Your Bitchin' Mixtape: the Twilight Singers

In celebration of our small road trip this weekend to see Greg Dulli and his Twilight Singers, I thought it best to come up with a new bitchin' mixtape. Here are your essential ingredients:

*2011's Dynamite Steps
#2006's A Stitch in Time (EP)
^2006's Powder Burns
+2004's She Loves You
~2003's Blackberry Belle

As usual, everything is sequenced to listen like the most killer of killer concerts you could hope to see. That means first act, long encore, small final encore. All restrained to the 80 minute confine of a CD. Tracks are sequenced for maximum flowability with the best songs weighted to the backend.


And now...
Your bitchin' Twilight Singers mixtape.

1.*Last Night in Town
2.~Teenage Wristband
3.^Forty Dollars
4.~Fat City (Slight Return)
5.+Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair
6.*Blackbird and the Fox
7.^Candy Cane Crawl
8.*Gunshots
9.^There's Been an Accident
10.^Bonnie Brae
11.*The Beginning of the End

12.+Feeling of Gaze
13.#Sublime
14.*Get Lucky
15.#The Lure Would Prove Too Much
16.~Number Nine

17.#Live With Me
18.^Underneath the Waves
19.~Follow Me Down

For best results, burn it onto a CD, pour yourself a nice scotch or irish blend and turn up the volume up. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

the hardest part

The hardest part is the admission to yourself that you somehow lost your nerve. That somehow, you are failing yourself. Again.

So stop worrying about the road not taken and just choose a road, any road. Too many people don't and the end result is the same. They never get anywhere.

For me, that means kicking open some of the doors I've worked really hard to get to. Now is not the time for losing nerve. Take your chances, make your mistakes and laugh about it later.

Because honestly, I've been so exhausted and stressed to the point of breaking over the last few months, I lost my nerve. It's as simple as that. And when you do that, you lose your ability to dream big.

So, it's time to get out of my own way and change my life for the better.

indie

What, in this day and age, does it mean to be indie?

First person to tell me that I wouldn't get it gets socked in the face with a can of PBR as I defile their sweatervest and skinny jeans.

Indie used to mean something. Even after Nirvana was poached by Geffen records. Even after R.E.M. left IRS for Warner Brothers.

But in this day and age, where books can be published on demand (a tool, mind you, that is completely underutilized by comic publishers), what does that mean for artists? More artistic autonomy. A larger slice of the pie. A smaller pie.

Technology is moving faster than we can keep up. So what does that mean for content distribution in both the digital and tactile realms? How capable will artists actually be in delivering their message independently of corporate interference?

So, legitimately, I'm asking: What does indie mean to you?

I'd ask Joe Strummer but he killed punk the day he signed to CBS.