Bad Karma (January, 1987)
And then it all came crashing down. In the space since the last tape it had all fallen apart. I had always suffered somewhat from depression, but once I started college I fell into a crushing depression. UNO turned out to be not at all what I thought college was going to be like. The dorms were dreary and lifeless. It is largely a commuter school, so people there aren’t really looking to make any friends, since they go home each evening to the friends they already have. None of my classes were particularly inspiring, either. It didn’t feel that much different from high school, except nobody yelled at you if you didn’t go. As a result, within a few weeks I had stopped going to classes altogether. Mark and I did not get along as roommates and eventually I moved out and into a different dorm room. So I was still living in the UNO dorms but not attending any classes. I think I was simply not prepared for the amount of responsibility college took, and I ended up failing the semester, of course.
In the meantime, I also broke up with Katie, lost many of my friends, and even — cliche as this may be — had my pet dog die. Merlin turned out to be a sociopathic liar who had deceived a lot of us and caused a lot of pain. He separated me from my friends, lied to me about having a job opportunity for me (though I cannot honestly fault him for me putting so much faith into such a dumb lie) and then abandoned me and moved on to my friend Rob, who he treated even worse. Katie, unable to deal with my depression, broke up with me and dated a guy called “Logan” (a name he chose for himself based on his favorite comic book character, Wolverine. That sound you heard in November of 1986 was my self-esteem plummeting.) who she met at her job at Photon, the laser-tag place. He was a regular there.
I eventually got some counseling and got my academic record erased, but it would be a long time until I was back to normal, and the scars stayed around for even longer. However, by the time I made this tape, things were starting to look up a bit. I was actually dating Charlyn (Katie’s best friend and Merlin’s ex…no, it didn’t last).
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No doubt, this is some darker stuff. It’s also oddly put together, with some really awkward segues and a very strange choice for opening side one. I like it still, it’s just a very weirdly done mix.
- Shriekback – Working on the Ground
- Shriekback – Running on the Rocks
As you can see, I’m still double-dipping. One of the bright spots of this time was getting to see Shriekback in concert for the Big Night Music tour.
You can read about that concert at my main blog. It still remains one of the best shows I ever went to.
- The Police – Synchronicity II
Synchronicity came out in 1983, so why was this song suddenly showing up on my mix CD? Answer: I have no idea. Nothing wrong with it, I just have no clue why it’s here. It might have been a Charlyn thing.
- Depeche Mode – A Question Of Time
- Depeche Mode – Dressed in Black
And then there were two. Depeche Mode gets knocked down to only two tracks on this one. Both of these are from Black Celebration.
- Alphaville – Fallen Angel
- Suzanne Vega – Straight Lines
- Peter Gabriel – Big Time
- Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Bloc Bloc Bloc
Nothing particularly special about these. More album-mining going on here.
- Art of Noise (f. Max Headroom) – Paranoimia
Definitely the most 80s song on this tape.
- Love and Rockets – Ball of Confusion
A weaker track off a good album, but I had just bought it and hadn’t really listened to it yet. In fact, I remember calling up Christine, who already owned it, and asking her which track I should put on the tape. Her advice was “Ball of Confusion”, as it was the single.
- New Order – Shell-Shock
I’m still just circling around New Order here, without actually landing. This is from the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, and I love the song, but for some reason I just wasn’t connecting with the band. I have no idea how this could be, since I should have been so primed for them.
- Touchtones – Don’t Close Your Eyes
Never heard of them? No reason you should. I knew Michael (he went by “Misha” at the time) from BBS, where his alias was “The Untouchable”. He was in the local music scene and gave me a tape of a band he was working with (I believe at the time he said they were thinking of going with “Glam” for their name.) This is a song from the tape, and I found it really catchy. I made up the band name for them. They never went anywhere as far as I know, so naturally this song wasn’t to be found on mp3. It’s a dub from the tape, and it sounds it.
- The Boomtown Rats – Rain
On the original (UK) version of In the Long Grass, this song is called “Dave” and has slightly different lyrics. It seems that “Dave” is slang for heroin (really?), which is what the song is about, so the US label had them change it. I had no idea. In 2001, when I was looking for an mp3 version, all I could find was the original, “Dave”. It took some time but eventually I was able to find it.
- Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11
The only way I could possibly love this song (and in fact, the entire Flaunt It album) more is if it didn’t remind me so much of UNO. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the album cover clearly in my hands in my original dorm room there. In fact, speaking of UNO, what SHOULD be on this tape is “High Wire Days” or “The Ghost in You” by the Psychedelic Furs, as Mark listened to a lot of them during our brief stint as roommates.
- R.E.M. – Begin the Begin
Again, R.E.M. shoehorns itself awkwardly into the proceedings, but for good reason; they weren’t originally in this spot. Originally it was “No More Words” by Berlin, but at some point I decided to swap it out. Lifes Rich Pageant was another one I purchased during my time at UNO but it would not reveal its greatness to me for a while yet.
- Violent Femmes – Add It Up
Funny story! Charlyn was working at Holmes, a department store, and had this tape going in her department. She was helping a customer and suddenly realized this song had come on, and had to make a dash to turn it off before it got naughty.
- Timbuk 3 – The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
In order to listen to this song in the proper context, turn up the bass and the sarcasm.
- Pet Shop Boys – Suburbia
Those guys in Pet Shop Boys must really hate the original vinyl version of this song, which is what was on the tape, because it was next to impossible to find it among the many versions and mixes out there. I’m still not sure this is the exact same version.
- The Bangles – Walk Like an Egyptian
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Just Like Honey
For the former, I don’t know. Hey, it’s a fun song and you know you’re singing along to it when it comes on. And originally it ended the tape, which is fine. But then I bought Psychocandy and it blew my little mind and I added the latter, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest songs ever written. The theme of it is “I will keep coming back to you even though it kills me.” and that pretty much said it all.
As stated before, this was simply The Cool New Music Tape IV until I went back and renamed the early ones, so the title isn’t prescient, just apt. As for the cover, it’s a fun and instructional collage. Some of the items are obvious, some less so, but all have meanings. The pills are Percodan. The back cover is styled after a computer BBS.
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.
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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.)
