Monday Morning Mixtape 037: You Think This Mixtape Is Funny? Funny How? Funny like a Clown? Does This Mixtape Amuse You?

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.

"You Think This Mixtape Is Funny? Funny How? Funny like a Clown? Does This Mixtape Amuse You?"

Songs to honor Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, celebrating its 35th anniversary this Friday

chosen by Batts

Spotify

YouTube

"Dirty Work" by Steely Dan

from Can't Buy a Thrill, 1972

Outside of the obvious song choices, I think about how Goodfellas influenced a great deal of Mob-related material in the '90s. My favorite, and everyone else's, The Sopranos, was a product of this. Even the cast had so many crossovers: Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, and Frank Vincent. Google AI says 27 actors crossed over, but I am in no mood to do accurate research for you all. It feels right? Tony sings this song before getting into one of many car accidents that should have killed him. We are lucky to have mob crime to entertain us!  —Sara

"St. Jimmy" by Green Day

from American Idiot, 2004

The first scene I ever saw from Goodfellas was a fan-edited video in 2009. My pal Dave sent it to me. Ray Liotta is in the shower yelling about Jimmy, except in the edit, the radio program he's listening to is Jimmy Rollins hitting a walk-off double in Game 4 of the NLCS. I knew who Ray Liotta was at the time, but I had never seen Goodfellas. I suppose Dave assumed that I had. It was a fun video, just because some guy was yelling about Jimmy Rollins in the shower, I don't fucking know, man. Why is this a thing, where we assume everyone has seen certain movies? It's especially egregious for the prototypical MALE movies. The phrase "you've never seen it?!" has haunted me for decades at this point.

For the record, I've since seen Goodfellas. It was fine. I don't really remember much from it. Most of what I now remember comes from Batts talking about the movie during the Wise Guys Zoom.  —Joe


"Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" by Dean Martin

a single, 1960

There is a bar/venue in my hometown named Goodfellas. I think John Gosslin of Jon & Kate Plus 8 fame DJs there sometime. I'm going to simply copy/paste a Yelp review to give you the general vibe; it's better than anything I could have written.

So, without further ado: "If you're not an 'insider' at this place, prepare to feel completely awkward. The owner insulted my hair upon arrival after asking which one of the guys I had arrived with I was 'whacking.' Not that I can't take a good joke, but that kind of joking is reserved to friends or people I've known for a while. The haze of smoke is heavy and doesn't appear to be any sort of ventilation trying to resolve that problem. Half of the bar is a mishmash of broken machinery and other things. Will try to avoid this place at all costs. To be fair, I don't know what their concert venue is like, but out of principle I won't go to any there."  —Gloria

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones

a single, 1965

With songs featuring in many of his films, the Rolling Stones notably happen to be one of director Martin Scorsese's favorite bands. While I've seen many of Scorsese's narrative films, I have not seen many of his documentaries, which includes the concert film Shine a Light. Even if the big names involved were around 60 years old, it still must have been cool for Scorsese to get the chance to work directly with his musical idols.  —Batts

"Killer Bee" by Ben Kweller ft. the Flaming Lips

from Cover the Mirrors, 2025

Beyond watching Goodfellas again, there are really only a few keywords that I can use to gather some good songs. Otherwise, I'm just guessing here. I think there were a bunch of deaths, right? I mean, that's the whole thing with the mob in popular culture. They kill other people, they kill each other, they occasionally kill themselves. I think I'm past the point where I have anything interesting to say about glorifying violence in film. Should we be concerned that most of the MALE films that I'm expected to watch all have violence in them? I have no idea, and I'm tired of caring.  —Joe

"Killer Joe" by the Kingsmen

a single, 1966

Fuck, this is a better "killer" song, because of "Joe" in the title, a.k.a. Joe Pesci. Did you know that, the week after Sinéad O'Connor tore up a picture of the pope on SNL to protest the (very real!) sex abuse allegations in the Catholic Church, Joe Pesci hosted, and said in his monologue that if he had been there the previous Saturday night, he would have smacked Sinéad O'Connor in the face? Let's not concern ourselves with violence in fictional films. Let us instead concern ourselves with violence on the despicable "comedy" program known as SNL.  —Joe


