Aversion Therapy (June, 1989)
In January of 1989 I started at LSU, living in the Pentagon dorms. It was a good time, and I spent it trying to shake the grime of New Orleans off of me. I was running with Liz’s crowd, making new friends, and not going back home on the weekends.
I matured to some extent, and tried new things, like an acting class (and briefly toyed with going into theater.) I also did a lot of things I hadn’t done before – got a lot more social, went to parties, went and played pool at The Bayou. Michelle and I never panned out, but I did start dating Jill at this time, which didn’t last very long due to unresolved issues for both of us (mine was named Katie, I forgot what hers was named.) But, unlike my other doomed relationships, we were able to stay friends. I at last discovered how much I enjoyed learning, and dove into a wide variety of classes.
I opened my mind a lot at this point — too much, in some ways — and read a lot of philosophy, weird mystic crap, and basically tried to figure out a spiritual angle for myself. Unfortunately, this resulted in me taking in a lot of junk at this point, like Tarot cards, but I eventually figured out the psychology that was really behind them and discarded them. It was a big awakening for me. Fortunately, I balanced a lot of this woo-woo junk with Flim-Flam by James Randi, which started me on a better path.
Just after I made this tape I headed for New Orleans with Ben (from Lafayette) to see Alex Chilton in concert, and with us was a friend from high school named Anita who I had somehow gotten back in touch with, and her friend Kelley. I confess that I kind of had a thing for Anita, but it was Kelley I would end up with.
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What’s notable is what isn’t here. This is the first tape without a Depeche Mode song. Boy, I really wasn’t crazy about Music For the Masses, I suppose.
- The Pursuit Of Happiness – Hard To Laugh
Although I may have read about this album (Love Junk) in one of the music mags, I’m fairly sure it was another one picked up on a whim. It is a great album, full of good rocking tunes.
- Guadalcanal Diary – Always Saturday
The follow up to the incredible 2 x 4 was Flip-Flop which…well…do I need to say it? This was the one track worth salvaging off of it.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Everything’s Alright When You’re Down
- The Mighty Lemon Drops – Take Me Up
- Deacon Blue – Dignity
- The The – This Is The Day
- Michelle Shocked – V. F. D.
- Siouxsie and the Banshees – Burn Up
- 10,000 Maniacs – Like the Weather
- Shriekback – Big Fun
- Voice of the Beehive – What You Have Is Enough
- The Sugarcubes – Delicious Demon
- The Cure – In Between Days
- The Smiths – Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before
Nothing special about these. “This is the Day” is a little out of place, and that Shriekback song is not overly good.
- Indigo Girls – Closer To Fine
Yes, I too got caught up in the neo-boho crunchiness of pop music in 1989.
- The Replacements – I’ll Be You
The Replacements followed up Pleased to Meet Me with this bizarrely overproduced album. It’s okay, and has some good stuff on it, but it’s so clearly the beginning of the end for them.
- R.E.M. – Stand
R.E.M. hit it huge with Green, and for good reason. It’s a very good album. As overplayed as “Stand” came to be, it’s still a lot of fun to listen to.
- Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Circle
Speaking of neo-boho, here it is incarnate. Jill and I went to see Edie in New Orleans (McAllistar, perhaps?) and it was the weirdest show I ever went to. It was an older (than us, at least) crowd, and there was row seating. Everyone sat down, and the few people who tried to stand up were chastised back into sitting down by the people behind them. When the band played “What I Am”, suddenly it was as though someone had pressed the “dance” button…everyone stood up, shook around a bit, and had a good time, and then immediately returned to their seats when the song ended, remaining there for the rest of the show.
- Alex Chilton – Let Me Get Close To You
As I said, the Replacements’ tribute to Chilton got me to check out the man himself, and there was no better time to jump on board than for High Priest, which is a hell of an album. I’ve seen him perform a number of times and he’s never disappointed.
- Jonathan Richman – Roadrunner
Twelve years later, I discover the Modern Lovers. I don’t remember who pointed me towards Jonathan Richman. It’s possible that I stumbled into him myself or read a review somewhere. This track is credited to Richman only here because it came off a “Best of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers” CD I picked up. Of course, by this point Richman is a solo act (and still is) and is another one you should see if you get a chance. This song is four minutes of pure pop bliss.
- Love and Rockets – 4 Stars (Jungle Law)
This is the jumping-off point for Love and Rockets for me. Their fourth, self-titled album is a sludgy mess with few indications of how good the band could be. Most folks would have put the hit single “So Alive” in here, but this tune is much better than that one, which is something, because this one is not very good.
