CONSTANT SIEGE

New Order - ‘Hurt’ 1981, 12” version (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

ZZ Top - ‘La Grange’ 1973 (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

The Misfits - of course: ‘Halloween’ 1981 (purchase)

“Candy apples and razor blades / Little dead are soon in graves / I remember Halloween”

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

See also: Misfits - Hybrid Moments 1978

Also also: Masturbate me/Then slurp it from your palm/Like a dry desert soaking up rain/Soaking up sun

The Cramps - ‘Strychnine’ 1980 (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

See also: The Cramps play live for mental patients at the Napa State Hospital 1978 (which, amazingly, is on DVD now)

Richard Hell & The Voidoids - ‘Blank Generation’ 1977 (purchase)

“I brought back the image of this distressed, strange thing called Richard Hell. And this phrase, ‘the blank generation’. […] Richard Hell was a definite, 100 percent inspiration, and, in fact, I remember telling the Sex Pistols, ‘Write a song like Blank Generation, but write your own bloody version,’ and their own version was ‘Pretty Vacant’.” -Malcolm McLaren

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

The Specials - ‘A Message To You Rudy’ 1979 (purchase), cover of Dandy Livingstone’s ‘Rudy, A Message To You’ 1967 (purchase)

Music video

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

Front 242 - ‘Don’t Crash’ 1985 (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

The Cure - ‘Fascination Street’ 1989 (purchase)

In honor of the FDA banning clove cigarettes this week. Cloves, leather jackets, gas stations, lipstick, Drakkar, grip tape, desert sage, vinyl records and schnapps were the smelltracks of my mid teen years.

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

The Jim Carroll Band - ‘People Who Died’ 1980 (purchase)

Jim Carroll, dead at 59.

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

Eurythmics - Love Is A Stranger 1982 (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

New Order - Cries and Whispers (often mislabeled ‘Mesh’) 1981 (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

Martin L. Gore - Motherless Child (purchase)

Depeche Mode songwriter/occasional singer, first solo project. Cover of classic American spiritual.

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

Depeche Mode - It Doesn’t Matter Two (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

Book Of Love - Boy 1985 (purchase)

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.

Sisters Of Mercy - Lucretia (My Reflection) 1987 (purchase)

“I hear the roar of a big machine / two worlds and in-between / hot metal and methedrine”

From Siege’s Summer of 17 mix, songs that were on heavy rotation in my Camaro the summer after I dropped out of high school.