"Lay It Down Clown" by the Replacements

from Tim, 1985

The ironic part about the famous quote about "Do I amuse you?" is that, like, yeah, it is actually amusing. Joe Pesci is a funny guy. He makes me laugh. I forget what caused his character to go into a fit of rage about being laughed at, but I assume that whatever the other character laughed at was legitimately funny and probably should have elicited laughter. I know, I know, this is just a tough-guy thing where they are afraid of getting laughed at and can't ever assume that someone is just laughing with them. Which is a problem. You heard it here first, folks! The biggest problem with the Italian mobsters is that they were too sensitive!!!  —Joe


"Layla" by Derek and the Dominos

from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, 1970

Shortly after graduating from college, I edited a few video montages of still images for my parents and their friends for notable birthdays. It was a fairly easy, if time consuming, process that involved scanning dozens of old photographs and using my edition of Adobe Premiere to use a Ken Burns effect over the images. "Layla" was a good song to use because it kind of feels like two-songs-in-one, with the rock-n-roll first half giving a different tone from the somber, wistful piano-driven second half. This was the one song I remember reusing between montages, just because I felt like it fit so nicely over a video photo album.  —Batts

"Love Your Shotgun" by Be Your Own Pet

from Be Your Own Pet, 2006

Seemed like my best bet for this week's Be Your Own Pet pick, even though I had to stupidly google "do they ever use a shotgun in goodfellas," and had to sit there and watch as that evil little punk-ass AI machine on that website tells me that, yes, Henry Hill used a sawed-off shotgun to kill so-and-so. How many times am I going to complain about AI in these blurbs? As many times as I need to. For some reason, I always think about Shia LaBeouf's character in I, Robot when I think about AI. Wasn't there a scene where he kills a robot with a baseball bat? I might be misremembering, but that's what I picture myself doing to google's AI machine. Who needs violence in mob movies when you can daydream about enacting violence against robots in real life?  —Joe

"Mambo Italiano" by Rosemary Clooney and the Mellomen

a single, 1954

Goodfellas is one of those movies that haunted my childhood. As an Italian-American with parents who owned video rental stores, I was constantly exposed to mob films. They scared the hell out of me. It was as if these stories were meant to help me understand our heritage, but the reality was very violent and toxic. I'm not sure what they thought I was learning, but they added a new fear to my list: mobsters. Like ghosts, vampires, and things that go bump in the night, I believed the mob was everywhere. I thought my brother might become a mobster. I panicked, fearing he, too, could end up swimming with the fishes. Of course, my father also found the classic CD Mob Hits as another way to honor our roots. With that album, I had both a filmography and a soundtrack for our people.

As I grew older, I listened to that CD almost ironically, but with a bit of pride. My grandfather was a trombone player in big bands around Philly, so some of these hits meant more nostalgia than mobster to me. I would have named our daughter Angelina, thanks to the Louis Prima hit, had Gary liked the name (he doesn't get us Guidos). 

The top of my list from Mob Hits was "Mambo Italiano" by Rosemary Clooney. When my Sweet 16 was in full swing, I blasted her anthem. I loved the Italian spattered into this song, Clooney's sultry voice, and the bizarre reference to "fish a baccalà." So much happens in this song: insults, mozzarella, accents, and dancing all in one absolute rump-shaker. This song is the original "Shake It Off" when she sings "Shake, baby, shake 'cause I love a-when you take-a me / Mama say you stop-a or I'm gonna tell your papa." Shake your pinched fingers in my face. This is an ultimate Mob anthem.  —Melissa