- The House Of Love – Christine
This band was all over the British music mags (which, at this point, I stop following.) I adore this song, and they did a couple other good ones but boy howdy are they a pretentious, non-fun bunch the rest of the time.
- Everything But The Girl – Heaven Help Me
Jill turned me on to this album (Love Not Money) and while I like the whole thing, this song is just amazing.
- Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army
Here I am catching up with the rest of the world on Elvis Costello. I grabbed a “Greatest Hits” CD because I felt I should check him out and it was everything I imagined. Why this song instead of just about any other? No idea.
- Wire – Eardrum Buzz
It’s a shame that, given Wire’s incredible catalog, the only representative I have of them is this totally disposable, near-novelty song. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but nobody (including me, at the time) is going to go, “Wow, I need to hear more of these guys!” upon listening to this.
- Christmas – Richard Nixon
A very odd album that I ended up giving away. These folks later went on to ride the “swing” train as Combustible Edison.
- Violent Femmes – Lies
A new Violent Femmes album, hooray! Oh. It’s full of Gordon Gano’s Jesus songs.
Liz and I had a common problem of individuals whose presence in our heads kept us from making wise romantic decisions. We joked about needing some kind of aversion therapy to get the positive associations away from those people. Something along the line of her saying “Katie!” and then burning me with a cigarette (I was smoking around this time – and no, we didn’t really burn each other.) That’s where the title came from.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Gene Pool of the Damned (December, 1988)
I returned to New Orleans and began to stagnate. I had a job working for Orleans Sea Food Company, dating nobody, and falling back on previous habits, such as hanging out on computer BBS systems again. I orbited the same circle of friends before (even attempting to become friends with Merlin again, which ultimately didn’t take) and although many of them had now moved on to somewhat different things, not a whole lot had changed for everyone. It was a strange part of my life, actually, very aimless, and I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself, so I just kind of floated around.
For some reason there was a lot of high sexual strangeness going on (none of it affecting me). There’s no need to name names here, but a lot of the people I knew now seemed to be involved in various intricate and unsettling permutations with one another. (And let’s be frank here, it’s not like I was missing a lot of this by choice…not my choice, at least.) I was constantly getting second- and third-hand reports of the latest doings and trysts. The whole thing was very odd and soap-opera-ish because in addition to all the screwing, there were all these weird petty jealousies and such going on.
The only issue of my own I had during all this was a brief fling with a girl named Beth who I met through Christine (now living near St. Louis). They visited New Orleans and I hooked up with Beth during that time. Eventually I flew out there to spend a week with her and wasn’t off the plane fifteen minutes before getting to meet Beth’s new boyfriend.
To back up a little, though, when I was going to USL, my trips back and forth to New Orleans often included a pit stop to give Liz a ride to/from home. Liz was one of the gang with Katie and Charlyn, and was now going to LSU. I ended up palling with her and her friends there, including Michelle, who I got kind of sweet on. During this time I started to head up to LSU on weekends to hang out there, and started to consider staying up there for good.
Rob told me that such plans were futile, that a change in location would not help me, but by December I didn’t care. I had to get out of New Orleans, away from these people. I had had enough of all of it and I headed for Baton Rouge and Louisiana State University and I never looked back (much).
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In keeping with how the story has gone, this one also represents a bit of stagnation. It’s not a bad mix, but there are a lot of wells I’m going back to here, and one especially egregious example of such. There is something notable, nevertheless: around this time I bought my first CD player. Since I was living at home, working, and had few expenses, I was buying a LOT of CDs (including a lot of things I already owned on vinyl.) Not only was this tape constructed pretty much entirely from CDs I owned, it’s one where I believe I still have every song on it on CD.
- Colourbox – Hot Doggie
This is from the 4AD compilation, Lonely is an Eyesore, and it’s by far my favorite track on there. I also liked the Cocteau Twins and Clan of Xymox tracks on there and dug both bands, though neither one of them ever made it onto a mix for some reason. As much as I love this song, I never really sought out any of Colourbox’s other stuff.
- The The – Slow Train To Dawn
- Guadalcanal Diary – Litany (Life Goes On)
- The Mighty Lemon Drops – Inside Out
- Love And Rockets – Yin And Yang And The Flower Pot Man (Remix)
- Sinéad O’Connor – Mandinka
- The Bolshoi – Modern Man
- The Smiths – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
- Voice of the Beehive – I Say Nothing
Nothing notable here, really, just some more of the same. That Bolshoi track seems kind of out of place here for some reason. And just as trivia, I believe “Slow Train to Dawn” was the first song I ever played on KRVS.
