Monday Morning Mixtape 062: Family Reunion

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

We are family! I got all my sisters with me!

"Family Reunion"

Songs that have family relationship terms in the title (mom, cousin, uncle, that sort of thing)

chosen by Joe

Spotify

YouTube

"Son the Father" by Fucked Up

from The Chemistry of Common Life, 2008

I never told my dad this, maybe I'm just waiting for the opportune moment, a speech or something I dunno, but one time, I was waiting at the mechanic, picking up or dropping off I forget, and this mechanic shop is on my dad's mail route, he's a mailman ya know, or was, he's been retired for a couple years now, so this must've been what three or four years ago this happened, and I'm standing inside and he can't see me and doesn't know I'm there, and he's driving down the street with the driver's side on the opposite side because it's a mailtruck, see, and the door is open, and he sees one of the mechanics, a guy that he sees every day probably, and he does this pointing this, like a "yo what's up" to the mechanic, very smooth, cool-guy shit, probably one of the only times if not the only time in my whole life that I saw my dad and was like "he seems cool," but like cool in the classic sense, obviously I love my dad and like my dad as a person, but I'm talking that indefinable sense of "cool" that children, by design, rarely see in their parents, I saw that day.  —Joe


"Uncle John's Band" by Grateful Dead

from Workingman's Dead, 1970

First thought, best thought! There's not a band that I wish I liked more (maybe Wolf Parade) than the Dead. Love the community around a thing that became bigger than the thing itself while never really becoming commercially successful... though I guess they all did fine. The live music vibe is supposed to be truly extraordinary. And while I appreciate that, it would just be sweaty to me. And the songs themselves are all fine but not as good as contemporaries. Like the fucking Allman Brothers lack the Dead's vibe but have several songs that are great. Even stupid shit like the Doobie Brothers or Steely Dan just put out more quality.  —Sam

"Brothers" by Hot Chip

from One Life Stand, 2010

Story about my brothers: At a house party, they once tried to saw a desk in half and turn it into a chair. After performing several preliminary cuts with a hand saw and realizing both the integrity of the desk and of their design wouldn't hold for much longer, they shifted their goal into throwing it off the roof of the house. I came upon them laughing like gibbons, sawdust all over the carpet. I leaned on the desk and it fell apart and I think they're still laughing about it right now. Brothers, man. You'll want to kill 'em you love 'em so much.  —Nate

"A Better Son/Daughter" by Rilo Kiley

from The Execution of All Things, 2002

Probably the first song that comes to mind when I think family relationship term. Jenny Lewis is always someone I’m glad to see around, even if most of my memories of songs are from decades ago.  —Sunny

"My Cousin Greg" by Houndmouth

from Little Neon Limelight, 2015

I have six first cousins on my dad's side and four first cousins on my mom's side. I also have two step-first cousins on my mom's side, but I don't really count them. I feel lucky that I've gotten to know them pretty well. I just spent Shabbat with one of them (the oldest one on my dad's side), and her kids are amazing. She has a married daughter. Meanwhile, we move along, and my parents are grandchildless.  —Zach

"Jeannie Becomes a Mom" by Caroline Rose

from LONER, 2018

My mom retired from her job last Friday. Kind of. She's going back part-time two weeks from today. Bumping down from 40 hours per week to twelve hours a week is significant enough to still call it "retirement," I think. What I'm really questioning is the desire to do it. Every hour that I work currently is an unimaginable hell, and that's not just because of my job. I like my job currently, relative to other jobs that I've had. And even then, why anyone would choose to spend a single minute working when they could easily choose to spend that minute not-working is a mystery to me. There's no way my mom likes her job that much. It's just a job. Leave that shit completely! Enjoy your life!  —Joe

"Uncle ACE" by Blood Orange

from Cupid Deluxe, 2013

I have two uncles on my mom's side. They both live on a lake in the Adirondacks. One of them loves to play tennis and has a knee replacement and falls asleep watching golf and college football all the time. We used to play street football with him all the time. The other one let me stay in his house for a year while I worked in Gloversville. I feel now like a dad, repeating the same stories over and over. Diligent readers of the blog will have heard this before.  —Zach

