FW: Tomorrow is Another Day Mixtape by Ladytron

03/26/20

by Brian Mier

I grew up on the pre-gentrified North Side of Chicago—territory that was dominated by the BSY faction of the Simon City Royals, who congregated in the playground of the grammar school I attended: Bell. In those days, it was a German neighborhood. I had friends who spoke German at home, whose grandparents dressed them in lederhosen, and a lot of teens wore brown leather pants. Whenever Kraftwerk came through Chicago they would go to the Davis movie theater where they still showed movies in German. The local bars, two of which remain (Lachett's and Resis Bierstube), were the first places in the US to import draft weissbier and they started serving me, no questions asked, when I was 14. That neighborhood, full of Germans, but also Appalachian whites and a smattering of Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Filipinos and Koreans, is long gone now. Now there are two-million dollar single family 2-flats and people pushing around $5,000 baby carriages. 

For the last 20 years I have been living in Brazil. Currently, I am living in the Brazilian epicenter of coronavirus, São Paulo, and things are getting kind of weird. On February 2nd, I was flying back from Caracas and came down with a fever and dry cough. The next day it was 103, then it vanished and was replaced by a congested chest cough. Seven doctors and two months later, I am told I have fully recovered from pneumonia, though I am still coughing a bit and taking cortisone because of bronchial irritation caused by pneumonia. Was this really coronavirus? I hope so, but am not taking chances. So here I am, in a 54-square-meter apartment in the Cantareira foothills on the NW side of São Paulo, stuck with my wife and two-year-old daughter watching a lot of Teletubbies and Peppa Pig, and doing as much writing and TV journalism as I can. I am the first OG Lumpen to ever become the Brazil correspondent for TeleSur English's News Program From the South. I also co-edit an English language portal for news and analysis from Brazil: www.brasilwire.com. I occasionally appear on US radio shows and podcasts. The latest Brasil Wire article reveals, through 6 months of FOIA requests, the secret election season collaboration between the Tory government and the Bolsonaro family.

I would like to share Ladytron's new mixtape, created in part by fellow Sampa resident Daniel Hunt-"Tomorrow is Another Day." In the words of Daniel and the other members of Ladytron, “whether you are going nuts in quarantine, forced to go to work through the crisis or you're one of the heroes on the medical front line, we made a little mixtape for you."