As the post-Valentine’s Day hangover/malaise sets in, balance your blood sugar with a search for one of the ten Elephant Mixtapes hidden throughout Chicago. The project’s clandestine creator has fashioned that quiet kid in your 7th period Chemistry’s class wet dream in his/hers hand mixing of the well-curated inaugural tape, which covers the gamut from singer/civil rights activist Odetta to The Ambassadors, a young choir from Gary, Indiana.
The rules are straightforward, follow the hints aplenty and once finding the tape take a picture of it along with a description of where you found it and a tidbit about the tape’s music. In order to keep the project moving, the discoverer is left with the option to hide it again, make a copy for a friend or get covetous through keeping it.
I’ll even help you out and highly suggest a stop by Ukrainian Village’s Empty Bottle for a poke amongst leftover Old Styles and chairs.
Elephant Mixtape Vol. 1 (tracklist courteys of Chicagoist)
Side A
Megan Roberts – “I Could Sit Here All Day” *
Adriano Celentano – “Prisencolinensinainciusol”
Tim Rose – “I Know These Two People”
Apollo Smile – “Let’s Smile” (Later re-named “Let’s Rock”)
Jimmy McCracklin – “Let’s Do It (the Chicken Scratch)”
John Martyn – “Don’t Want to Know”
Unknown (Written by Cole Porter) – “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”
Louise Huebner – “The Emotional Bondage Spell”
Odetta – “Sail Away Ladies”
Nektar – “Recycle/Cybernetic Consumption”
Butterbeans & Susie – “Elevator Papa, Switchboard Mama”
Dschinn – “Rock ‘N Roll Dschinny” **
Jack Bonus – “Aye Que Lyn”
Side B
B-Movie – “Moles”
Francis Lai – “Spring Time Ballet”
The Ambassadors – “Gary, Indiana” ***
Theo Bikel – “I Hear the Laughter”
Colyn Davies – “The Hearse Song” ****
Leona Anderson – “Rats in My Room”
Country Funk – “Apart of Me”
New Electrikk – “Lust of Berlin” *****
Tom Cora – “Cruelty and Memory”
Cozmic Corridors – Dark Path
Mike Batt – “Zero Zero”
Elsa Lanchester – “At the Drive In”
Skreem – “Winner Takes All” ******
Third World War – “Teddy Teeth Goes Sailing”
*Little information could be found about her save for she is a professor in western New York focusing on electronic composition. This track appeared on a compilation entitled New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media (1977, 1750 Arch Records).
**All I know is they may have only had this one record and they are from somewhere in Europe.
***This is a young adult choir from Gary, Indiana. The common thread is that all of the members are mentally handicapped in some way.
****He was a Cockney singer in the 1940s. Little else is known.
*****I was unable to find any info on this group except that they are from 1980s Germany. Imagine that.
******I found this on a 1987 compilation entitled Little Rock Rocks, collecting Christian hard rock and heavy metal from the Little Rock, Arkansas area.
