Mama Mix Tape HOME
M.K/Mama/ Kathy or as I called her- Mugsy (my funny nickname for her and she called me Mugsy Jr. or Skinny Girl Hinchcliffe) was a music person through and through. She celebrated, painted, cleaned, grieved, loved, communicated and lived through music and sharing music was central to her life. So it is fitting that I have embarked on the Motherlode of a Mix for Mama. If you want a copy of this CD mix just let me know and I will gladly burn you one. xo ellen marie
Don't Be Shy- Cat Steven
Opening the mix…this song has double importance to me- first because it was the opening song in "Harold and Maude" which was one of Mom's favorite movies. In fact we watched it again about a month before she died and both had a good cry/laugh/cry. To me this song captures something about Mom's spirit- I hear her singing these lovely words to us and I also hear myself singing them back to her. Often the gifts we give others are not gifts that come easy to give ourselves. This was very true for Mom who was the most loving, open, generous person I have ever known but also struggled deeply to love/accept herself.
Like a Rolling Stone- Bob Dylan
I know this song was a favorite of Moms, I think it really spoke to her in hard times. When we were living in Dayton and I was probably 12 or 13 she actually wrote the line "How does it feel…" on the wall in the basement. I remember I thought that was cool. Later when I was in high school she made me a mix that started with this song.
Cracking -Suzanne Vega
Mom and I both loved this singer so much and I can't even remember who discovered her first. It was my senior year in high school and we had moved from Ohio to Scituate MA. I was not a happy go lucky teen but brooding and moody. We fought a lot, really the only time we ever did. But music was our communication and our way to connect. We would drive to the Hanover Mall about 30 minutes away and go to Camelot Music and spend hours looking through records and tapes. And on the way there and back we would share songs, sing and talk. We were sharing this cassette of Vega's first album for months until my Mom finally bought another since we both always wanted to hear it. We went to see her play in Boston that year which was the first of many concerts I shared with Mom.
Money Changes Everything - Cyndi Lauper
Another shared love affair with an album/artist. Of course she loved Time After Time and Girls Just Want to Have Fun but then she really got hooked on $ Changes Everything. I remember her blasting this song and singing and laughing in that way you do with total recognition.
Running Up That Hill- Kate Bush
I made her a mix tape just after I graduated high school and left home. This was the first song on the tape. She told me later that it took her three months to even listen to the rest of the mix she just kept rewinding and playing it over and over. Kate Bush really defines that time for me from the end of high school and first few years after and my evolving relationship with myself/and my Mom and being a woman. This album for some reason evokes my Mother to me in a really strong way and I play it and feel close to her.
Slow Turning/ Angel- John Hiatt
Well I have to put two from Mr. Hiatt on here. Always a perennial favorite of ours and we would party down to him with many others. Mom really adored him, his wit and emotion and love. Slow Turning is one of those anthem songs for us both. And Angel is an especially favorite memory for me. I had come to her house in Marshfield MA to stay with her for an extended summer vacation as I was in the process of ending a three year relationship. One late afternoon shortly after I arrived I had an awful conversation with my soon to be ex. I hung up the phone and went out into the backyard and was crying and feeling lost. Suddenly this song came blasting from the living room windows. My Mom had put the speakers in the open windows and cranked it up full blast! She was leaning out of the window grinning at me and it was such a great moment of connection and support. Music and Mama could see me through anything.
Meaning Of Life -Soul 2 Soul
An absolute favorite dance song of hers, she knew every word. I can still see the way she moved her body to this song, she was such a great dancer.
Spirit in the Dark- Aretha Franklin
Another favorite song to dance to. Oh how we danced!
White Boots- The Vaughan Brothers
Mom loved this album and it was in heavy rotation for years. She told me White Boots always made her think of me because I loved to dance in my big black boots and didn't care who was watching and was so free. She always admired my wild extroverted side and never seemed to see that I got that sense of "Do your own thing!" from her.
