Randy Newman Mixtape

Phew, it's been a while since my last post. I think I'm going to blame me moving back to the UK from New Zealand as the largest contributor in that supposed apathy. Not to mention several months of possibly the most hectic activity it's possible for an unemployed ex-student to get wrapped up with. Yep, that's it. But none of that is relevant here. I've still been formulating plenty of ideas for mixes, and will now kick off this wonderful little renaissance with the equally wonderful Randy Newman.

Not unlike, I'm sure, most people of my generation who have caught on to the brilliance of Mr. Newman, I was first introduced to his work through 'Toy Story'. You know that cracker of an opening tune which has successfully carried the soundtracks of two (and in a few weeks, three) 'Toy Story' films? Well that's not the half of it. Get past the film-score friendly sheen of the his music, and you have a fantastically eccentric sense of humour rarely, if ever, found in mainstream popular music. Randy writes most of his songs from various alternative perspectives: by turn xenophobic, nostalgic, defeatist, optimistic, money-grabbing, misanthropic, aggressively right-wing, and zambianoliangioticaloigisticologphobic (that's the fear of short people, says Google!), and turns the popular song format into something which walks the borderline between fantastical character prose and some sort of exaggerated (though ironic) confessional.

The tracklist goes as follows:

1. It's Money That I Love (Born Again)
2. Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear (Sail Away)
3. Mama Told Me Not To Come (12 Songs)
4. I Think It's Going To Rain Today (Randy Newman)
5. Short People (Little Criminals)
6. My Life Is Good (Trouble In Paradise)
7. Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad (Randy Newman)
8. Birmingham (Good Old Boys)
9. Lonely At The Top (Sail Away)
10. Baltimore (Little Criminals)
11. You Can't Keep A Good Man Down (Randy Newman's Faust)
12. Political Science (Sail Away)
13. I Love L.A. (Trouble In Paradise)
14. Sail Away (Sail Away)
15. I Will Go Sailing No More (Toy Story OST)
16. Let Me Go (Guilty: 30 Years Of Randy Newman)