- R.E.M. – Exhuming McCarthy
You can’t tell by this track, but this is the point where I fell for R.E.M. hard. I like Document well enough, but I now went back and really started devouring the previous stuff like never before.
- Deacon Blue – Raintown
Here’s how much I was buying music: I’m in Tower Records one night and I see this album by a band called Deacon Blue, called Raintown. I like the cover. The band is named after a Steely Dan song I like. I like the album title. Something about the entire package (except the music, which I haven’t heard) “clicks” for me, so I buy it. Fortunately, I turn out to really like the album. (I tried this same thing with other CDs and didn’t encounter success.)
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Sidewalking
Barbed Wire Kisses came out after Darklands, even though a lot of it was recorded before that album, and it shows the JAMC progressing from the fuzzy sound of their first album to the more melodic second. On the one hand it gives a bit of context to the progression, but at the cost of taking away the surprising about-face they did.
I’m jumping ahead a bit here, but I eventually saw the band play at Tipitina’s (with an opening act to be named later). My friend Jody accompanied me and I warned him that everything I had read about the JAMC in concert assured me that they were AWFUL live. Sure enough, they were halfway through this song — one of my favorites — before I recognized what they were playing. (In fairness, I saw them two more times after that and they were much better.)
- The Cure – Catch
Also jumping ahead here…at LSU I ended up auditioning for a play, and the audition required “performing” a song as though the lyrics were dialogue. This is the song I picked for that. (I got called back but didn’t get the part.)
- Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights
Not sure why I suddenly get into Kate Bush here, with a song that wasn’t new to anyone except me.
- Morrissey – Hairdresser On Fire
Right as I’m getting into The Smiths, they break up and Morrissey goes solo. Is it cheating to have both on the same tape? At least I put them on different sides.
- 10,000 Maniacs – Don’t Talk
R.E.M.’s newfound mainstream success had a lot of similar acts being pushed hard. These were the darlings of the indie rock scene at the time both because of their affable sound and because let’s face it, Natalie Merchant was way cute.
- Shriekback – Go Bang
Shriekback put out a new album for which this is the title track. And Stephen and I wanted to love love love it like we did the others but lord, it was not that good. It did have some moments on it, but for the most part it was something of a mess (and the inclusion of an ill-conceived cover of “Get Down Tonight” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, featuring a rap, was pretty much a test for even the most devoted fans.) Nevertheless, the fact that they didn’t follow it up with anything for some time means that four tracks from this album will get mined from it, when maybe two would have been enough.
- Depeche Mode – Shake the Disease
This is the WTF-est track on here. Yes, you are remembering correctly. It’s not a remix or live or anything, it’s the exact same song that was already on The Cool New Music Tape II. I have no idea why it’s back.
And it’s not like Depeche Mode wasn’t putting out new music, either! Music For The Masses had come out and was wowing everyone (except me, I guess — I never loved it as much as everyone else seemed to, but it eventually grew on me more.) I will say that the album works best as a whole, with few tracks that sound as good in isolation (I had already used “Strangelove” on Paradise Misplaced.) The track that probably should have gone here is “Little 15″. But even without the new album, there was so much else I could have put if I wanted an older tune. Hell, I hadn’t ever used “People Are People”!
- The Sugarcubes – Motorcrash
Looka little Bjork! The British music press adored the Sugarcubes and I liked their first album as well, even the songs where whatshisname would come in and start talking all over the place. We also saw them play at Tipitina’s and ended up leaving after only a few songs because, honestly, they weren’t that good. (I think I won the tickets by calling into WTUL, which I listened to a lot at work.)
- Siouxsie and the Banshees – Peek-A-Boo
- Jerry Harrison – Cherokee Chief
I’m sure Siouxsie fans regard Peepshow as the absolute nadir of the band, but it was great for a faux-goth like myself. And did you know Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads (and yes, the Modern Lovers, but I didn’t know that yet) put out a solo album (two, actually)? Unfortunately for him, most people didn’t know this. It’s not bad, if a bit more by-the-numbers than you’d expect.
- Michelle Shocked – Anchorage
If this seems unusual for me, you’re not wrong. But again, the British music mags went gaga for Michelle-Shocked’s Texas Campfire Tapes, so when I saw her new album, Short Sharp Shocked at Sound Woohoo (our name for Sound Warehouse), I gave it a try, and ended up liking it a bunch, to my own surprise.
- The Replacements – The Ledge
I mentioned it in a comment on the last mix, but it deserves proper mention, and this is a worthwhile place to do so. While I was at USL, Michael Dodd, my former friend who became a hated enemy, took his own life. Afterwards I played this song during my radio show as a “tribute” to him.
