NOW That's What I Call Funeral!

I'm doing this for a number of reasons, the most pressing being my ol' buddy ol' pal Cameron Turner posting his ideal "funeral mix" on his website the other day- Take a gander at that HERE, and accept mine with the same small print, meaning, if you're a kid from high school and we never really spoke but you found this and thought you'd better intervene before i threw my boombox in the bathtub Benicio-Del-Toro style, feel free to read guiltlessly on. If i had any thoughts of prematurely skipping out on this life, i think you'd see a lot more Elliot Smith (and Korn?) on this list. Now, back to what's happened here.

What's really happened here is Cameron Turner has invoked a dangerous chain reaction, likely intentionally seeded, to fuel the insatiable John-Cusack loving english-major minds out there to further entertain thoughts of their own premature demise, a thought even quicker to be replaced with: how will everyone on earth manage to cope with the loss of me once i'm gone? To put it simpler, this is equivalent to asking Kid Rock if he'd like a Coors. The perfect mixtape is an artform in itself on par with ice sculpture, only carrying the burden of importance each one of us is individually bestowed with to feel as though the greatest songs on earth were written precisely for us, just us, just me, i.e. not you. So what could be more relevant than the songs you'd choose to subject your friends and loved ones to when you're already up there playing cards with Bing Crosby and Henry Kissinger?


Well, a lot of things. Like, top ten "There's Only An Hour Left On Earth, What Do We Listen To" tapes and "Top Ten Greatest Lesser-Known Last Tracks of Albums" tapes and obviously the list goes on. So without further ado and more small print, my current preferences for funeral mix, all of which you have my permission to play as they load my body into the specially designed humpback whale-carcass pod to be tied by a five hundred foot rope to the back of the next departing space shuttle mission.

Also note, lest you think me an ignoramus, that i'm crediting the artist and record whose version i select, not who i'm guessing wrote each tune or suggesting each tune is up for grabs by any old artist. Take for example my selection of a song featured on the "Toy Story 2" Soundtrack by Randy Newman. If you were to play the Sarah McLachlan version of this song at my funeral right off the soundtrack, my body would explode in a maelstrom of incendiary hellfire. To properly honor me, you would play the instrumental version, featured on Randy's Songbook Volume 1. Also, i'd like to hope that my inclusion of a song from Toy Story raises the bar of pretentiousness tenfold to this entire discussion.

1. Shenandoah, Keith Jarrett, from The Melody At Night, With You
2. That Lucky Old Sun, Ray Charles, from Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music
3. The Man In Me, Bob Dylan, from New Morning
4. Row, Jon Brion, from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Soundtrack
5. Fair Play, Van Morrison, from Veedon Fleece
6. Yawny At The Apocalypse, Andrew Bird, from Armchair Apocrypha
7. God Only Knows, The Beach Boys, from Pet Sounds
8. When She Loved Me, Randy Newman, The Randy Newman Songbook Volume 1
9. The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades, Sufjan Stevens, from Illinois
10. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, Bob Dylan, from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
11. Golden Slumbers, The Beatles, from Abbey Road