It Never Ends! (November, 1989)

 

Kelley and I hit it off and that summer we started dating. Although she was going to school in Natchitoches (pronounced “NAK-a-dish”), about four hours from Baton Rouge, she was in New Orleans for the summer, so I saw a lot of her. I was still living in the Pentagon dorms, which weren’t air conditioned and which were unbearably hot.

Kelley was a positive influence on me in a lot of ways. She was from Dallas and introduced me to a lot of more folky-type music than I’d been used to. She also really liked movies (she was a theater major) and I saw a lot of movies while we dated. I had also made friends with Jody, who influenced my musical taste as well and got me into comic books again. I was really starting to develop a life away from New Orleans.

When the summer ended Kelley went back to school in Natchitoches. We still saw each other on weekends, when either she would come to Baton Rouge or I would go to north Louisiana. Where I wasn’t going, for the most part, was back home.

Spacemen 3 – Revolution The Cure – Fascination Street The Replacements – Talent Show The Jesus and Mary Chain – Between Planets Deacon Blue – Wages Day The House Of Love – Road John Moore + Expressway – Something About You Girl The Proclaimers – Over And Done With Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Little Miss S. Morrissey – Suedehead Tom Tom Club – Suboceana	R.E.M. – You Are The Everything The Feelies – It’s Only Life Indigo Girls – Prince Of Darkness Alex Chilton – Baby The Smiths – I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish Elvis Costello – Veronica The Stone Roses – She Bangs the Drums Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus New Order – Sub-Culture Shriekback – Nighttown The The – Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)

With constant long trips between Natchitoches and Baton Rouge, I spent a lot of time listening to music in the car. My old mix tapes came in quite handy here, as well as the tapes I made for entire bands. I would also buy CDs and put them on tapes to listen to on the road. Any song that got rewound a lot before moving on to the next was a contender for the next mix tape.

By this time I had tape-making down to a science. I knew approximately how much wiggle room I had on a Maxell XL-IIs 90-minute tape, and I had written a spreadsheet in Excel that would calculate the time on each side and the total time. I could plan things out so as to squeeze as much as I could onto a tape.

• Spacemen 3 – Revolution

You might wonder why, since I enjoyed DJing at KRVS so much, I never became a DJ at KLSU. Truth is, I did try out for it, but didn’t make it. I remember not being terribly upset about it at the time, but I’m sure there were a fair number of sour grapes involved. One thing I remember about the experience was that, while I was in the studio, I saw the new Spacemen 3 album (which I already had and loved). There was a sticker on it with notes from one of the station guys saying how awesome it was, how every track was worth playing, and so forth. A few days later the same guy wrote a review of the album for LSU’s newspaper and declared it as a ho-hum album that just showed how the British music press will go nuts for anything these days.

• The Cure – Fascination Street

Disintegration didn’t grab me at first, and that kind of bummed me out. Then I listened to it at night, with most of the lights off, and that’s when I got it.

• The Replacements – Talent Show
• Deacon Blue – Wages Day
• The House Of Love – Road
• The Proclaimers – Over And Done With
• Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Little Miss S.
• Indigo Girls – Prince Of Darkness
• Alex Chilton – Baby
• The Smiths – I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish
• Shriekback – Nighttown

Not a lot of specialness here. The Smiths are a little played out at this point, and the second Deacon Blue album was not so good. I’ve been slagging Go Bang! by Shriekback, but “Nighttown” is a good tune, and probably should have been featured sooner.

• The Jesus and Mary Chain – Between Planets

Automatic is probably the best-known JAMC album, and it’s a really good one, revving up Darklands just enough.

• John Moore + Expressway – Something About You Girl

This is a terrible song. Really, it’s awful, and I’m sorry it’s here. When Bobby Gillespie left the Jesus and Mary Chain to found Primal Scream, this guy, John Moore, took over for him. He too left and formed this band, and I bought the CD because of the JAMC connection. And it was bad. I guess this song was an attempt to find something good about it but man, it’s bad.

• Morrissey – Suedehead

This is the end of the Morrissey, which is a shame because I really should have followed him more closely. I liked Viva Hate and I’ve liked every single I’ve heard from him since, so I don’t know why I never went any further with him.

• Tom Tom Club – Suboceana

I have no idea where I first heard this song or why I bought it, but I’d like to point out that I owned it as a cassingle.

• R.E.M. – You Are The Everything

I think this is a beautiful song, and one of my all-time favorites. I saw REM in concert around this time and bought a t-shirt, which was stolen from my seat while I was still at the show. So Jill helped me hand make one. It turned out really nice and I was sad when it finally became to small for me.

• The Feelies – It’s Only Life

This is a very nice and very subtle album. How subtle? I didn’t really care for it at first and got rid of it. I saw it again in the record store, realized that I actually did like it, and bought it again!

• Elvis Costello – Veronica

I love this song and maybe a couple others on Spike, but my newly-found appreciation for Elvis Costello quickly turned into a newly-found appreciation for his older stuff, not so much the newer stuff.

• The Stone Roses – She Bangs the Drums

I really don’t know what to say about this album other than GUYS IT IS SO GODDAMN AWESOME.

• Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus

Depeche Mode returns with a new album that I absolutely love, and consider to be their last good one (though it won’t be the last one I buy). Violator was full of the energy and drive I found missing from Music for the Masses, and I played the hell out of it.

• New Order – Sub-Culture

I have no idea why this tune from 1985 suddenly appeared here. Had I rediscovered Low-Life? I honestly don’t have a clue but hey, it’s a great song.

• The The – Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)

I wasn’t quite as crazy about Mind Bomb as I had been about the previous albums, and I wonder if I should listen to it now with more mature ears. I found it to be too sedate for a The The album, and I actually found Johnny Marr’s guitar work on it to be distracting. This is the end of the line for them, I’m afraid. (And I didn’t know until very recently that Matt Johnson is doing a parody of the intro to “Ballroom Blitz” by (The) Sweet at the beginning of this song!)

Among the people I had become friends with were George and Dave, the Hardcore Boys, who DJed the Saturday night Hardcore show for KLSU. Through them I helped hone my ability to rant, and developed a character called “Pentagon Man” as a sort of iconized rant with his motto, “It Never Ends!” That’s him on the cover I made. There may still be stray Pentagon Men doodled in various places around the LSU campus – I remember drawing one on a wall in the Astronomy building. The back cover is, of course, a t-shirt for a Frat Party…these were ubiquitous at LSU.

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.

Shriekback – Achtung The Jesus and Mary Chain – Happy When it Rains The Smithereens – Behind The Wall Of Sleep Tirez Tirez – Somebody Tell Me Love And Rockets – No New Tale To Tell That Petrol Emotion – Big Decision The Replacements – Alex Chilton Depeche Mode – Strangelove New Order – True Faith The The – Perfect The Mighty Lemon Drops – Turn Me Round

Screaming Blue Messiahs – I Wanna Be A Flintstone Boom Crash Opera – Great Wall The Cure – Hot Hot Hot!!! Sinéad O’Connor – Troy The Smiths – Cemetry Gates Bauhaus – She’s in Parties (edit) Guadalcanal Diary – Where Angels Fear To Tread Voice of the Beehive – Just a City The Bolshoi – Happy Boy The Proclaimers – (I’m Gonna) Burn Your Playhouse Down R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

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.)

Life in the Big City (July, 1986)

 

This remains one of the best compilation tapes I ever made. It sounds like the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, and for good (and obvious) reason. The summer of 1986 saw my graduation from high school and my job at Michelle’s Sno-Balls on Transcontinental Drive in Metairie, next door to a hardware store. I spent the summer hanging out with Katie, Charlyn, Liz, Merlin (yes, his real name was Merlin) and others. I was into computer bulletin board systems and met a lot of people through them, like Stephen, Christine, and Pat and an entire new crowd. My Dad’s Toyota Tercel drove all around New Orleans at all hours of the night. My records came from the (late departed) Metronome and another beloved hangout was Borsodi’s coffeehouse.

Not only was the summer great, but the fall was going to be great as well! A friend from junior high, Mark, was coming back to town to attend the University of New Orleans with me, and we’d be rooming together in the dorms. It was going to be great. We planned on finding some bar around UNO that would be our regular hangout, just like we’d seen in the movies! Plus of course I’d be out of my parents house and have a place where Katie and I could get together with some amount of privacy. Life was looking faaaan-tastic.

Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money) Shriekback – Nemesis Depeche Mode – Something To Do The Dead Milkmen – Bitchin Camaro Boys Don’t Cry – I Wanna Be A Cowboy Alphaville – The Jet Set The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty In Pink (movie) Modern English – I Melt With You Depeche Mode – Black Celebration The Boomtown Rats – Drag Me Down Tears For Fears – Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – So in Love Sly Fox – Let’s Go All The Way Violent Femmes – Kiss Off Shriekback – Hammerheads R.E.M. – Can’t Get There From Here Depeche Mode – Stripped Berlin – The Metro Sting – Shadows in the Rain Suzanne Vega (f. Joe Jackson) – Left Of Center New Order – Love Vigilantes

I always think of this playlist as being light and optimistic but man, there’s some dark stuff on here. I suppose that’s a testament to how upbeat I was feeling at the time. Still, there’s a lot of fun goofiness here and a fair amount of just plain joy. With this one I was starting to really think about the order of the songs, making sure either side could function as “side one” and be strong from start to finish.

• Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)

I bought Please at the Metronome and really liked it, but for some reason, it was the end of my Pet Shop Boys purchasing until years later when I bought a greatest hits CD. They have been putting out consistently good music for years, and I’m kind of sorry I didn’t follow them more closely.

• Shriekback – Nemesis
• Shriekback – Hammerheads

Here’s the beginning of a life-long love affair. I first heard “Nemesis” on WTUL, the radio station for Tulane that all the cool kids listened to (what other station regularly played all 22 minutes of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”?) but it wasn’t until Charlyn introduced me to Oil and Gold that I really got hooked. I fell for them and fell hard, soon owning every bit of Shriekback vinyl I could get my hands on. And to make things even better, they soon released Big Night Music, which was also a great record. They start out with two songs here and will soon get chopped down to a single entry with everyone else, but they’re going to be a mainstay of the tapes for some time to come.