“Gene Pool of the Damned” was one of the nicer terms I had come up with to describe the circle of friends I had grown up with who were now in these weird, angry, incestuous relationships with each other. The Barrel of Monkeys from the cover was another metaphor I used, since there didn’t seem to be any way to have just one of them without getting the whole bunch along for the ride. (and see if you can find me in the diagram on the back cover!)
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Paradise Misplaced (January, 1988)
Towards the end of the summer of 1987 I was thinking about going back to school. My record at UNO had been purged and I considered trying it again (as a commuter this time), but two things prevented that. First, I set foot on the campus to talk to some administrator about returning. Immediately I was filled to bursting with anxiety and disgust. Second, I talked to the administrator, who ended our talk with “It’s like the Prodigal Son returning!” and at that point I knew that I wasn’t going to go back to UNO.
Instead I went to the University of Southwestern Louisiana (as it was called then) in Lafayette. This is where Gene and Julie went, and I spent a lot of time with them and their friends, Felix, Duane, and Allen. In my first semester there I lived in Roy Hall, in a wonderful huge private dorm room, but then I moved to an apartment with two other guys, Ben and Hai, both of whom were great guys.
More importantly for purposes of this discussion, however, I had gotten a job as one of the DJs for the weekend late-night alternative music show on KRVS, the campus radio station (I believe strings were somehow pulled, but I don’t remember by whom.) The show was on Fridays and Saturday nights (or, more accurately, Saturday and Sunday mornings) from midnight to 6 am, and I had a blast doing it. Ben would often join me in the studio and we just had a great time. I got a lot of good feedback during my shows from people calling in, and would visit the station almost daily to see what new records had arrived, planning for the upcoming weekend. Despite the fact that I’d be starving right now, I’m not sure why I didn’t pursue this as a possible career path.
All this forward movement aside, though, I was still strongly tethered to New Orleans. Katie and I were still together, and on Friday or Saturday nights, I would do my show, eat some Vivarin, and then drive the hour and a half to New Orleans to see her or do laundry. Katie was going to school at the University of Southern Mississippi and I visited her there once. As a result I still spent a good deal of time with the same old people as before (in fact, I had even forgiven and re-befriended Merlin, so I was not quite making good choices yet.)
In my second semester at USL, Katie was no longer at USM and was instead back with the old New Orleans crowd, so this tie just increased. In addition, I never got a phone in my second semester at USL – we just never got around to getting one put in the apartment, so I had to do a lot of the work in communicating with Katie. She never wrote me letters or came to visit me, and by the end of the semester, we had broken up for the final time. I was feeling my depression coming back, so when I went home to New Orleans for the summer, I did not return.
Ultimately I didn’t put down any lasting roots in Lafayette and wound up back at home, running with the same crowd as before, doing the same things. It all turned out to be a complete wash.
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This is a huge departure from the previous track listing. The radio station is the main reason for the huge explosion in new stuff, and Ben is too. In addition, I was now regularly buying the British music tabloids Melody Maker and NME and was often grabbing stuff they talked about simply because they talked about it. For once I was actually somewhat ahead of the music geek curve!
- Shriekback – Achtung
- New Order – True Faith
- Love And Rockets – No New Tale To Tell
- The The – Perfect
- Depeche Mode – Strangelove
- The Bolshoi – Happy Boy
- The Cure – Hot Hot Hot!!!
These seven bands are the only holdouts from previously. And they’re fine choices, all said. When I had my last radio show I threatened to put “Achtung” on turntable one and “Sidewalking” by The Jesus and Mary Chain (featured on a tape yet to come) on turntable two and just go back and forth between them all night.
Incidentally, this version of “True Faith” is not the version on the original tape, which was a 7″ mix. Being New Order, however, there are approximately forty-twelve different versions out there to sift through, and this one is good enough.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Happy When it Rains
They’re back! The JAMC’s second album, Darklands, was much more accessible than their first (when asked why it sounded so different they replied, “We already did Psychocandy“, which I thought was brilliant.) and my love for it made me dive back into their first album and finally truly appreciate it. They’ll now be a mainstay for quite some time.
- The Smithereens – Behind The Wall Of Sleep
This is a great song, and I like a whole bunch of their others, but for some reason this is the only appearance of this band in the series. Ben really dug them, which is how I got started on them.
- Tirez Tirez – Somebody Tell Me
This remains one of two bits of music from this time that, to this day, I have been unable to find as an mp3. (The other being “Love Dog” by Norman Nardini, which has a bit of a story behind it.) Ergo, this is a tape dub. It’s actually a dub of a dub, as I played the song on one of my radio shows and sometimes taped the shows. Honestly, it’s not that great of a song, and I’m not sure why it made the cut. I can think of ten songs off the top of my head that should have been here instead.
