

“I'm really influenced and inspired by demonic imagery,” Michete explains via FaceTime from outside her parent's house in Spokane, Washington. “I love thinking of myself as being like a demon, and I love the idea of me as a queer person—meaning that I'm 'evil' or 'corrupt' or whatever.”  She lets out a laugh—warm, unbridled and infectious. “I just live for that—the idea that I'm demonic or that I've been tainted by the devil. I'm into that concept... [how] the crazy, religious right says 'queer and trans people are going to hell' and—I don't know—are possessed by demons or whatever. I hear that sort of rhetoric and I'm like, 'uh, cool!'  Like, 'good!'”

*   *   * Cool Tricks has only been out a few months, but Michete doesn't sound like an amateur—largely because he isn't one. “I've always been a performer and shit,” she explains. “I did theater and improv all throughout high school. The first raps I ever wrote... I was probably 15, but I don't think I took it that seriously. [But] I've always been a creative person, and that manifested itself several ways, and I just ended up being a rapper. I don't think I would have expected that, [but] it's what my natural skill set lends itself best to.”

Though she's been refining her craft for several years (the hook for “Red Rover” dates back to 2012, and apparently there's an unfinished demo from 2011 she'd rather leave unheard), it wasn't until 2014 when she wrote and recorded her proper introduction—the nihilistically-referential and gleefully raunchy “Rap Game Kimmy Gibbler.” (Some particularly juicy bars include: If I'm a queen then I guess that you're a princess / Don on the Mike like Ninja Turtle incest and the titular Burning up these bitches like my last name's Hitler / Uninvited guest, rap game Kimmy Gibbler.) It serves as a perfect pre-emptive strike—a Full House reference twisted into a snide invitation to haters, a trap, packed with enough venom to lay waste to all would-be antagonists.  It's Michete's “bring the motherfucking ruckus” moment.

“[It] came together, like, so quickly—it was just so easy to make. And I was like Wow! Making songs is fuckin' easy! I can do five more of these! But...” She laughs “...that's not the reality of it at all!” (Still, Cool Tricks' nine tracks took only about a year to finish).

That April, Michete uploaded “...Kimmie Gibbler” and immediately began to receive attention from unexpected sources. “Like, random people I went to high school with, who I barely even talked to, or who I'm not really friends with anymore, were just like, 'Oh my God, I listen to your song all the time.  We play it in the car and know all the words.' And I'm like, 'why?'”  She laughs hard. “So at that point I was like, Okay, I'm clearly on to something, so I should really keep doing this.”

Around that time, she also had begun corresponding with art-pop prodigy Shamir—someone who quickly became one of Michete's biggest supporters. In late September 2015—only three months after completing and releasing her first EP—Michete made her live debut in an opening slot for Shamir, before a sold-out crowd at Seattle's The Crocodile.

“It was rad. Yeah, people loved it. The crowd's energy was super good.  Um...” she hesitates, and a wickedly bemused smile creeps into her voice “...there was this cult there, that was filming an episode of True Life for MTV, called True Life: I'm Starting My Own Religion. Like, this fucking happened!” We both burst out laughing. “But yeah, I wasn't nervous at all. I was just so excited.”

*   *   *

Michete names Kanye and Nicki as his favorite rappers, and Lady Gaga as an “influence in life” (evidenced by a Gaga tattoo on his left arm), “[but] I'm more obsessed with myself now, though. I'm all about myself and my own artistry.” She then brings up Michael Jackson, dropping that “[there are] a lot of pop influences that I don't think a lot of people see in my music yet.

“I don't think people are really aware of how ambitious I am, or how ambitious I plan on being.  Like, I really want to be the biggest pop star in the world, but I only have the resources to be this queer punk rapper at the time.  So that's what I'm going to be for now!” There's also a significantly more oppressive, regional inspiration that seeps into Michete's work. “The unbearable whiteness of people in Spokane is definitely kind of a low-key influence, and I think that's something I might talk about more explicitly [on future releases].” The topic of conversation quickly shifts to former-NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal. “She's the most famous thing that's happened to Spokane in a long time. This is the only city where that would happen.” Michete notes the irony of being a white rapper sharing a hometown with the disgraced activist; a source of bitter amusement.  “Spokane is such a crazy cesspool of white nonsense.” (Weirdly, the rapper and Dolezal have another connection: Andy Wickwire—Michete's video director—apparently took an African-American studies course under Dolezal a year before the scandal broke). “There's a reason why the first show I ever played was in Seattle. I don't honestly have much interest in playing shows in Spokane until I've evolved beyond being a local artist. As of right now there's not a market for queer rappers in Spokane.  It's not something people are going to be excited to see until they already know who I am.”

*   *   *

“It's such a long explanation—the concept of 'tricks.'” She bursts out laughing, sounding ecstatic to finally relay this story. “I'm just going to let you know. Okay, it was two summers ago....”