"Sister Jack" by Spoon

from Gimme Fiction, 2005

When we get to shit-talking, my sisters make a claim that they "cleaned up so much puke from the bathroom" when we all lived together at my parents' home. This is a joke aimed at my tendency, as a teenager and 20-something, to get fucking annihilated on alcohol. The joke lands because it is also categorically not true. There was exactly one incident of me throwing up in the bathroom and not having the wherewithal to clean it up. Somehow, that one incident has become "oh he ALWAYS used to do this." I hope you know I'm smirking as I'm typing all this, by the way. And another thing they claimed at one point is that they could "hear me" blowing my nose while in the shower and "wiping the boogers on the wall." It's true that a shower is a good place to blow your nose and it's true that when I blew my nose you could probably hear it in the next room over, but how in the world did that one single very normal noise become that I was "wiping boogers on the wall"?! Fucking sickos! I bet you an eleven-year-old Brianna speculated about the booger-wiping early one Tuesday morning and expressed this thought to Jenny and somehow that completely baseless speculation turned into truth, a truth that is actually fiction, a lie as black as coal. Every accusation is a confession!!!!!  —Joe

"Uncle Fester" by the Barren Marys

from The Barren Marys, 2015

Story about one of my uncles: He's a retired state trooper who walks the classic cop line of being a hard-ass stiff-shirt conservative while also liking to smoke darts and listening to guitar solos. As he's aged, the latter has come out more than the former. A few years ago, we were in North Carolina, and he was letting his hair down. Someone in the group decided to try and score some reefer at a bar. Locals were scouted and decisions were made about who was likely holding, so my uncle and another player-not-to-be-named approached the locals and asked about buying some weed. The locals go, "are you a cop?" To which my uncle answers, big smile on his face, "Yup!" I'm laughing right now just thinking about it.  —Nate

"I Love You like a Brother" by Alex Lahey

from I Love You like a Brother, 2017

I don't have a brother, and none of my kids have brothers, so I have very little firsthand experience with what it means to have a brother. I love all my friends but for this reason I have never definitively thought about any of my friendships with any male friends as being "like a brother." Either because I don't know what it's like to have a brother or because I don't know how to form bonds with male friends like that. What does it mean to have a brother? How is that different from loving anyone else platonically? I suppose some of my "cousins-not-related" might have been considered "brother-like" as well, back in the day. I see my cousin-not-related who was the best man at my wedding maybe twice a year now. We used to kick it every weekend. Life gets in the way—which I imagine is not something you'd say about a real brother. But I wouldn't know, I don't have one.  —Joe

"Your Auntie Grizelda" by the Monkees

from More of the Monkees, 1967

I have three aunts on my dad's side and one on my mom's side. They are all great people. I am lucky to have a great family. We have drama, yes, but nothing that's home-breaking. Yes, three aunts/uncles have been divorced. Yes, there has been cheating. Yes, there is alcoholism and hurt feelings. But we've all been alcoholics at some point. Family fights are real and will never go away.  —Zach

"Uncle Phil" by Long Knife

from Curb Stomp Earth, 2022

I have four uncles on one side of the family and one uncle on the other side of the family, but I see my four uncles way more than four times as much as I see my one uncle. The one uncle's reputation among my immediate family is that he's a louse, generally just can't keep a job or support any of his (checks notes) eight children that are legally but possibly not biologically his. (One of his kids already took the starring role in a previous blog post.) Maybe six months ago—and I won't go into any of the fraught family dynamics that went into this conversation, but I can confirm that none of this has anything to do with me, and it's not my relationships that are fraught—my dad casually mentioned that my uncle had told his mom (my dad's mother-in-law) that he needed money to go to a doctor's appointment at Kensington and Allegheny, and my grandmom gave it to him, and I'm like, wait, what? My dad is playing it off like I should've known this whole time that the actual issue was drugs, whereas it sincerely did not even cross my mind that my uncle was the way that he was because of an addiction to hard drugs. Which I guess was stupid of me, but for real, this was the first time anything of that sort was even hinted to me. Why don't we talk about this kind of shit as a family? It doesn't have to be all sunshine and roses all the time. Give me the truth. I'm 37 years old. I'm a fucking master in the field of social work. I think I can handle this shit!  —Joe

"Cousin Zach (Born Lucky)" by Camp Trash

from Two Hundred Thousand Dollars, 2025

I don't have a cousin Zach (not counting my blogging cuzza from anotha grandmuzza Zach S.), but I have ten cousins on one side and eight cousins on the other side. The latter eight cousins (all younger than me) were mentioned in the previous blurb and don't need to be mentioned again. The ten cousins on the other side (all older than me) were once a pretty integral part of my life, but only in the sense that they very, very often in the same physical space as me. That doesn't really happen all that often anymore, and I have found peace in that reality. I think that my cousins cared about me, and I them, in the nominal sense, like in that we are family and we gotta look out for each other and shit. But I also don't think that I ever had any sort of relationship with any of my cousins that looked something like friendship. Which is fine. Not everyone has that. One of those cousins actually bailed a few years ago, just took some small grievance that had occurred and was like, nah, I'm not doing this shit anymore, and straight-up none of my cousins nor I have seen her in all those years since. Has anything changed in anyone's life since then? Probably not. I guess she herself had friendships with some of my other cousins, and yet life goes on. So why wouldn't it if cousin Joey stopped responding to the group text? I'm not going to ignore, but I don't really feel the need to make much of an effort either, if that distinction makes sense.  —Joe