"Möbius Chicken Strip" by Origami Angel

from GAMI GANG, 2021

Before I ever saw Goodfellas, I saw the parody of Goodfellas on the Season 1 episode of Community. It's the one where Abed is the Henry Hill character, and instead of money (or drugs? I forget everything about Goodfellas, apparently), Abed is running chicken tenders. For my money, the Community episode is better than Goodfellas, but that's just me. Community hit me during my formative years, and Goodfellas did so right outside of them, so it was Community, not Goodfellas, that I was cringily posting multiple Facebook statuses a week about, imploring people to please watch it, or else it was gonna get cancelled. The comparison doesn't make sense, because you can't cancel Goodfellas. At least not in the same way you can cancel a TV show. You can't cancel Goodfellas in the other sense either. JOE PESCI WOULD NOT ALLOW IT. JOE PESCI IS TIRED OF THIS WOKE CANCEL CULTURE BULLSHIT. And the next woke yute that he sees, he's gonna smack 'em in the face on live television, this Saturday night.  —Joe


"Mrs. Robinson" by the Lemonheads

from It's a Shame About Ray, 1992

When I checked the Wikipedia page for The Wolf of Wall Street, I was a little surprised to see more than a few sections devoted to controversies that the movie has been involved in. The most obvious talking point has been the view that the movie "glorifies" its real-life protagonist's decadent life style. I would argue that the movie is showing what is appealing about such a way of life without trying to morally judge it. However, I was reminded of the strange news items surrounding the movie's Malaysian financial backers and how the movie may have inadvertently been involved in an international money laundering scheme. I can't tell if that is ironic.  —Batts

"New Jack Biddy" by Cool Calm Pete ft. Jaymanila and Jungle Mike

from Lost, 2005

I wanted a song about Dr. Melfi, who plays the mob wife part in Goodfellas. In fact, didn't I see somewhere at some point that Lorraine Bracco auditioned for Carmella Soprano but instead wanted to challenge herself by playing the non-mob role on The Sopranos? I could be making that up. This song, one that I've certainly never heard of before today, and may never hear it again after today, fits well. It actually carries twice the workload, because instead of the line being "Melfi and Tony," it's "Melfi and the sad clown," with "clown" of course applying to the Joe Pesci quote lampooned in the name of this Mixtape. Wait, was Tony Soprano a sad clown? I guess that is a direct reference to a plotline in a Sopranos episode. It's been more recent that I've rewatched Sopranos than watching Goodfellas, but I'm still pretty forgetful when it comes to this kinda of shit.  —Joe


"Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye

from Trouble Man, 1972

I know the general vibe and plot from it being in pop culture, but I've actually never seen Goodfellas. Therefore, my approach to this was to look up the actual soundtrack and pick songs that fit that vibe. Hopefully, that was a good approach. "Trouble Man" was written for the soundtrack of a blaxploitation film of the same name. Marvin Gaye actually did the whole soundtrack for the film Trouble Man. It follows a super cool, private investigator named Mr. T (it's a different Mr. T) who hangs out in a pool hall and handles jobs that the police can't or won't. I think it kind of fits with that theme of operating outside the law and navigating a dangerous world of the mafia as well. As I type this, I'm realizing that we had a playlist earlier this year called "Troubleman," and trying to remember if I submitted this song then as well, but if I can't remember, then you probably don’t either, so I'm not going to worry about it.  —Gloria

"Velvet Casino" by Civic

from Future Forecast, 2021

I'm generally aware that people like to snarkily point out that Goodfellas and Casino are similar movies. I've seen both, and I agree, though I don't remember much of either. I also don't remember The Irishman all too well, but I think I recall formulating a theory that this was Scorsese's attempt at distancing himself from the idea that his movies glorify the mob? Like, that The Irishman was specifically designed to rebuke the reputation of Goodfellas? I don't mind any of this, by the way. I actually think that Scorsese should lean into it, make the same movie yet again. In fact, go crazy with it. Make Goodfellas 2. I forget if Henry Hill dies in the first one. Honestly, that's not really an issue. Liotta himself is dead too? Not an issue either. There are enough archival recordings of Liotta, especially from Bee Movie, that you could cobble something together. If there's any man that can do it, it's the genius Martin Scorsese.  —Joe

NEXT WEEK: "You Think This Blog Is Still Funny? Still Funny How? Funny like a Clown, Again? Does This Blog Continue to Amuse You? Or Are You Over It? Is Joe Pesci Overrated?" — Sequel songs (i.e. songs that act as "sequels," however you choose to interpret that) to honor Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas 2, celebrating its 85th anniversary this Friday (chosen by Joe)