Cher - Take Me Home - 1979

What a cover, right? In the spirit of Halloween I thought this cover was a sort of tribute to dressing up in outrageous costumes. In looking at it now, it sort of makes me think that this inspired Princess Leia's outfit in Jedi. Who knows if that is true, but it certainly is a great outfit.

I have a few Cher records from early in her career and I have some Sonny and Cher records I enjoy. This record from 1979 may be the most recent record I have of hers on vinyl. I was a bit skeptical about what to expect of the music at this point in her career. I dreaded hearing some bad disco and was only buying the record for the amazing costume she's wearing.

I was pleased to find that I knew the song "Take Me Home" and I already loved it. My previous experience with the song was with the cover Sophie Ellis Baxter did back in 2001. I thought that was a great dance track. Cher's version is also pretty great.



There are a few other tracks on the record that I also like. Another highlight is another song that I had heard before, but didn't recognize the title. The closing track "My Song (Too Far Gone)" is a beautiful little song. Not at all what I was expecting when I thought I was picking up a formula disco record from Casablanca records.

And the third song I knew, but didn't know I knew was "Let This Be A Lesson To You!", which has a great gospel and soul flavor to it. The chorus is certain to get you singing along and clapping your hands like you were in a revival meeting. A great song.

Track 2 "Wasn't It Good" on the other hand was a new song for me. I hadn't heard it before getting this record, but I love it. In relistening to it while writing this blog I couldn't help but think this would probably be a good candidate for some DJ to mash up or remix with some modern beats. The other thing the song made me think about is that the electronic manipulation on the back up singers were kind of like the precursers to her 1998 hit "Believe" which had the hook "Do you believe in life after love" where her voice was electronically tweaked.

The electronic voice manipulation also reminds me of some of the robotic voice effects in the Bee Gee's movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" which would have come out just a year before she recorded this record. Listen to "Mean Mr. Mustard" for a comparison.

Also check out "Git Down (Guitar Groupie)" and "Love & Pain". I dig on them as well.

Overall this is a great record and one to pick up when you see it. Get it on CD or just keep your eyes open in the thrift stores for the vinyl. It litters the dollar bins everywhere.

Enjoy!

01 Take Me Home.m4a
02 Wasn't It Good.m4a
03 Say The Word.m4a
04 Happy Was The Day We Met.m4a
05 Git Down (Guitar Groupie).m4a
06 Love & Pain (AKA Pain In My Heart).m4a
07 Let This Be A Lesson To You!.m4a
08 It's Too Late To Love Me Now.m4a
09 My Song (Too Far Gone).m4a

Take Me Home Side 1.zip
Take Me Home Side 2.zip

As an extra bonus here is one of Cher's other tasteful outfits from the 80's. Remember this gem?

Brigham Young - Rise And Shout

Besides Halloween and Thanksgiving, many people think of of college football when they think of Fall. I'm not a big football guy myself, but I recognize that many people love the sport and to them Fall means football. So in honor of that here is a college marching band record. It's just the sort of music you here at college football games. I attended a few when I was in school. Like most sporting events, being there in the stadium is usually a fun time and a far different experience than watching it on TV.

Many of these songs, most people won't know unless you went to BYU, because they are school songs. However there are some pop songs on here. I love The Beatles and so "Hard Days Night" is a favorite here. "Watermelon Man" is also pretty fun.

Enjoy!

01 Cougar Song.m4a
02 Watermelon Man.m4a
03 Acapulco 1922.m4a
04 The Old Y Bell.m4a
05 WAC March.m4a
06 Give My Regards To Broadway-Mondo Cane.m4a
07 Hard Days Night.m4a
08 Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho.m4a
09 College Song.m4a
10 Longest Day.m4a
11 When The Saints Come Marching In.m4a
12 On The Trail Of The Y.m4a
13 Lonely Bull.m4a
14 Walk On The Wild Side.m4a
15 Cougar Song.m4a
16 Fight You Cougars.m4a
17 College Song.m4a

Brigham Young University Band - Rise And Shout.zip

Halloween Mix 2007 Re-post

Yes, I am being totally lazy recycling old posts, but what can I say. I'm into recycling. I've also been extremely busy and I'm spending whatever extra time I have for this blog, getting Christmas records digitized and processed for the month of December. I am planning to do like last year and post a new record every day. I'm also madly trying to get all that done so I can make my final selections for the Christmas mix. I spent time this past weekend digitizing audio clips from movies and TV shows that I thought might work nice on a mix.

Well, enough about Christmas. This is October and Halloween is quickly approaching. So come with me in the way back machine to 2007, before I knew how to make mixes in garage band and was doing it old school with itunes. This was my first Halloween mix and I think I did okay. If nothing else I think my cover photo was pretty good.

Enjoy!


Spencer's Halloween Mix 2007.zip

The track listing is as follows. For details on the artists you'll just have to download the tracks and look at the ID tags. Or if you are really just curious, you can send me an e-mail.

