Halloween is creeping up on us and that means one thing is on the mind of every record collector: in the zombie apocalypse, which albums in your collection would you be willing to throw at the head of a zombie to decapitate, maim, or stun it?
Courtney E. Smith, author Record Collecting for Girls is pulling out the heavy guns from her record collection this week at TVD.
In the zombie apocalypse, if it came to throwing records at zombies to incapacitate (or better yet decapitate) them, the second album I’d throw would be: Be Your Own Pet’s Get Awkward.
Not for the reasons you might think, but I am all for killing a zombie with the record that has “Zombie Graveyard Party!” on it. If you could make zombies dance themselves to death then I’d play that song on repeat until they all dropped dead, but I think that only works if you can get a witch to cast a spell—at least that’s what I learned from repeated viewings of Hocus Pocus.
No, I’d fling my copy of Get Awkward because of the song “Becky.” The back story goes like this: on a seminal mix for the last guy I dated I used the Mamas and the Papas version of “Dream A Little Dream of Me.” For him, it was the stand out track—the thing he commented on most. Months later I found out he’d put the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong version of the song on a mix he made for the girl he dated before me.
A girl named Becky.
The timeline on the whole thing was a bit messy and it seemed to me like there may have been overlap, when there was not. But the mixtape misadventure caused flared tempers and discord. When things calmed down, he sent me that damn “Becky” song. He thought he was being funny. What he did was ruin that record for me.
I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to throw Get Awkward. I’d throw the CD right after it. I’m keeping the digital copy though, just deleting that song. If I try hard I’m sure I can pretend it doesn’t exist.
Courtney Smith spent eight years at MTV as a music programmer and manager of label relations where she was instrumental in deciding which videos went into rotation on all twenty of MTV’s music platforms and created launch programs for emerging artists. She specialized in grooming upcoming bands and was an early champion of Death Cab for Cutie, the Shins, Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, Bat for Lashes, and many more. She writes for Flavorpill and The Daily Swarm. She also blogs about women and music for MTV’s music blog.
