I hate Bluetooth. And YouTube. And smartphones.
This will come as no surprise to those who know me but let me reassure them that this isn't one of my usual high-minded, technology-is-forever-altering-humans-attention-span style rants. This time I'm being far more narcissistic.
You see, my college glory days took place at the perfect time for an opinionated music fan such as myself. It was when mp3 players became ubiquitous (by which I mean that I had one - I rarely own a technology before it's already become ubiquitous) but before people always had one with them via their smartphones. This was also before most stereos could be wirelessly connected with such music players or with YouTube, aka the free world's free music library.
Back in those halcyon days of yore, most parties were reliant on whatever actual music libraries were available via computer or mp3 or other headphone jack technology. As you know, most sane people don't lug their iPods around for a Saturday night of partying. Therein lay my advantage.
Christmas music is easily my most uncritically sentimental music of that year and God bless it for that. Christmas is the one time of the year that I still let myself go all out and try to recreate my childhood (unlike the rest of my generation which seems hell bent on recreating every aspect of their childhood in a bubbling nostalgia bath as soon and as often as possible).
Of course at the same time, so much Christmas music is produced with such insufferably cheeriness that it's, well, insufferable. God knows the holidays are just as much about disappointment, an inability to recreate the past and the passage of time as about blithe celebration. Hopefully this mix will succeed in balancing that hope and alongside songs about the imperfect reality that is more often our lot.
It's no secret how much I love covers. I mean, if I had an kickass rock band, God knows that I'd spend a lot of time kicking out my favorite jams. I think that most musicians are also music nerds and although they get to have the fun of getting up their and making music while I just write about it, when I see them geek out over some Modern Lovers song a band that no one's heard of I can see that we're not so different, they and I. I've had Titus on the brain, what with listening to their latest record non-stop, so I decided that I might as well get all those covers in one place throw, slap a bow on it and send it your way.
New Jersey's finest Newly-minted New Yorkers Titus Andronicus (does it pain you to read those words as much as it did me to write them?) have always been particularly generous with their covers. Between the tour singles, free mixtapes and raucous live singalongs, they've amassed quite the list. Fortunately for you, dear reader, On Warmer Music has them all right here, just for you.
Titus cuts a wide swath of musical territory with their cover choices. The list runs the gamut from punk icons to jukebox favorites. There are bands I needed to look up (and could barely find anything on), mid-level cult acts, as well as a healthy swath of alt cannon from the Reed to Richman, Westerberg to Cobain. They even play with their audience at times (I mean, Coldplay and Lana Del Ray - honest appreciation, hipster baiting or both?) but it's all in good fun. The quality of these recordings varies greatly from nearly-unlistenable bass-heavy messes to studio masters and everywhere in-between.
So enjoy and remember, they may not all be the best recordings you've ever heard, but there are undeniably a lot of them. And they're free.
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