01 Ed Wood Main Titles (Edit)
02 Trick Or Treat
03 My Dear Watson
04 Horrorshow
05 To Make A Witch Pockmarked
06 Suspiria (Narration)
07 Angel Witch
08 Pass The Witch's Broomstick
09 Figments Park (Edit)
10 Kill The Brain And You Kill The Ghoul
11 I Walked With A Zombie
12 Halloween Hootenanny
13 Surfin' Dead
14 Teenage Zombie Blues
15 Braineaters
16 Among The Dead
17 She's My Witch
18 Lil' Red Riding Hood
19 The Self Fascination Ritual For Increased Power
20 Evil
21 Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But...
22 Braineater
23 At The Munsters
24 Casper, Casper (Whatcha Doin' On The Moon)
25 Do The Rigormortis
26 Pacific Ghost Highway... (Intro)
27 Dinner With Drac
28 Goblin Dance
29 Hillside Strangler
30 Blood Lust
31 Jack The Ripper
32 The Tell-Tale Heart
33 Popeye (The Gravedigger)
34 I Dig You Baby
35 Halloween

SAP Music Halloween Mix 2008 re-post

Last year was my first exploration into doing mixes in garage band. I am still really proud of last year's mix and thought I should repost it for the new comers.

Last year I posted it as a podcast because last year you could burn that podcast to disc in itunes and itunes was smart enough to break up the chapters into individual CD tracks. For some reason on one of the itunes updates this summer that feature was lost. So I'm posting the individual tracks in this one zip file.

The liner notes image has all the details on everything that went into creating this mix. And when I say everything I do mean everything. Prepare to geek out on the level of detail I have provided. Just click on the image to get view the large high res file. At the bottom I've also provided an image to print out for a CD case.

Check back soon, because the 2007 Halloween mix should make an appearance before the end of the month.


Enjoy!

SAP Music Halloween Mix 2008.zip

SAP Music Halloween Mix 2009

It is finally that time of year again. For me Halloween is by far the best season for making mixes. There is so much material out there and I have the most fun mashing up and layering things. Also in addition to traditional Halloween songs, pop and rock music is full of songs with dark themes that lend themselves to Halloween. Candy and sugar is another popular theme in pop music which again plays so well into the whole Halloween thing. So this year, you get songs about candy, you get Elvis Costello singing about killing people.

Again to keep myself off the search engine radar, I'm going to avoid typing out the songs and artists on the track list. I have however provided a hi-res image of the liner notes I made for the CD's I made for friends. You should be able to read that to learn who is singing what. Also as always I have put in all the track tags so when you pull these files into itunes you get all the info you need.

Also I highly recommend listening to the whole thing, because I've mixed all the tracks to flow into each other. Also included here is an image that can be used to print out a CD sticker. That would be the image with the circular theme.

As far as the tracks go, I've put a lot more spoken word and dialogue samples on this mix this year. Don't let that scare you off. I made sure to make all those bits as interesting as possible by layering in music and sound FX. I've also done a lot of editing of songs so you get just the best bits. Much of the time, songs don't overstay their welcome. My philosophy was to get in, get the gist of the song and then move on. So the mix is constantly surprising the listener. I think also there may be some tracks that will put a smile on your face because you may have never thought of them a Halloween songs, but I think you'll find in the context of the mix they work quite well. The easiest example of what I'm talking about is the opening track by The Doors. You may be asking "The Doors, how is that a Halloween song?" well once you give it a listen and hear what I've done I think you'll get it.

So have fun with the music. I hope it can provide a nice soundtrack for the month of October. I also hope to get some comments back from people, so feel free to ask questions and or discuss the songs.

Enjoy!

Here is the whole thing in one zip file.

SAP Music Halloween Mix 2009.zip

01 Peace Frog.m4a
02 Swamp Blood.m4a
03 Skeleton Topless.m4a
04 Full Moon.m4a
05 The Final Sound.m4a
06 Terror From The Circus Of Death.m4a
07 Halloween.m4a
08 More Evil.m4a
09 Psycho.m4a
10 Nightmare In My Closet.m4a
11 The Dead Do Rise Vs. People's Playground.m4a
12 Poltergeist In The Pantry.m4a
13 Ghostride.m4a
14 Ghost Ship.m4a
15 The Ghastly Stomp.m4a
16 Haunted.m4a
17 We Are The Witches.m4a
18 You Must Be A Witch.m4a
19 I Put A Spell On You.m4a
20 Spooky.m4a
21 Candy Man.m4a
22 Some Candy Talking.m4a
23 Graveyard Girl (Yuksek Mix).m4a
24 Zombie.m4a
25 The Haunted And The Haunters Vs. Man With A Harmonica.m4a
26 The Boogie Man.m4a
27 Trick Or Treat.m4a
28 Under The Moon Of Love.m4a
29 Night Of The Witches And Dr. Frankenstein On Campus Commercial.m4a
30 Vampire Daddy.m4a
31 Graveyard Rock.m4a
32 Rock Candy.m4a
33 A Spooky Sounding Halloween Story Vs. The Emperor.m4a
34 The Headless Horseman.m4a
35 Astro Zombies Commercial.m4a
36 Goo Goo Muck.m4a
37 Walk Like A Zombie.m4a
38 Season Of The Witch.m4a
39 Halloween Is All Around.m4a

Here's an image to print out for a CD case.