"The Mother We Share" by CHVRCHΞS

from The Bones of What You Believe, 2013

Story about my mother: At a sports bar in Philadelphia some years ago—potentially Fox & Hound but I can't swear to it—my mom wanted to order a small drink, something simple. She ordered a bloody mary, thinking she'd be getting a pint glass with some tomato juice and vodka in it. What she got was some enormous goblet of red slime, with two pony bottles of Corona sticking out of the top of it. A legitimate look of horror on her face when it came to the table, shifting to annoyance ("why would anyone ever sell something like this? This is so stupid."), shifting over to laughter. She drank about two sips, and I had one of the pony bottles.  —Nate

"Bob Dylan's Grandma" by Diarrhea Planet

from Turn to Gold, 2016

Not sure when my remaining grandma is going to pass away. Definitely after next weekend and definitely before she has a chance to become a great-great-grandma. What will I remember about when she passes? Probably her casual racism. Which is fucked up, I think, on my part, that that's what I'd remember. At the same time, I think the fact that she would still drop casually racist comments around me even though she knows I despise her comments and think so much less of her because of them means that she just doesn't give a fuck about me. Or, like, doesn't give a fuck about me in the way that I give a fuck about. I would rip up every check she gives me if it meant her promising that she wasn't going to be a fucking bigot anymore. But my generation will hopefully have the wherewithal to stop her generation's racism from perpetuating. Just like my generation and my daughters' generation will have the opportunity to stop my parents' generation's transphobia from perpetuating. I wonder what my descendants will think about me, and what they will feel the responsibility to address when I get old.  —Joe

"Son of a Preacher Man" by Nancy Wilson

from Son of a Preacher Man, 1969

The only one who could ever reach me was the son of a teacher who was high up in the sky. He taught me calculus and how to throw a football with a perfect spiral. Also, he made a mean butternut squash. He had perfect teeth. When I walked by him and accidentally brushed the backside of his jeans in a way that could have been construed as sexual he simply ignored it. He didn't expel me from that great school in the sky. His name is Irv Greenberger. He is my grandfather, and he is also your grandfather.  —Zach

"Sons & Daughters" by the Decemberists

from The Crane Wife, 2006

Aw shit, you remember when they first tried to spin-off The Office with The Farm, starring one of the worst if not the straight-up worst character on The Office, Dwight K. Schrute? That was pretty funny. The concept of a spin-off starring this fucking prick was the funny part. The actual failed backdoor pilot (refashioned as The Office S09E17) was not funny at all, as were basically none of the plots involving Dwight after like Season 2. In no world is the Schrute family aware of any music that came out after like 1889, let alone a 2006 Decemberists classic, enough to play it all together on the back porch of Aunt Shirley's house. Fuck out of here. Come on now. Jeez. Haven't we suffered enough with The Office by the time we get to Season 9? We just survived a full year of James Spader basically playing a different character every episode, and now we gotta listen to Dwight fucking Schrute do a Colin Meloy impression? Meanwhile, Todd Packer is back at the office, I shit you not, spiking cupcakes with date rape drugs and giving them out to employees. I watched every goddamn episode of this TV show when it was on, and I think I'm starting to realize a decade-plus later that I hate it.

Aw fuck, I probably should've written a blurb about my daughters. My bad.  —Joe


"Daddy" by KoЯn

from KoЯn, 1994

Story about my father: Athlete in high school and in college, played beer-league softball through law school and his early years as an attorney. Was good, but as age and weigh caught up, it slowed him down both in the physical sense (fatter, older), and in the spiritual sense (how many beers can a man keep drinking?). At the start of his career, he was known as the Home Run King (a perhaps self-appointed title) thanks to his ability to hit it over people's heads and get around the bases in the time it would take to field the ball. As the years went on, he'd still hit for power, but was much slower. He became the Triple King (again, perhaps self-appointed), and finally, in the last years before his retirement, the Double King (for certain not self-appointed).  —Nate

NEXT WEEK: "Near, Far, Wherever You Are" — Good songs that were nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars at some point in the past 92 years (chosen by Batts)