Death Trip

***DISCLAIMER**** I AM NOT THINKING ABOUT KILLING MYSELF. THIS LIST IS FOR POSTERITY ONLY. DO NOT CALL THE AUTHORITIES.

Last year, my grandfather died. He had been sick for a long time and had a good life. His funeral was held at a place I am familiar with, King-Lynk funeral home in Ft. Madison. It was a nice, well-attended funeral and the funeral director was able to put together a nice slideshow featuring pictures of the deceased at various stages of his life accompanied by Ferlin Husky's gospel hit "Wings of a Dove". Now, I came to appreciate my grandfathers favorite music too late in life - he was a big Johnny Cash fan WAY before it was cool - and I can dig on a nice gospel tune done right. However, Ferlin was the only thing on the menu all during the visitation and it got to be a grim joke towards the end as God's pure, sweet love was spread around for the 50th time that afternoon.

Now, everyone should know by now that music plays a big part in my life and, as anyone who's wrestled with me for control of a car stereo can attest, I am pretty particular about what I like. And so, in the interest of preserving it in case of my untimely demise, I have decided to post the music I want played at my funeral on this blog. I came to this decision after having a re-occurring nightmare of lying in state while "The Time of Your Life" by Greenday plays softly in the background. It... haunts me.

So anyway, here it is. Notice that, in the interest of harmony, I have not included a lot of my more esoteric fare and nothing that I have noticed really irritates some people (Killdozer, Daniel Johnston, etc...). If you have similar fears, please feel free to post the listing for your own mortuary mix-tape in the comments and I'll make sure you are put in the ground with a smile on your face.

Now all of these songs can be found on my iTunes under the soundtrack heading "funeral party mix". And I did put some effort into making them segue from song to song, so don't fuck with the order.



1. "Come Down Softly to my Soul" - Spacemen 3
2. "King of Birds" - R.E.M.
Shut up.
3. "Cocoon" - The Decemberists
4. "Buckets of Rain" - Bob Dylan
5. "Felt Good To Burn" - The Flaming Lips
Tee-hee, I know. Hopefully, the fuzz combined with sad small talk with drown out most of the cussing/violent imagery/references to drug use.

And all your dreams, and oh, God blessed your soul
I saw you were holdin' your head
But we couldn't have been dead
'cause you stood up and moaned and said,
I wasn't wavin' goodbye, I was sayin' hello.

6. "Spider in the Snow" - The Dismemberment Plan
7. "Tired of this Life" - Dawn Landes
8. "Thirteen" - Elliot Smith
Yeah it's a cover. Sue me
9. "Hangman" - Fire on Fire
10. "Love Love Love" - The Mountain Goats
11. "Which Will" - Nick Drake
12. "Wayfaring Stranger" - Johnny Cash
13. "Jesus, Etc" - Wilco

Jesus, don't cry
you can rely on me honey
you can combine anything you want
I'll be around
you were right about the stars
each one is a setting sun

14. "Chasing After Deer" - Midlake
15. "Miles From Nowhere" - Cat Stevens
16. "Guiding Light" - Television
17. "Mercy" - Mojave 3
18. "Atmosphere" - Joy Division
'natch
19. "Soon" - Low
20. "Here" - Pavement
21. "So It Goes" - Tom Waits
22. "Homeward, These Shoes" - Iron & Wine
23. "Every Fool has a Rainbow" - Merle Haggard
Thanks, Grandpa.
24. "After Hours" - The Velvet Underground
It's the version on the Quine tapes: "I'd like to introduce my drummer Maureen, we call her Moe..."

So there you have it. If not played at a reasonable volume on a decent sound system, I will haunt every one of you motherfuckers from beyond the grave.

Oh, yeah, and sorry for not posting for a long time, blah, blah, blah...