DJ Malpaso’s Funeral Playlist!
By WTJU Rock
As one of WTJU Rock’s (arguably) more goth-adjacent DJs, when I was recently given the writing prompt of creating a playlist for my own funeral, I leapt at the idea! (It’s not as if I’ve been formulating this list recreationally for years, or anything…)
You can listen to this playlist on YouTube at: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoi8rZkKtJwLP4QMW3pPOdI-mgp6GAD9C&si=rIVZiftupEL1nWRL
1. It’s A Sin – The Moon Loungers (Pet Shop Boys cover)
I felt like a slower, more contemplative version of the song was needed for this purpose. If the Boys themselves had made an acoustic version, I would likely prefer it, but this is a respectful effort, and I like how these guys, like Neil Tennant, sing with very discernable accents. I’m not sure the original quite hit home with me until I heard it claimed as an ecstatic outliers’ anthem in the Refn film Bronson, and I have had a strong personal attachment to it ever since. It’s all too fitting for a kid who from the start was always attracted to the forbidden red buttons, the light sockets, the bees’ nests, the divergent foot paths… presumably in pursuit of the juiciest possible story.
2. Dancing Right In Front Of Me – David Gilmour
Pink Floyd and Pink-Floyd-adjoining music is nestled too deeply in my bones for me to be particularly objective about it. From the time 16-year-old me watched The One I Wanted perform “The Trial” before me in a most theatrical manner (and soon after was loaned The Wall on CD by The One Who Wanted Me) – I was done for. Gilmour-helmed Floyd of course is a good deal milder than the band in its glory days, but something slightly vaudevillian (or should I say, “music-hall-esque”) still seeps in at times and tenderizes my calloused old heart. Plus the sentiment here is stellar: “Maybe I should have shown you a clearer plainer truth / That doesn’t care about summer and less about youth.”
3. Flower Shop – Marcia Strassman
I learned of this song just recently through an online group called Sad Old Music. I probably don’t have to explain to you that I am viewing the titular flower shop as a big running metaphor, which is probably how it was intended.
I should mention that in addition to having a brief recording career, Strassman (born in 1948) was an actor featured in M*A*S*H and Welcome Back, Kotter, among other projects. She died of cancer at just 66.
4. Charlotte Mittnacht (The Fabulous Destiny Of) – DeVotchKa
I have vivid memories of buying this CD (How It Ends) in 2007. I was in a little indie record shop in Colorado Springs that was the only business of its kind for many miles, close to a coal line and standing amid a vast plain against the backdrop of the Rockies. I played the CD in the rental car as my dad drove around the area, and the music seemed to reverberate through the sun-drenched landscape. We were visiting my paternal grandma, a military wife who’d immigrated to the US from the Philippines in the 1950s and been a part of the community around Fort Carson for the majority of her adult life. She died in 2019 at the age of 102.
5. Alexandra Leaving – Leonard Cohen (with Sharon Robinson)
One of my Greek great aunts, a suave, close-cropped go-getter, used to vacation in the proximity of Cohen and his cohort on the Greek island of Hydra. When I came across this tune in the late aughts, I was just getting into a lot of the music she had gifted me, which meant exploring Cohen beyond just his greatest hits. I had also just started a musical project under the stage name Alexandra Rising, taken from my middle name which nods to relatives on the Greek side of my family. (Note: I’m not religious, so I prefer to look at the line “leaving with her lord” as referring to Death itself.)
6. Bolero – Moulin Rouge (2001) Original Film Version – Closing Credits – Steve Sharples
Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive, erratic film didn’t age all that well in my opinion, but at the time it earned lots of uniqueness points. This track, at 8-ish min., is a behemoth with different movements that could suggest different characters weaving in and out of one’s life (and trust me when I say that at my private all-girl’s college I was closely acquainted with the violin that enters at 5:58). The opening lines, from the song “Nature Boy” (written by beatnik Eden Ahbez and recorded by many, including Bowie), serve as a reminder that human connection really is the most important thing, which is something my introverted behind has to remember every day.
I’ve always felt that the song’s accelerating tempo reflects the changing perception of time as one ages. When a year is now only a small fraction of one’s life, it passes with alarming speed.
7. If – Pink Floyd
Now for the Floyd proper. I love how plainspoken and direct this song is. It captures how we sometimes know we should do better, and for whatever reason, we just don’t. It also looks headlong at rifts between familiars, and fear of isolation. Not to mention that, in title only, it reminds me of my first exposure to the Rudyard Kipling poem “If”, which happened to be my mom presenting it to middle-school-aged me in a totally unironic fashion. (For better or for worse, we had a lot of musty classics lying around the house at all times).
8. Crazy Love – Marianne Faithfull (with Warren Ellis)
It doesn’t get any better than 1) an anthem of empathy for the outcast, 2) featuring this epic duo, 3) as part an album (2004’s Before The Poison) of contributions by Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, and a veritable who’s who of alt rock at the time. I always like to describe Ellis’ mournful violin tone where it goes especially raggedy as sounding “congested”. There are few sounds on earth that appeal to me more than that sound.
Listen to DJ Malpaso’s weekly show, Limerence Addiction, during the graveyard shift, every Wednesday from 1-3am
Send your own funeral playlist, record or concert review, or anything fabulous on the subject of rock music to anniedeblanco@gmail.com