Like many great works of art, Cool Tricks emerged from the influence of controlled substances. Michete describes a day when her and a friend taking psilocybin mushrooms, chilled in a pool, and held ab in-depth discussion about Missy Elliot for six hours. “Specifically the moment in the 'Get Your Freak On' video when she turns her neck into a  snake-like thing and goes—Is that your CHICK?!” she rasps. As the trip wore on, they gradually began referring to the special effect as though “that was something Missy Elliot was physically capable of in real life. We were like 'yeah, Missy Elliot is really talented—she can turn her neck into a snake.'” Months later, Michete and the same friend dropped acid and spent the day watching “every Lady Gaga video, every Ke$ha video, every Kanye, every Nicki video, every Christina Aguilera... the entire R. Kelly 'Trapped In the Closet' series—we just watched music videos all fucking day. And we just kept pointing out people's 'tricks.'  Like—'Oh, Lady Gaga's head is on a swan. That's a cool trick.'”   The term “trick” eventually came to encompass individual songs, certain special effects—practically anything that hinted at a magical ability or property. “And so, we kind of had this weird realization about how life is all about 'tricks.'  'Tricks' in the sense of skills, like talents—tricks that you have. But also in terms of deceit—like, convincing people. Like, if you go to a [job] interview, you have to 'trick' the person into hiring you. “So Cool Tricks was basically a concept I came up with on that day—on acid—over Thanksgiving break in 2013. And I was obviously out of my mind on drugs, so I didn't fully understand it yet, but I was like, This is going to be very important. The concept of tricks is very important to my life. This is going to be a big fucking deal in my life. Tricks!” “So Cool Tricks is my first collection of tricks where I'm using my tricks to trick you into supporting me and helping me get a career!” She laughs loud, and I join in—not only because her laugh is so sincere and contagious, but also because she may have just changed the way I look at the world forever. 

*   *   *

It's not hard to imagine Michete starting a cult of her own—and being really good at it, too. He certainly possesses the pre-requisite will, savvy and charisma, and Cool Tricks already stands as a siren song of sex, magic and casual abomination. Years from now she'll probably be strolling the countryside, erecting compounds and shrines dedicated to all the best blasphemies, all outfitted with only the most powerful sound systems—where rappers and singers bring lightning down to earth with their voices. She'll travel coast to coast, claiming worshippers in scores and casting hexes upon all who dare oppose her. But for right now, Michete has to hustle to get the word out. He isn't working off the support of a manager or label; she's learning how to navigate the music industry from the bottom up—on top of the two jobs she works to make ends meets. It's exhausting, and the fatigue takes a toll on one's ability to engage with the creative process—especially when one is creating art so intensely personal. Art that exists sheerly because it needs to exist. Still, this past month she's already released a new track—“Recognize This Pussy,” which is inarguably one of her best. Maybe his most sophisticated production so far—fresh layers of kaleidoscopic bell tones weave through sinister sub-bass throbs—she pushes her already-impressive vocal cadence to new heights.  When she spits...

My flow and bars / Leaving them deader than Mozart   Got these dudes acting up / like Melissa Joan Hart But so far there hasn't been / One that's on my level   They're so laymen, I'm so flamin' / Yes I'm hotter than the devil

...it's almost impossible to beat back the swirling, hallucinatory visions of Michete stalking some un-charted metaphysical space, consulting her grimoire and drawing energy from forbidden shadow-realms. Traversing the left hand path and wreaking domination, utterly indifferent to the unprepared. “Recognize This Pussy” feels like a natural step after Cool Tricks, and taken together these songs feel something like an omen. Regardless of whether Michete's next opus will be a blessing or a curse, it will undoubtedly be stitched through with her wholly unique tricks—that arcane dark magic she has set upon our world.

☊

Stream and download Cool Tricks and more at https://michete.bandcamp.com/ and https://soundcloud.com/michetemusic. 

☊

B.R. Yeager is a music critic and senior editor for mxdwn.com, as well as a freelance (i.e. unpaid) author of prose and poetry. His Wu-Tang slang is mad fucking dangerous. Read more at http://bryeager.wordpress.com.

[mixtapemethodology]

This Must be the Place

Poetry by Chris Campanioni

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Chris Campanioni is a first-generation Cuban- and Polish-American. He has worked as a journalist, model, and actor, and he teaches literature and creative writing at Baruch College and new form journalism at John Jay. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2013 for his collection, In Conversation, and his novel,Going Down, was selected as Best First Book for the 2014 International Latino Book Awards. He is also the author of Once in a Lifetime, a book of poems from Berkeley Press. Find him in space atwww.chriscampanioni.com or in person, somewhere between Brooklyn Bridge Park and Barclays Center.