People in the middle -Spearhead
Oh she loved Spearhead and Michael Franti. I would stop by on a Saturday morning and find her having a one-woman dance party to one of their many albums. We went to see Spearhead together in Minneapolis at First Avenue in maybe 1999 and had a blast. She was really taken by the energy of the show and got right into it. Michael Franti always gets the crowd to jump and there was my 55-year-old Mom jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air like she just didn't care. Beautiful.
Dr Wu -Steely Dan
Hard to choose just one song. Another all time favorite band of Moms (and me) from my childhood on. Last road trip we took together down to South Bend to see Ted, Gretchen, Henry and Eleanor for Easter and we must have listened to the old best of Steely Dan tape three times through. She said it then and it's true…best driving music ever.
Coming in From the Cold -Bob Marley
A constant in my childhood was Bob Marley playing. I remember lazy Sunday mornings and waking up to Mom in the kitchen with Babylon By Bus or Uprising on the stereo and she was making pancakes for us in the shape of cats. Wholesome Mom- M.K. style! She waited in line for hours to get tickets to see him in Cincinnati but sadly he died before the tour started.
Misty Mountain- Toshi Reagen
Here is another song I put on a mix for her that she listened to non-stop for months before even getting to the rest of the mix. We saw Toshi live two times together and rocked out with this amazing woman.
Resurrection Blues -Cassandra Wilson
I know this was another favorite singer of Moms. She loved her voice and wrote out the lyrics (a favorite past time) to one of her songs for me a long time ago and now I can't remember which one. But last summer she put this on for me and we sat in the heat and listened together.
SIDE 2
Sisters of Mercy -Leonard Cohen
She introduced Cohen to me by a mix tape the summer after high school. She told me, "You will like him, he is a poet that sings his poetry." She was right I love him to this day. We went to see him in Boston in 1988 at the club Axis. It was a fabulous show with a memorable moment- we were waiting in line to be let into the club (which took forever at Axis for some reason) and this rich woman got out of a limo with a big red hat and made her way to the front of the line. Mom shouted from the line, "Oh I guess if you wear a big red hat you don't have to wait in line like the rest of us peasants!" Everyone else in line chuckled and said "Right on!"
Let X=X -Laurie Anderson
Another brilliant woman Mom introduced to me. She made me a copy of the album Big Science when I was a junior and said you are going to love this woman and I did.
The Bug –Dire Straits
She really liked Dire Straits. She put this on for me one night when I was really low and it cheered me up. She said she sang this one to herself a lot.
Raptor -John Trudell
We shared a deep love and respect for Trudell as a thinker and teacher and Mom especially loved his love songs- I think she had a little crush on him because he was her kind of passionate. This song Raptor she loved and I remember her writing out the lines, "A thousand full moons beat in my heart…" and putting it on her painting studio wall.
Dweller on The Threshold- Van Morrison
Her favorite Van Morrison song, which appeared often on mixes, she made and which took on powerful meaning for me when she passed over the threshold.
Only Getting Started –Buffy Sainte-Marie
Anthem for survival and love for this world. Mom was such a justice seeker, such a deep thinker and such a rebel at heart. She loved how Buffy sang when it comes to learning to live with earth and each other- "This is only kindergarten".
Tomorrow Comes- Edie Brickell
Another shared love from my late teens/ early 20's but then this album came out a few years later and this song became an all time favorite of hers.
Train in Vain -Annie Lennox
The last summer she lived in Massachusetts I basically lived with her for more than half of it. We used to go to this great aerobics class taught by this cool woman Claire who had excellent taste in music. This was a song we did aerobics too. Then after aerobics we would go to this drive through bakery place and get these delicious breakfast pastries. When she divorced Gary and packed up her car to move to Minneapolis (a damn brave thing to do at 51) she made herself a "Leaving Marshfield in the Broad Daylight…" mix and this was on it.
Be Like a Bird- Libana
If any song this was my Mom's soul song. We sang it together many times including in the hospital for my Nana/her Mother who was passing over to the Ancestors. I sang it to her in the woods among the Robins the day before she died and I sang it to her the long night before she passed over when I held vigil with her. I will always sing it and feel her with me, her struggles, her strength.
