Track 1: Yakety Sax (a.k.a. The Benny Hill Chase Theme) Artist: Boots Randolph

This track represents my goofy side, which is fairly prominent. I often hear the theme running through my head as I'm doing one thing or another. Embrace fun!

Track 2: Take Me Down To The Infirmary Artist: Cracker

I cite Cracker as my favorite band (though Murder By Death - see Track 7 - has achieved tie-hood for the title), so some song from their extensive discography had to make an appearance here. This track has a nice balance of great song with lyrics that really do represent aspects of my personality. The narrator wants to go to the infirmary so he won't have to drink or sleep alone. Also, I love hospitals.

Track 3: No One Driving Artist: John Foxx

A favorite from my youth, and, again, one that speaks to me on a deeper level. In a marijuana haze one night, my friend and I 'realized' that the song is about athiesm (There's no one driving.) Even straight, I can see that interpretation; was it intended? Who knows. We also loved the line, "Someones gone liquid in the sheets. A sudden smell of burning leaves." which my friend 'realized' represents orgasm followed by the lighting of a cigarette! So cool. If you like this track, in any wise, I strongly recommend the whole album, Metamatic.

Track 4: Requiem (K.626), Introitus Composer: Mozart Performers: Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields

I have always loved the concept of the Requiem, music to commemorate a person's passing (and to glorify the host of heaven). Mozart's is arguably the finest example, and this brief movement its most dramatic, building as it does. It never fails to move me, fill me with the numinous, as they say.

I particularly like taking it out of context, as I've done here. Its like a brief flash of the glory of the heavenly host, then on to:

Track 5: Queen of the Mountain Artist: Burning Spear

Just a great song, and I do love the mountains.

Track 6: Danse Macabre Composer: Saint-Saens Performers: Angèle Dubeau and La Pietà

The first classical piece that really resonated with me as a child. We listened to classical and jazz pretty exclusively, but this is the first one I remember loving and needing to know the title and composer so I could find it again.

Ran across this version only recently on a collection called Infernal Violins, and it really captures the image of the risen dead, dancing in a mouldy graveyard.

Track 7: Until Morale Improves, The Beatings Will Continue Artist: Murder By Death

Like Cracker, Murder By Death, a favorite band, had to make an appearance here. The title of this track doesnt really describe the content. Its from an album which tells a story, of a man tracking the Devil across the Southwestern US and into Mexico, and in this track, hes facing the seeming impossibility of the task.

I particularly like the line, "I drink whiskey instead of water, 'cause I can't stand to be sober in this place." because whiskey is my drink. I can stand to be sober, but don't always want to be.

Track 8: Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty / I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts Artist: Barry ODowd & The Highlanders

If I had a version with just Blighty, I'd have included that - nothing against Coconuts, but the purpose of the track's inclusion here is my love of England.

Track 9: Once Upon A December Artist: Deana Carter

One of my favorite songs to sing along to! This is the end-credits rock-version of a song from the animated film Anastasia and, for once, is wonderfully done. I really like the guitar solo.

Track 10: Devils Artist: The Endparty

Thinking back, Im not sure why I chose this track over Home ("Everywhere you are feels like home to me" - which definitely describes how I feel about Hubby *aww*). But I do love this track, and I am not without my own Devils crawling inside me!

Track 11: My Last Breath Artist: Evanescence

Would you believe that I actually made an effort not to make my selections too dark? This track is a song of joy and hope and promise. The narrator is dying, in the arms of her beloved, and she sings of how everything will be all right.

The lines, "I'll miss the Winter, a world of fragile things. Look for me in the white forest, hiding in a hollow tree" are of particular significance to me, as I do love Winter (not that we get much of one here in Los Angeles), and I love, love, love the concept of the beauty and majesty of nature reminding us of our loved ones who have passed.

Track 12: Smell of Home Artist: Jules and the Polar Bears

My very first Favorite Band. Fortunately, I got to see them twice before they were gone forever. Nothing that Jules Shear has done since quite lives up to the greatness that was the Polar Bears. The song is about the desire in all of us to have and find home, and how elusive that concept can be. To me, theres another association, because I'm so dog-crazy: for a dog, theres great comfort in the smell of home.

Track 13: St. James Infirmary Artist: Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band

I have lots of versions of this, my very favorite song of all time, and the one that I can, on occasion, be persuaded to perform. This version captures the Hot Jazz origins of the song rather nicely. (My very favorite version is not available as an audio track; it's the Cab Calloway version in the Betty Boop cartoon Snow White)

This is an instrumental version, but the song is another dark topic: the narrator visits his beloved in the morgue, where she has died from a drug overdose, and he describes what he'd like his own funeral to be like.

Track 14: Little Room Artist: The White Stripes

By no means the best White Stripes song, but it speaks to me on the nature of creativity. "When . . . you've got something good, you're going to need a bigger room. When you're in the bigger room . . . you might have to think how you got started sitting in your little room." Genius.

Track 15: Houdini Artist: Kate Bush

Moving little work about Houdini's wife trying to reach her husband through a medium. Although I am not a traditional romantic, I have strong feelings about True Love, and that even death cannot sever such a link, and this song touches all those places. Makes me cry every time.

Also, Houdini is just cool!

Track 16: Carrousella Artist: In The Nursery

I really love this track. I can't come up with a really salient reason for having included it here, but because I love it so much, I associate it with myself, if that makes sense.

Track 17: Under The Bridge Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers

I talk a lot of smack about Los Angeles, but it's my birthplace and my home, and I have a fondness for it born of that. Los Angeles has always, and always will, take care of me, just as described in the song. Thank goodness it didn't take a devastating heroin addiction (as in the song) to realize it!

Track 18: Libertad Composer: Michel Cusson Singer: Marie-Soleil Dion

A beautiful song from the soundtrack to Cavalia, the equine-human dance show. An incredibly moving show. This track is here because of my love for animals, for working animals (hey, performance is work!), and because the track always fills me with such joy.

Track 19: Darkness Darkness Artist: Robert Plant

What a great version of a great song. I love the dark, and this song is a rare tribute to all the wonderful aspects of darkness.

Track 20: Suffocate (EP version) Artist: The Teardrop Explodes

Another track included mostly because I just love it. I haven't, thank goodness, had to suffer any relationship such as that described, though I've heard of plenty.