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MUSICAL ESSENCE: NESMITH VS. CONDESCENDING
Musicians Jason NeSmith (Casper & the Cookies) and Don
Condescending (The Shut-Ups) have been buddies and musi
cal collaborators since they met in sixth grade at Atlanta's
Paideia School. For this week's Mixtape Wars, NeSmith and
Condescending devised mixed tapes that would capture each
other's musical essence. Says Condescending, "People of the
future will need maps of our musical DNA should they ever
decide to clone our respective aesthetics."
Don Condescending's "Essence
of NeSmith" Mixtape
1. "Pinball Ride" by Sounds from the World of Sid &
Marty Krofft
Don Condescending on why he picked this tune: It is
1977. You are a four-year-old riding a 10-story escalator to the
top floor of an Atlanta shopping mall, where children's enter
tainment gurus Sid & Marty Krofft have erected, for no appar
ent reason, an indoor amusement park. At the entrance to the
park, glittering gloves usher you into a giant silver ball, where
a robot launches you into a giant pinball machine. You take
several turns on the ride, feeling that a great mystery has been
revealed. You return the next weekend, only to find the escalator
blocked off, the park closed forever. The escalator remains, how
ever, for years and years, a towering monument to lost paradise.
This is what you heard on the day you made it to the top of that
escalator.
Jason NeSmith's Reaction: Lest you think I'm big on disco,
it's the microtonal synth stuff at 2:00 that warped my brainz.
I'm still chasing that sound.
2. "Question" by The Moody Blues
DC: Some children have teddy bears to sleep with; Jason had
a warm security blanket of reverb. Night after night, The Moody
Blues wrapped this cherub-faced boy in angst-ridden psychedelic
existentialism. The otherworldly vibe would lend to his troubles a
sense of poetic dignity. Then, in the morning, he would wake up
to the sobering truth that he was a glasses-wearing fat boy that
nobody loved.
JN: That's not entirely true. That was back when my mom
loved me. The Moody Blues is the only band I can listen to
without my inner critic growing restless.
3. "Junk" by Paul McCartney
DC: No one is better than Jason at finding discarded crap
from the auditory junkyard then transfiguring it with the right
mouse click at the right time. This song appears on the album
McCartney, whose offhand vibe and seemingly half-assed song
writing practically demand that you toss the disc into h.e dung
heap.
JN: Oh, but what a half an ass it is!
7. "Helicopter" by XTC
DC: Imagine The Beatles, only with massive stage fright, fear
of success and other debilitating neurological disorders. It's nice
to have heroes with problems.
JN: I always wanted to be in a critically acclaimed, finan
cially ruinous band. Dreams DO come true.
8. "Cuddly Toy" by Harry Nilsson
DC: Jason has always been more of a head-bobber than a
head-banger; I have observed that this exact tempo unfailingly
triggers in him the head-bobbing reflex. Also, he likes singers
who sound eager to get started on their mid-morning booze nap.
JN: This song is secretly nasty!
9. "Close to Me" by The Cure
DC: Jason has long been impressed with how this recording
runs counter to industry production standards by making the
listener feel he is in a place more cramped than that which he
technically occupies. When he plays this song in his van, Jason
feels as though he is driving a bumper car, whilst, seated next to
him, Robert Smith hyperventilates seductively.
JN: These days I prefer to listen to records without any
Robert Smith on them.
10. "4'33"" by John Cage
DC: Cage apparently intended this piece, with its three silent
movements, to be more than an exercise in perversity. The lis
tener is supposed to accept as music any sound—a sniffling
nose, a crying baby, a buzzing florescent light—that happens
to fill the void. Nobody can really do this, of course, but Jason
routinely comes close to doing it... that is, as close as a human
being can come without having his ears confiscated by the
angels.
JN: Reader, you can try this at home! All you need to do is
put the paper down and stare at things indiscriminately.
NeSmith's "The Evolution of
Don Condescending" Mixtape
4. "Mother People" by Frank Zappa
DC: The Zappa influence can be fatal to impressionable
youths who tend not to realize that Zappa's sense of humor is
often really lame; this has stunted the artistic growth of all but
a few disciples. Jason is the rare Zappaphile to have transcended
the limitations of his former master.