• Depeche Mode – Something To Do
• Depeche Mode – Black Celebration
• Depeche Mode – Stripped

Speaking of which, Depeche Mode is still reigning with three more tracks. The latter two here are from their Black Celebration album, which I adore. With a title like that you might expect it to be pretty dour — and you’re not completely wrong — but there really is an optimistic strain throughout. The theme is not that the world is awful, it’s that despite the awfulness of the world, there are victories for us in it. Now, isn’t that nice?

• The Dead Milkmen – Bitchin Camaro
• Boys Don’t Cry – I Wanna Be A Cowboy
• Sly Fox – Let’s Go All The Way

Three completely disposable “joke” songs, but I loved them all, and the second two were even from mainstream radio at the time (when most people think of eighties music, especially those who didn’t actually grow up in the eighties, this is about the time period they’re thinking of.)

• Alphaville – The Jet Set

I believe Julie or Gene (via Julie) introduced me to Alphaville, and their Forever Young album is still a favorite. The follow-up, Afternoons in Utopia didn’t grab me as much at the time, and I drifted away from them, but having re-listened to that album fairly recently, I find it to not be bad at all.

• The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty In Pink (movie)
• Suzanne Vega (f. Joe Jackson) – Left Of Center

Speaking of John Hughes movies, Pretty in Pink is a pretty dire one (and like most of his teen comedies, has a very questionable message), but it has a pretty good soundtrack. Psychedelic Furs purists hate this version of the song, but it was the first version I heard, so it sounds fine to me. And this Suzanne Vega song is fantastic. A reviewer in, I think, Rolling Stone said that this song distilled her entire first album into a single track, and I think that’s a spot-on observation.

• Modern English – I Melt With You

One of the eightiesest songs ever, and still one of the best.

• The Boomtown Rats – Drag Me Down
• Violent Femmes – Kiss Off
• Berlin – The Metro
• Sting – Shadows in the Rain

My musical tastes still weren’t that broad and of course I was limited to only what I bought or borrowed, so it was necessary to really mine the hell out of albums. I was still loving Violent Femmes, though their The Blind Leading the Naked album was something I just couldn’t get into. Berlin is here because man, how could I have not put it on The Cool New Music Tape II, where it so obviously had belonged? And some of you may be happy to hear that this is the end of Sting. “Drag Me Down” is obviously another one of those “upbeat and optimistic” tunes.

• Tears For Fears – Everybody Wants To Rule The World
• New Order – Love Vigilantes

“Everybody Want to Rule the World”, more than any other song, can instantly transport me back to those days. I get a strange feeling all over me when I just hear the opening bits of it. And yet it and the New Order song were not originally on the tape at all. Two other tracks ended the sides, but I have no idea now what they were (except that I think one may have been “Alive and Kicking” by Simple Minds). “Love Vigilantes” is a fine song, but a really odd choice for New Order, considering what else I had to choose from on Low-Life. I suspect it made the cut merely for being able to fit in the time left on that side.

• Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer

Another classic eighties tune, from a great album. There’s enough upbeat in this one to counter a thousand “Drag Me Down”s.

• Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – So in Love

I bought OMD’s Crush album solely because I liked the name of the band and the album cover (I may have read a review as well. At this point in my life I was still dumb enough to subscribe to Rolling Stone). Turns out, I ended up liking the album as well, but not enough to make me go back and get their earlier stuff, so it would be a while until I discovered the joy of “Tesla Girls”.

• R.E.M. – Can’t Get There From Here

This bit of jangle-pop seems quite out of place among all the keyboards, but there’s a story behind it. I mentioned earlier how suddenly my clique at school became cool, though I opted out of it. When my senior prom was coming up, I didn’t fail to notice that a lot of plans were being made — by my good friends, supposedly — that seemed to specifically exclude me. I had assumed from the beginning that I’d show up, take a photo, stay briefly, and then go leave to do amazing things — the kinds of things one does on prom night, whatever they may be. When the big night came, I was wearing my tux, Katie was in her dress, and pictures were taken by her mom (none of which I have). As I started the car, Katie asked, “How long are we staying there?” and I said, “We’re not.” We had each brought a change of clothes and so we went and picked up Christine and Dave, changed clothes, and instead went to the record store, some place to eat, and Borsodi’s coffee-house. I picked up R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction at the record store (based again, I’m sure, on a review I read). So this song is a bit of a prom souvenir. At the time its lack of beep boop didn’t really grab me, so it would be a little later before I really appreciated what I had here.

And no, I never once have regretted skipping my senior prom.

This tape was originally just The Cool New Music Tape III. In fact, I didn’t give them individual titles until VI, at which point I went back and re-named from III on. When I renamed this one, I chose “Life in the Big City” because it expressed the sense of excitement and opportunity that I really felt at this point in time. The image on the cover is the sign for the Morning Call, an all-night coffee-and-beignets place that we visited regularly (for me, this was also because Dina worked there, and I was still pining a lot for her.)

Click on the player below to listen to this mix!

(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)