- That Petrol Emotion – Big Decision
Another one I can’t find the original version of. I had this album on vinyl and used the version on that record. When they released it on CD, they replaced it with an extended mix. This version claims to be the original version but it’s not. (The original version ends on the last note, it doesn’t have the “Whatcha gotta do in this day and age” fade out.)
- The Replacements – Alex Chilton
Ben made me a tape of Pleased to Meet Me and I wore the hell out of it. And yes, thanks to this song, I then got into Alex Chilton himself, but that’s for a later tape. When I eventually got a CD player of my own, I bought the disk and discovered that he had taped side two before side one. The album I thought I knew was completely wrong. And what’s worse, the Ben way is a much better album and makes more sense! Try it yourself! Start at “Never Mind” and end with “The Ledge”. It flows so much better!
- The Mighty Lemon Drops – Turn Me Round
- Screaming Blue Messiahs – I Wanna Be A Flintstone
- Boom Crash Opera – Great Wall
- Guadalcanal Diary – Where Angels Fear To Tread
- The Proclaimers – (I’m Gonna) Burn Your Playhouse Down
These are all from working at KRVS. (Though I probably read about the Mighty Lemon Drops in the British music mags.) “I Wanna Be a Flintstone” is a bit too novelty for me now; I probably should have gone with “Big Brother Muscle” instead. No one is more surprised than me that I was able to find “Great Wall” as an mp3. Guadalcanal Diary already had a place in college radio, and this album 2 x 4 would have cemented it for all time if the followup hadn’t been so mediocre. And finally, years before they’d walk 500 miles for a haver, the other Scottish Reid brothers were getting coverage in the British mags, inspiring me to give their first album a try when it came into the station.
- Sinéad O’Connor – Troy
Slow, long, and all over the place musically, I probably could have picked a better track. I still laugh when I remember Rob hearing this song, getting to the point where she screams, “I’d kill a dragon for you and die!!” and saying, “She’s not taking the breakup well, is she?”
- The Smiths – Cemetry Gates
I hated The Smiths for a long time. Ben would play them just to irritate me. This was one of the only songs of theirs I enjoyed. And then one day, pow, I just suddenly flicked on the “Enjoy The Smiths” switch in my brain.
- Bauhaus – She’s in Parties (edit)
I don’t know how or why but a joke developed between Ben and I that was turning into a great big goth. This wasn’t remotely true, but Bauhaus is here largely to represent that. This is my own edit, because of course the song is quite long, as it’s not so much a song as an adolescent phase.
- Voice of the Beehive – Just a City
This is the album version of the song, which was slightly different from the version on the tape, which came from a compilation put out by Melody Maker called Indie Top 20, vol II (I also had volume one.) Honestly, I don’t remember what the difference even is. Those compilations were handy at the station because if I needed to go to the bathroom or pull records I could just slap one of those on and have five different songs worth of time. (To this day I still have recurring nightmares about being in the station, having the record be about to end, and having nothing to cue up afterwards.) This series of compilations will return with a vengeance later on.
Voice of the Beehive and That Petrol Emotion are also both notable because Ben, Katie, and I saw tem in concert at Tipitina’s. After That Petrol Emotion did a great sped-up version of “Belly Bugs” I yelled “That was great!” and the lead singer said, “He liked it! That one’s for him!” And when Voice of the Beehive sang “What You Have is Enough”, the singer sang a bit of it to Katie, who was dancing right towards the front. That was a great show.
- R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
And they’re back, though we still aren’t quite at the point yet where I really dive into R.E.M. appreciation and end up having to do a lot of catching up.
This was the first tape to get its own name. It was originally The Cool New Music Tape VI, but I got tired of that and decided I would rename them. At first I was going to pick a single name and rename each one volume one, two, three, etc., but eventually I decided each would have its own name, a decision most people would have made in 20 seconds but took me a long time. I went back and retroactively gave earlier tapes names up to number three. For some reason the original two Cool New Music Tapes seemed to deserve to keep their names.
I don’t know where the phrase “Paradise Misplaced” came from, but I liked it as, of course, a play on “Paradise Lost” but also a slight pun. After I named the tape this, there was an interview with The Jesus and Mary Chain in a British music magazine and the title of the piece was “Paradise Misplaced” which I saw as some kind of synchronicity.
For the cover I wanted something abstract and ended up ripping off this piece of art from who knows who while doing a Google image search. If you know what this piece is and who did it, please let me know so I can credit them.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