JN: The only thing more annoying than people that hate
anything Zappa-related is people that love it.
5. "The Telephone Always Rings" by Fun Boy Three
DC: Sounds like the two backing vocalists are lying in parallel
hammocks, sleepily reading cue cards in a forgotten language
while listening to a warped vinyl record of someone else listening
to a warped vinyl record. An influence on Jason's early produc
tion style.
JN: I thought for sure this is where the Gabriel-era Genesis
slam would go.
6. "Bum-Bum" by Trio
DC: Jason went to high school in Germany where he quickly
discovered the aesthetic values of minimalism (playing less, say
ing less, feeling less) before forsaking them at the first opportu
nity to join a hair band.
JN: It turns out Germans like Starship even more than
Americans do.
what I mean." On the other side of that very ugly door sat
Jon Anderson and his housekeeper Simon LeBon, who Don was
told—in the Duran Duran tour program—was a "lyrical genius."
He dutifully absorbed as much crappy genius as he could.
DC: Smelling like he sounded, Simon answered the door
with a question mark, then shook up the picture (the lizard
mixture) and tried to find my mountain hideaway. All of which,
he denied. The morning after, I noticed that voices in my body
were coming through on the radio; crappy genius had become
a reflex.
5. "The Trial" by Pink Floyd
JN: Misery was teenage Don's new best friend. And so was I.
He bought Pink Floyd: The Wall on cassette and became irate
when I copied it. I had made him an unwitting accomplice in an
illegal act. We avoided talking to girls by dissecting the album
and trying to feel as miserable as possible.
DC: Those were the best days of my life.
6. "Beginning to See The Light" by Velvet Underground
JN: in 1986 Don told me that Lou Reed, that weird old guy,
was actually totally awesome. A year later, he was the first guy
under the age of 18 to like the Pixies. Before the important
thinkers of rock culture could agree with him, Don decided he
didn't really like those bands anymore.
DC: They were OK.
8. "Mayor of Simpleton" by XTC
JN: Don had a subscription to Rolling Stone as early as 1984
and kept a book in which he wrote down chart stats like they
were baseball scores. Based on their review, we both bought
Oranges and Lemons. Then we recorded three albums in two
weeks.
DC: Yeah.
9. "Mustache" by Sparks
JN: By 1997 Don had become a masterful songwriter without
a master. One day he heard Sparks, and he knew that he was
accidentally not born a Mael brother.
DC: I would never again know loneliness.
10. "Common People" by Pulp
JN: The universe, in an effort to show that Don is right and
we should have known it, makes Jarvis Cocker rich and famous
for writing pop songs from the perspective of an unreliable nar
rator, maintaining an ironic detachment, and making his listen
ers feel enlightened, vindicated and victimized. It should have
been you, Don.
DC: Thanks, Jason, but I have always thought of victimiza
tion as its own reward.
2. "The People in Your Neighborhood" by
Sesame Street
JN: This song for kids introduces them to
the postman, the fireman, the banker and
more people with important societal roles.
Don's calling turned out to be writing songs
about the mentally challenged children of
the postman, the fireman and the banker.
DC: Actually, the entire neighborhood
was mentally challenged.
1. "Goodnight Sweetheart" by Sha-Na-Na
JN: Pre-pubescent Don's first role model was Bowser, the
uberstud with a congenital jaw defect. The fake cool-guy shtick
will come in handy when Chris Snell has to find some
one to be onstage besides himself.
DC: Who?
Ed note: You can catch The Shut-Ups and Casper & the Cookies when
they share a bill at the 40 Watt Club on Friday, July 22.
3. "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"
by Billy Joel
JN: Eight minutes of Beatles-esque har
mony and semi-theatrical pretensions lead
Don down the primrose path to the door
of his favorite artist, whose mailbox reads:
I'm Billy Freakin' Joel, and you're just a
stupid mailman. Don played this song for his
80-year-old neighbor. Then he made a cryptic
reference to this event in one of his own lyrics.
That's the kind of weird stuff true artists do when
they're 11.
DC: And mentally challenged.
4. "Leave It" by Yes
JN: Don's love of song
brought him to another
house, but this mailbox
said: “No phone can take
your place, you know
lyrics
JULY 20, 2011-FLAGPOLE.COM 13