Step Outside Your Mind -Taj Mahal
Another deeply shared love affair was with Taj. This is another one of those songs that would make it's way back and forth between us through mix tapes.
Swimming Song- Maddy Prior
My Mom loved Steelye Span and Maddy's music and this song stands out because she put it on a mix for me just a few years back. It really speaks of my Mom as someone who hung on through tough times and loved the water so much. She was a sea otter in another life and there was such playfulness and grace in her when she swam. I will always think of her swimming in pools, lakes and the ocean.
Cindy Kallet
Another deeply shared love for a singer. We had the great pleasure of driving many miles one night to see her perform in a little Inn somewhere in Massachusetts. We listened to this album a lot in her last month for it's sweet calm and lovely memories. Many, many favorites but she always loved how Cindy captured the kid energy in this song and it was one we always returned to.
No End –Sandy Denny
In some ways more than anyone Sandy Denny feels like the voice of my childhood and her songs alone and with Fairport Convention thread all through my life. This was a particular favorite of My Mom's, beautiful and melancholy…
Electricity - Joni Mitchell
Ahhhhhhh…which Joni songs to put on here? She introduced me to Joni when I was 19 but of course I had been hearing her my entire childhood. She gave me the album Blue and I listened to it over and over in my apartment in Boston. Joni evokes my Mom as an artist who would stay up late in Dayton when we kids were asleep, painting at the dining room table with her big headphones on and usually a cat or two curled up by the paints. But Blue really isn't the album I associate with her…she told me her favorite Joni song was Electricity and the albums from my childhood are definitely "Court and Spark" and "Hejeria" After a fight when things were pretty tense between us my senior year in high school she wrote out the words to Trouble Child and slide them under my door. There was always such compassion for my teen dramas and such respect for my big, crazy heart.
Sweet and Shiny Eyes- Bonnie Raitt
We had a joke about the Joni/Bonnie axis because our mixes back and forth almost always had at least one song from each woman. Another absolute favorite of my Mom's that when I was old enough became a bedrock of my own musical world. Now we most definitely did some throwing down to Bonnie often with Jen and Rocklynn by our side. I remember (to my shame) my Mom picking my friends and me up from the Salem Mall when I was 13 and she was rocking out to Bonnie, clapping, drumming on the steering wheel and singing along. I was mortified and wished for a "normal" Mom. Of course later I realized that I lucked out and actually had the most fabulous Mom ever. We finally saw Bonnie live with Jen at Great Woods in Massachusetts when I was 21 and had a great time dancing on the lawn to every song. My parents had a theme party when I was about 11 that was in some way based on Sweet and Shiny Eyes. I remember my Dad dressed as Fernando with a white suit and hat. It's a song that evokes so many good times with Mom and yes in my sweet dreams we are drinking salty margaritas with Fernando.
Naive Melody- Talking Heads
Still another amazing band and all time favorite my Mom introduced me to. I think she learned about them by going to see Stop Making Sense at The Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Naive Melody…well what can I say? This song was/is an anthem for us and her love is my home and this song makes me cry and smile and miss and feel her lifting up her wings and dancing… there is no better way to end this mix.
For the Birds –Bruce Cockburn
To close…this album Sunwheel dance will always be fall with Mama for me. She loved this sweet little song and had it as her answering machine message for years.
P.S Mom loved so much music from the time she was a teen in Lima, Ohio wearing her best Joan Baez outfit (navy wool skirt, black turtle neck and knee socks) and buying folk music collections from around the world to the deeply passionate listener of Jazz she was the last ten or so years. I didn't even attempt to include all the jazz she loved (I will leave that task to Juma or Ted who share that obsession) or all the folk, traditional and classical she enjoyed from Africa, Europe, Asia and around the world. She always had such a hunger for books, ideas, music and art. She taught me a lot about how to live well in this world. I miss her so much and I know I will until I join the Ancestors. In the mean time music is one way to visit with her spirit and remember all the good times.