Sunday, September 4, 2016

The 2015/1967 Countdown - 09/04/2016 Update

All right, so my son is off for his first year of college. Time to get back to working through those songs that were included in the 2015 and 1967 mix collections but will not be represented in our best of the year rankings before we start the countdowns proper.

Today, we look at three older tunes featured on our 2015 Coachella Starters mix.

For those less familiar with our annual mix collections, each year's Coachella Starters mix highlights some of the top undercard acts I saw at the same calendar year's Coachella Festival.

Though I always strive to stay current, this is the one mix where I will really relax from sticking to a same-calendar-year or prior-year release date criteria with regards to song inclusion.  If a band I might not profile again produced its best song three years ago, that's what goes in here.

But this year, three of the songs on this mix date way, way back.

The best of the three and one of the very best songs I saw performed by any band the entire festival weekend was veteran Brit Rockers Kasabian's Club Foot.

The track opener for the band's 2004 self-titled debut, it's a Stone Roses/Madchester styled groover of the first order that absolutely destroyed in the Mojave Tent early Saturday Night.

Sadly, it's the only song of the three profiled today where a decent video of the Coachella performance is still available online.



Another hard-charging rocker that totally stood out amongst all the 2015 weekend's music was former Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork's searing rendition of long-time fan favorite Low Desert Punk.

Just a funky stoner rock anthem, the song dates back all the way to Bjork's 1999 solo debut Jalamanta, but the recorded version included in this mix, as fun as it is, doesn't do justice to how extraordinary the song played live.

Videos of that Coachella performance are no longer available, but this video of a European performance five years prior comes the closest to representing the fantastic vibe that day.



Our final deep reach back is the breathtaking Jon Hopkins / King Creosote collaboration Bats In The Attic, which originated on the duo's gorgeous 2011 collection of ambient folk-tunes lyrically anchored around life in a Scottish sea town, Diamond Mine.

In truth, I only caught a few moments of Hopkins' 2015 Yuma DJ set, and doubt this track was part of his set that day, but since I had already mined much of the material from Hopkins' more recent and equally impressive 2013 release Immunity a few years back, I wanted to shine the spotlight on Diamond Mine here instead.

Oh, and if you haven't heard this song before, you might want to grab a tissue. This one really pulls at the heartstrings.

No comments: