Greatest Misses (August 2004)
We’ve skipped ahead several years, but don’t worry, you aren’t missing anything. We’re doing something a little different this week.
The idea behind this mix was that these were songs that somehow never made it onto one of the original twenty tapes. They aren’t things I didn’t know about at the time and only discovered later, they were things that by all rights should have been included but somehow got overlooked.
Even with this simple mission it’s a flawed collection. There are things here that it’s pretty easy to explain to omission of and were never serious contenders.
As you can see, there’s no way this could be a single 90- or 100-minute tape. I will talk about that later.
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- Billy Joel – A Matter Of Trust
Please save all your groanings until the end of the lecture. I won’t deny that I liked Billy Joel, and still like this song. I don’t know that the series needed MORE Billy Joel, but if I was going to put some on Love Eats Dirt, this might have been a better choice.
- Hoodoo Gurus – What’s My Scene
This is just a great, solid song. I first discovered the band while in Lafayette, but it also wouldn’t have been out of place on one of the Kelley-era tapes, such as That’s About the Size of It.
- Pixies – Here Comes Your Man
I got into the Pixies late with Trompe le Monde, which I loved and mined the hell out of. Even though I went back and got their earlier stuff, it seemed strange to jump all the way back once I was done with the later album. How Can There Be a God When There’s So Much Corn got “Planet of Sound” which is one of the screamy Pixies songs, and given the amount of grunge on that one, it probably could have benefitted from this more melodic tune.
- Dash Rip Rock – Pack Your Bags
This was a local Louisiana band. Although I first listened to them and saw them live while in Lafayette, it was later at LSU that I really heard a lot of them. This song got added to about five different tapes, but never made it to the final cut, and I don’t know why. There are a bunch of tapes it could have gone on, but I’m going to put it on Me and the Soviet Union.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – You Trip Me Up
Definitely should have gone on Love Eats Dirt. “My Little Underground” was considered for that one as well.
- Love and Rockets – Life in Laralay
Honestly, there is just enough Love and Rockets already. Still, this could replace “Ball of Confusion” on Bad Karma, since I like it better than that one.
- The Police – Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
One of my all-time favorite songs, and even though it was already a few years old when I started this whole mess, I went through a Police phase during it. It would work fine on Life in the Big City.
- The Church – Under The Milky Way
This song was everywhere for a while, but there’s a reason. It’s gorgeous without seeming too calculated. It would be fine on Gene Pool of the Damned.
- Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
This is a tough one. Love Eats Dirt is probably accurate for when I was listening to this, but Kate’s already on there singing with Peter Gabriel on “Don’t Give Up”. And Paradise Misplaced just isn’t right for it. So I’m not sure on this one.
- Men At Work – Overkill
I really like this song, but when did it come out? Still, it can easily join in with some of the crazy stuff on How Can There Be a God When There’s So Much Corn and then Altered Beast came out right afterwards. He appears non-stop after that, and I like all the songs of his I’ve picked. So what can I do? Simple. Go back in time, get into him earlier, and put this on A Hand Big Enough to Slap the World. Seems obvious in hindsight, doesn’t it?
- Faith No More – Epic
Sure, this can go on A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That.
- Depeche Mode – People Are People
All the scads of Depeche Mode songs, including one of them twice and yet somehow their biggest hit was avoided. The hell? It’s tempting to simply replace the duplicate “Shake the Disease” with it, but instead I’ll put it on Life in the Big City.
- They Might Be Giants – Ana Ng
I liked They Might Be Giants pretty steadily from Flood, despite their sporadic appearances here. This suffers from the same “earlier album” problem that the Pixies did above. I think it could go on Dead Fly in My Nehi.
- Husker Du – Never Talking To You Again
I never got into Husker Du, though I know I’m supposed to. Kelley introduced me to this song and I dig its stark forwardness. It could have gone on It Never Ends!
- Miracle Legion – Just Say Hello
This whole mess started with a copy of a copy of a mix tape of unknown origin, and after I left Lafayette Ben presented me with another of those. It contained, among other things, this song, but at the time I had no idea who it was. No one else seemed to know either. For years I liked this song with no success in identifying it. (You can read about this quest here.) If I got the tape in 1988, as I think I did, this song could go on Gene Pool of the Damned and just be credited to “Unknown”.
- Donald Fagen – New Frontier
Who am I kidding? Love the song, but there’s not a single tape this would fit on.
- The Replacements – Can’t Hardly Wait
It’s a much better song than “Achin’ to Be” and can replace that on That’s About the Size of It.
- Lush – De-Luxe
This is another one that got added and removed several times. Shoulda been on Dead Fly in My Nehi.
- Alphaville – Big in Japan
I’m not sure. Maybe replacing “Fallen Angel” on Bad Karma?
- Kraftwerk – Pocket Calculator
Definitely one for Life in the Big City.
- Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – If You Leave
A no-brainer. Love Eats Dirt.
- Don Dixon – Praying Mantis
I played the hell out of this on KRVS. Why isn’t it on Paradise Misplaced?
- Peter Gabriel – In Your Eyes
I don’t know about this one. It’s a good song, but I think it can still be omitted.
- Suzanne Vega – Tired Of Sleeping
This one might be cheating. I never got Days of Open Hand and only heard it after I started dating Becky, so I hadn’t actually heard it at the time that I might have put it on A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That.
- U2 – With or Without You
I fell under the spell of this song just as everyone else did, and I’m surprised it didn’t turn up on Paradise Misplaced or Gene Pool of the Damned.
- Elvis Costello – Alison
I got to Elvis Costello late, of course, and no one can deny how great this song is, but I’m not sure it has a place. “Oliver’s Army” was an odd choice for Aversion Therapy, but I don’t think this would fit there, and any further on down and it becomes even more anachronistic. So I’m okay with continuing to leave this off.
- R.E.M. – Driver 8
This is my all-time favorite R.E.M. song. But the only open slot I have for it is on Love Eats Dirt, which it doesn’t really fit on. After that it’s two albums previous and getting overwhelmed by new stuff. Once again we’ll have to grab the time machine and put it on Aversion Therapy.
- Cocteau Twins – Lorelei
Angel introduced me to the Cocteau Twins and though I really liked them, I was kind of wary of putting them on a tape for some reason. This probably could have gone on Love Eats Dirt.
- Peter Murphy – Indigo Eyes
I could see this on Gene Pool of the Damned, couldn’t you?
- Duran Duran – Ordinary World
Stop laughing! This is a really good song! It totally should have gone on Jacking Into the Net, Stat!
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Lightning
I love this song, no lie, but I don’t think anyone can say this album or band is under-represented on the tapes as is. Instead of this, I might suggest “She Screamed” or “Crash” from UVS’s first album, as only one track from it ever got included. But I don’t know where I’d put either of them.
It’s pretty self-explanatory, no?
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Do Not Mock the Powers of Hell (August 1997)
In the year between this tape and the previous, I had taken two night classes, one in Algebra and one in Trigonometry. And I really enjoyed them both. I tried to take a Calculus class in the mornings before work, but it was too difficult to do both. So I sat down and realized what I wanted to do was go back to school and get a math degree, for the purposes of becoming a math teacher.
I had never liked Math before. I had an English degree specifically so I could avoid Math. A succession of teachers in high school had convinced me I wasn’t any good at it (I failed Trig in high school.) It turned out I liked it and was good at it and wanted to help others avoid the trap I’d gotten into.
If you’re counting, in five years I had worked in four different jobs. I had never been completely satisfied in any of them. Some people know from the start what they want to do with their lives. Some people discover it later on. Some folks have no preference, and are satisfied with whatever they happen to come into. I’ve never known. I’ve never had that calling that lets you know what you want to do with your life. But here, in 1997, I wanted to be a math teacher.
So I quit Publication Services, which by that time I had grown to hate (once again, not the actual work, but the management’s attitude made it miserable), and went back to school. I started at Parkland College to get some basic things out of the way and realized at once how much I missed college. I really enjoyed being in school again and learning things.
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Here’s where the story originally ended. Once I started back at school, time and money were at a premium. This is the last tape I made, and for a long time it was the final entry in the series that started back in 1985.
It’s no longer the end of the story, however.
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Another long gap, but this time the results afterwards are considerably fresher. There’s not nearly as much coasting as there has been, and a whole lot of new faces. I originally ended on a high note.
- R.E.M. – Leave
New Adventures in Hi-Fi is probably the last worthwhile R.E.M. album and it still has a fair amount of dull stuff on it. But the good parts are really good, and this track is the best. It grabs and just doesn’t let go.
- Garbage – Only Happy When It Rains
My friend Brady wanted to pay Shirley Manson to beat him up.
- Mono Puff – Unsupervised, I Hit My Head
A side project for John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, and there’s no mistaking that. This first album, Unsupervised, is light and fun. The followup, It’s Fun to Steal is a little denser and not quite as easy a listen, but still has moments. Worth checking out if you’re a fan, but then again, if you’re a fan, you probably already have.
- Luscious Jackson – Naked Eye
I like this song and I have wanted to love Fever In, Fever Out ever since I got it, but it just…misses. I don’t know how.
- Matthew Sweet – We’re the Same
- Toad The Wet Sprocket – Something’s Always Wrong
- Cracker – Nostalgia
- Foo Fighters – This Is a Call
- Belly – Red
- Veruca Salt – All Hail Me
- Oasis – Champagne Supernova
With the exception of Toad the Wet Sprocket, sounding VERY tired here, even the standbys are doing well. Three tracks into Kerosene Hat and I still haven’t touched “Low”, which tells you how good that album is. “Red” is an awesome song and just about anything I pulled off of King would be great.
- Cake – I Will Survive
- Patti Rothberg – Treat Me Like Dirt
- Fountains of Wayne – Leave The Biker
By this time The Planet had gone considerably downhill. Blues Traveller was the headliner there until that fateful day when I guess Eddie Vedder pulled the station manager out of a burning building, prompting their “all Pearl Jam” format. They literally played at least one Pearl Jam song per hour (sometimes they would mix it up with a little Temple of the Dog or Stone Temple Pilots.) Another radio station started up with the awful name of “The Web” and they played some pretty good stuff. That’s where I first heard these three bands. Fountains of Wayne and Cake (my first Cake song was actually “Italian Leather Sofa” which almost made it here instead) continue to be favorites of mine, while Patti’s album was okay, but not nearly as good as this standout track.
Soon they too weren’t that great and they were eventually bought out and turned into “Extreme Radio,” which meant no ovaries allowed.
- Weezer – Buddy Holly
I like the blue album fine enough, but I never would have thought Weezer would make it as far as they have.
- Suzanne Vega – Caramel
She sure do take her time, don’t she? Suzanne Vega’s Nine Objects of Desire is an album best described as “sumptuous” and this is a fantastic song.
- Lush – Ladykillers
Lush are back! Well, actually they never made it onto a tape despite my really liking Gala and Spooky. At this point they dropped the shoegaze and moved into straight-up pop territory, and this is a solid tune.
- They Might Be Giants – Till My Head Falls Off
Factory Showroom is not my favorite TMBG album, though it’s grown on me. It’s the point where I feel they really stopped experimenting as much and went from doing a variety of styles to doing a variety of parodies. The high points on this album are muted by a lot of really ho-hum songs.
- Depeche Mode – Barrel Of A Gun
This is not a good album. Little killer, LOTS of filler. It’s the beginning of the end for them.
- No Doubt – Don’t Speak
I know what you are thinking, but there is a REASON this song was overplayed. It’s really good. It’s a good tune, and it’s delivered perfectly. So suck it, haters.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – My Girl
The end of the line for the JAMC, and it’s sad to see them go out on a chump note like this. Yeah, it’s unexpected, and yeah they do a decent job with it, but this is clearly me throwing them a bone, hoping the next album will be better. It wasn’t.
- The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get
As examples of the brief ska phase for radio go, I could have done a lot worse (for example, I could have included Reel Big Fish.) There’s nothing wrong with this song other than it being part of a short-term fad, which is no fault of its own.
- Bad Religion – Drunk Sincerity
I could listen to this song over and over, and I have.
- The Cardigans – Lovefool
I can do a pretty good impression of this one-hit wonder’s singer, but of course nobody knows who the hell I’m talking about these days.
- Nada Surf – Popular
A gimmicky song, but still a good one, and even though this particular album isn’t overly special, they would eventually go on to create some really solid stuff.
On the way back from Chicago ComiCon, a comic book convention, Chris was reading a copy of Champions #16 he had bought in which someone makes a smartass comment to Ghost Rider about his flaming skull head. The title is Ghost Rider’s response. We thought it was really funny. The picture on the front is that slightly edited panel. The picture on the back is a dog wearing a costume.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
An Object at Rest Cannot Be Stopped! (April 1996)
Eighteen months passed between the last tape and this one, for a lot of reasons. Prior to getting married I had led an often solitary life, happily squirreled away in my room with my computer and my CDs. Naturally, this was no longer something I was doing so much of. My other previous method for taking in music was driving around in the car, which wasn’t as big an activity in the much smaller city I now lived in. There was also a simple logistical factor: in our new apartment, the CD player was in a separate room from the computer, so sitting down and listening to a CD like I had done before just didn’t happen that much. So I wasn’t listening to as much music as before, and hence wasn’t making tapes.
We were, however, spending a lot of time with our friends. I was still playing Magic a lot, as well as getting back into role-playing games some with Chris and Christine. Those two got married during that time, as did a few other couples we hung out with.
Getting more involved in this life came at the expense of our previous one. We hadn’t been gone from Baton Rouge for long, but as the people there graduated and dissipated throughout the country our connections to them got more and more thin. We occasionally saw Jeff when we went back to Louisiana, and Anna and Kurt we stayed in touch with, but others faded away. Trips back home were also more of a problem now. In addition to just being difficult to arrange and a tough 14-hour drive to make, my mom started to show increasing signs of Alzheimer’s, and was very hard to be around.
Things had improved for me at work, briefly, but soon PS was causing problems. I liked what I did, and I liked most of the people I directly worked with, but the management there was incredibly inept. Because of this, the place had a lot of good, talented, professional people, none of whom stayed for very long. Also, I saw no future for myself there, and I really wanted a plan for the future. Everyone around me had some career goal they were working towards — professor, doctor, lawyer — and I was still doing the kind of “first job out of college” stuff I should have already gotten away from. This was causing no small amount of stress for me.
At this point I started to notice that despite a lifelong hatred of all things mathematical, I was actually pretty good at math and liked it. So I decided to start taking some math classes at night. I had no idea at the time where this would lead.
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The surprising thing about this tape is how, after an eighteen-month break, it doesn’t seem much different at all. Sure, a lot of the early-90s grunge and gloom is gone, but there’s some stuff here that I look at and go, “Huh? They’re STILL around?”
- Everclear – Santa Monica
I have to say, I didn’t care much for their other stuff, but I love this song, and it still grabs me to this day.
- Green Day – When I Come Around
While it’s possible that their role now as a “serious” band is a bit overstated, I would never have imagined that Green Day would still be putting out good stuff. Dookie is full of little pop gems like this, all wearing Doc Martens and pretending they regularly listen to Black Flag.
- R.E.M. – Crush With Eyeliner
- Velocity Girl – Pop Loser
- The Breeders – Divine Hammer
- Meat Puppets – Coming Down
- Matthew Sweet – Sick of Myself
- Veruca Salt – Number One Blind
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Something I Can’t Have
- Toad The Wet Sprocket – Nanci
- Cracker – Movie Star
- Velvet Crush – Hold Me Up
- The Offspring – Self Esteem
Some of the holdovers from the previous tape. Admittedly, there’s some good stuff here, but I just have to wonder: a year and a half later I was still listening to The Offspring?
- Bad Religion – Stranger Than Fiction
Speaking of pseudopunk, I have no idea how I discovered this band, but I really dig this whole album, and the follow-up, The Gray Race isn’t bad either.
- Tracy Chapman – Give Me One Reason
Okay, so…not a bad song. And certainly not the dreariness of past stuff. But I had no idea at the time that this song would be such a crossover hit, allowing just about any radio station to play it into the ground, which they did. Plus, it’s about six miles long. Plus — and this is the real head-scratcher — between Bad Religion and the Foo Fighters?
- Foo Fighters – Big Me
I admit it, I have a weak spot for these guys. I realize they do a lot of very generic rawk, and that half of the first album I can’t listen to because all it is is screaming, but they’re just so affable!
- Peter Gabriel – Steam
The Gabe is back, Actually, he had come back in 1992, but I guess I didn’t get this album until four years later? I don’t know.
- Sponge – Molly
Was this song just a Midwestern thing, or was it big everywhere else too? It’s not a bad song but here’s the thing…I remember the album cover had candy corn all over it, and that’s kind of an appropriate image. You know how you eat candy corn and then suddenly you’re like, “Ugh! Why am I eating this?” Yeah.
- Counting Crows – Rain King
Really, Dave?
- Natalie Merchant – Wonder
I like 10,000 Maniacs, and I like this song and the other single off Natalie’s first solo album, but the rest of it just flies past my ears.
- Dusty Springfield – Son of a Preacher Man
Yes, from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Dusty brings some class to the place, don’t you think?
- Björk – It’s Oh So Quiet
I’m not much of a Bjork fan, truth be told. A little of her goes a long way for me, But this is one of the most fun and charming songs ever done, and it’s helped out in a big way by a great video.
- Hindu Love Gods – Battleship Chains
Chris was a big Warren Zevon fan and I heard this over at his place. The Hindu Love Gods are Warren plus 3/4 of R.E.M., so it’s no surprise I took to them. This song is originally by the Georgia Satellites, remember them?
- They Might Be Giants – No One Knows My Plan
They Might Be Giants make another sporadic appearance. I don’t know why they weren’t a regular staple.
- Bush – Everything Zen
I don’t think so.
- Belly – Now They’ll Sleep
Everything Belly’s first album is, their second album is all that and more! King is one of my all-time favorite albums, and I love every single second of it. It kills me that I see it so often in used CD stores — how can anyone not love this album!? But if you don’t own it and have such a store in your area, buy it. You will not be disappointed.
- Jonathan Richman – Cappuccino Bar
Remember “When She Kisses Me?” from Up All Night, Talking, back in 1992? This is from that same album. I like the song, but why is it here? I have no idea.
- Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger
I know that right now it’s very fashionable to not only not like Oasis but to never have liked Oasis, but I’m here to say: I liked and still like Oasis. I have no problem with bands who wear their influences loudly on their sleeves, and I think they put out some great pop music.
The title came from the cartoon “The Tick” which we were big fans of. It is spoken by The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight and it contains True Wisdom. I am very proud of the cover for this one. I took a bunch of clip art and turned it into what I think is a quite nice collage!
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Are You Calling Duane Barry a Liar? (October 1994)
Our basement apartment eventually became pretty unbearable. It was dark, the ceilings were low, it was always cold. We called it “the cave”. Also, the family upstairs was unbelievably noisy. They ran on a NordicTrack non-stop and blared the stereo while they were doing it. The TV seemed permanently switched to the “explosion channel” and was located right above our bed. We had to park in front of their house and often didn’t have a space there because the girlfriend of one of the sons would take that space with her car. So we began looking for another place and eventually moved across town to an apartment in Urbana.
By that time we had made friends with Chris and his girlfriend Christine. They introduced us to a game called “Magic: the Gathering” that we got into with them. Chris and Christine were into a lot of the same things as me – games, science fiction, comics, so I became very good friends with them. Our new apartment turned out to be right next door to theirs, which was very convenient.
Meanwhile, Micro-Pace was destroying me and one day when I couldn’t take any more, I walked out of the place. (In fact, the day I walked out was the day we first met Christine.) I had never walked out of a job before, and it was a terrifying thing, but I just couldn’t bear it any longer. Fortunately I was able to get another job rather quickly, and I abandoned the world of computers that I had gotten sick of to enter the world of book production at Publication Services, where I was estimating the cost of producing a book based on the submitted manuscript. This job was a lot more interesting to me, and I made some friends there, including Brady, whose girlfriend Melanie was in the English department with Becky.
Brady also played Magic and soon we had a ritual of going over to Brady and Melanie’s apartment on Friday nights to watch “The X-Files” and play Magic afterwards. It was a really fun time. Champaign-Urbana was starting to feel more like a home to us.
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More of the same, again mostly sponsored by The Planet. I know I’m coming off as very harsh towards this music but honestly, with very few exceptions, this is stuff I never listen to anymore. I don’t even have many of these CDs anymore.
- Machines of Loving Grace – Perfect Tan (Bikini Atoll)
- Brenda Kahn – She’s In Love
- Counting Crows – Round Here
- Matthew Sweet – Ugly Truth Rock
- Velvet Crush – Atmosphere
- The Cranberries – Linger
- Depeche Mode – Condemnation
- Gin Blossoms – Mrs. Rita
- Juliana Hatfield – Spin the Bottle
Don’t get me wrong. There’s some stuff in there I like, specifically Matthew Sweet and the Matthew Sweet-produced Velvet Crush tune. Brenda Kahn is good and that Gin Blossoms song isn’t bad. But wow…at some point I thought I’d want to hear “Linger” yet again?
- Nirvana – All Apologies
- Tool – Intolerance
- Pearl Jam – Jeremy
- Sugar – Hoover Dam
A lot of passengers are getting off the train here, including these guys. In Utero was stillborn for me (ha!), Vs. was forgettable, and Sugar’s follow-up, File Under: Easy Listening was almost embarrassing. Will shedding a lot of the growlers mean that the next tape will finally have some joy in it?
- R.E.M. – Star 69
Not to be outdone, R.E.M. decided to hop on the noise-train as well with Monster, a muddy, jagged, supposedly-Nirvana-influenced album which would eventually come to be recognized as the universal sign of the used CD store. Seriously, although the album went quadruple platinum, selling four million copies, five million can be found in secondhand CD stores across the country right now. I admit that Monster took a while to grow on me (and I do like this song), though it would not rank in my listing of the top ten first nine albums of theirs.
- The Offspring – Come Out And Play
- Green Day – Basket Case
Welcome to “punk rock” a la 1994! It’s not punk, it’s barely rock, but I’ll give it this: it’s fun.
- Hootie And The Blowfish – Hold My Hand
Yes, yes, roll your eyes. Truth be told, I borrowed this CD to include the song, no idea who from.
- Belly – Gepetto
- The Breeders – I Just Wanna Get Along
Two very bright spots here. Belly is just pure wonderful pop. And The Breeders give us one of the all-time great lines: “If you’re so special, why aren’t you dead?”
- Meat Puppets – Backwater
I suppose with the success of Nirvana (and the killing of that particular golden goose) there was a frenzy to see which other “punk” acts could be given some attention now, which is why the Meat Puppets finally found themselves on the radio. Like many others, I bought Too High to Die because of this song. Like many others, mine now inhabits a used CD bin.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Girlfriend
Leave it to the JAMC, as soon as the rest of the world wants to sound like them, they pick up acoustic guitars and write slow and dull songs. Stoned and Dethroned isn’t a bad album, but it’s not the kind of album you pull of the shelf and go, “Say, this is what I want to hear!” so much as “Man, I hardly remember this one!”
- Velocity Girl – Crazy Town
When trying to figure out how I discovered Velocity Girl, the only thing I can think of is that I spent so much time in used CD shops (see above) that I must have decided to give them a whirl.
- Toad the Wet Sprocket – Fall Down
These guys are back with something of a downer of an album. I liked Fear a lot, but Dulcinea left me cold, and attempts by friends to get me into their other stuff all failed. I think Toad is one of those bands where I’m really okay having only a single album of theirs.
- Frente – Bizarre Love Triangle
If Frente had given us nothing else except this heartfelt, wonderful cover of the New Order song (one that really shows the humanity in the dance band’s lyrics), we’d still have a lot to thank them for. Which is good for them, because that’s all they gave us.
- Veruca Salt – Seether
With all the testosterone fueling pop music at the time, it’s easy to overlook the number of all- or mostly-female bands that also got a fair amount of attention. Veruca Salt was one of the more promising ones, with a solid sound and intelligent lyrics, and this is one of the few CDs from this time that I occasionally find myself wanting to listen to.
- Cracker – Get Off This
I never really got into Camper Van Beethoven, despite attempts by Kelley to do so. I liked some of their songs and had tried out an album or two, but something about it just didn’t take hold for me. Cracker, on the other hand, which some would probably call CVB’s illegitimate redneck cousin, hit the right notes, and Kerosene Hat is just a phenomenal album.
- Ultra Vivid Scene – How Sweet
Out of all the bands we’re saying goodbye to, this one hurts the most. The third UVS album was so disappointing, and interviews with Kurt Ralske at the time had him saying how much he hated Joy: 1967-1990, which I loved so much. It was bad enough to get a disappointing album in the wake of a beloved one, but to then have the beloved one dismissed was just heartbreaking.
The regular Friday night X-Files/Magic date counted as our major social event at the time, and the tape’s title came from an X-Files episode. For some reason we thought it was a funny line at the time. The front and back covers are pretty obvious.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Jacking Into the Net, Stat! (March 1994)
We gradually adjusted to life in Illinois, and started making new friends there. Through the English department, where Becky was a graduate student, we met Anne, Stewart, Amy, Nigel, Jay, Lauri, April, John, Alice, and Beth. We were often doing things with one or more of these people, and this took up a large piece of time. It was better being with them, because the novelty of our apartment was starting to wear off and it became a pretty dismal place. It was always cold and the family upstairs was incredibly noisy.
At work things were also not so good. Apex turned out to be an utterly dismal place to work. The boss was a jerk and I had been lied to about the opportunities that would be available to me. I started working there in August of ’93 and by December of that year I had already quit and was working at a computer software distributor. That job turned out to be even MORE miserable, and to this day I still suspect the place was some kind of money-laundering scheme, because I can’t imagine how they went about making money. I watched the career I thought I had dissipate before my eyes, and it brought on another bout of depression.
One positive(?) change for me at this time was discovering the Internet. Becky had an account on the UIUC server, and through that I discovered the wonderful world of email, newsgroups, ftp, and such. (The World Wide Web wasn’t yet what it would come to be.) It was a really neat world for me, especially since I could contact friends elsewhere a lot easier. I briefly tried BBS in Champaign but never found any place I really liked. The Internet, on the other hand, was incredibly exciting to explore.
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While its true that my depressed mood at the time colors this collection, the truth is there’s not a lot here to get excited about. It’s all just more of the morose early-90s “testostorock” that was all over the radio.
- Us3 – Cantaloop Flip Fantasia
This is one of the sadder noble failures in pop music. The idea of fusing jazz with hip-hop to appeal to a younger audience was inspired, but the manifestation of this idea was not. This song is fun and peppy, but the rest of the CD was pretty dull, somehow missing the excitement in both genres.
- The Lemonheads – The Great Big No
- Gin Blossoms – Found Out About You
- Soul Asylum – Black Gold
- Belly – Dusted
- Depeche Mode – Walking in My Shoes
- Shriekback – The Bastard Sons of Enoch
- Tool – Swamp Song
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Candida
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Teenage Lust
There’s a whole lot of going through the motions there. It’s the end of the road for The Lemonheads, as well as a few others.
- Brenda Kahn – I Don’t Sleep, I Drink Coffee Instead
A good song from a great album.
- Matthew Sweet – Time Capsule
The arrival of Altered Beast so soon after I got into Matthew Sweet meant that Girlfriend got pushed aside a bit too early. Incidentally, we also now had cable television, which meant I actually saw some music videos from time to time, including the video for this song, involving Matthew slowly being drawn underground. I kinda knew how he felt.
- The Cranberries – Dreams
What was that movie in the early 90s that had this song in its soundtrack and trailer? Oh, that’s right: all of them.
- Counting Crows – Mr. Jones
This band was touted as the next R.E.M. It was no R.E.M.
- Sugar – If I Can’t Change Your Mind
Apparently Sugar missed out on the previous tape, only to return for this one. I’m not sure what happened there.
- 4 Non Blondes – What’s Up
True fact: the first time I heard this song I thought it was a guy singing it, like some Axl Rose type of falsetto. Boy, a lot of this stuff has not aged well, has it? But you can stop worrying: Blind Melon’s “No Rain” is not on any of these tapes.
- The Breeders – Cannonball
Probably the high point of this particular tape. While Pod didn’t really grab me so much, Last Splash is a lot of fun. In addition to this song being just plain good, it’s firmly attached in my mind to that sketch by The State in which the guy wears pants for the first time.
- R.E.M. – Ignoreland
This is exactly the kind of rousing, outraged, torches-and-pitchforks political song that for some reason R.E.M. decided not to do any more of after this one. During the beginning of the Clinton administration they had this kind of energy and conscience. Where did it go?
This song also ties into the Internet theme here. I quickly found the newsgroup for fans of R.E.M., but also just as quickly discovered that nobody on it was interested in talking about anything except which obscure bootleg recordings they had. After all, anyone could listen to and enjoy the songs on the albums, but it took a True Fan to listen to a muddy third-generation recording from the 70th row of the band covering “Rhinestone Cowboy” in Munich in 1987.
- Pearl Jam – Go
Pearl Jam fans were eagerly awaiting a followup to Ten and got Vs which, frankly, wasn’t very good. In fact, it was downright dull. That and the Planet’s love affair with all things Pearl Jam quickly sapped our interest in the band.
- U2 – Numb
U2 is back with…well, monotonous droning. But I admit, I think it’s an interesting song, probably because it’s downright subtle for a U2 song.
- Machines of Loving Grace – Butterfly Wings
- Rage Against the Machine – Bullet In The Head
GRRAR! RARRG!! HURRGGGG!!! RAAAAARRRRR!!!!
- Nirvana – Rape Me
I was in the pretentious record store, Periscope Records, and someone asked if the new Nirvana album was any good. The girl behind the counter said, “It’s so good! And the best thing about it is, it doesn’t sound at all like Nevermind!” The opening bits of this song (which for all I know are on purpose) beg to differ, ma’am.
- Velvet Crush – Asshole
And then Velvet Crush delivers its strongly-worded yet plaintive message without a single scream or grunt.
This was a reference to the Internet and was a joke between Kurt and I. It was a play on all the “cyber” stuff happening at that time. You’d see tv shows and movies with a character bent over a keyboard and “jacking in”. He’d also usually turn around towards the people behind him and say, ominously, “We’re in.” This is, of course, what the cover illustrates. The “stat” business came from similar things in comic books, where superhero teams were now paramilitary operations that had to, “secure the perimeter, stat!”
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
How Can There Be a God When There’s So Much Corn? (August 1993)
Most of the first half of 1993 was spent preparing for the wedding. Anyone who has had a wedding of any size knows what goes into it, and ours wasn’t even that big. Becky had been accepted into the graduate program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so we also had to travel to Illinois to find a place to live. And I had to find a job there. It was an incredibly busy time.
But it all came together, and we got married on August 14th, 1993, two years after our first date. Jeff was the best man, and Julie, Becky’s sister, was the maid of honor. Kurt and my brother-in-law, George, were groomsmen and Karen (Becky’s other sister) and Deshae were bridesmaids. I’m told it was a very nice wedding but honestly, when you’re at the center of all that, you really don’t actually see it. I don’t know who caught the bouquet, but Sean caught the garter, and at his wedding Kurt caught the same garter.
Out of respect I invited Rob and Katie, which was easy since they were now living together. It was the first time I had seen either of them in some time, and it would be the last time I ever saw her.
There was no honeymoon; we had to be in Illinois by Monday, so we spent all the next day driving up there. We had an apartment in the basement of a huge house owned by a history professor. It was a dreary apartment, and always cold (we had heaters running in the middle of August) but it was home to us. We had brought my dog from my parents’ house, Spud the chihuahua, and the three of us enjoyed our little home as much as we could.
Champaign was smaller than Baton Rouge, and of course we didn’t know much of anyone, so it was only ourselves for a while, but we were very busy. Becky was starting graduate school and feeling homesick, and I had gotten a job with Apex Computers, a small computer shop, that I thought was going to turn into bigger things. We were also discovering new things about our town, such as the radio station called “The Planet” that played only alternative music!
It was a very exciting, yet frightening time.
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There’s not a whole lot of new stuff here, but most of what is can be attributed to radio station 107.1, The Planet. This was the point when “alternative” became a viable radio format, and suddenly bands that had been ignored by anything but college stations were being welcomed with open arms.
- Soul Asylum – Somebody to Shove
- Poi Dog Pondering – Jack Ass Ginger
- The Lemonheads – It’s a Shame About Ray
- Suzanne Vega – In Liverpool
- Shriekback – Exquisite Corpse
- Pearl Jam – Black
- Pixies – Planet of Sound
- Velvet Crush – Windows To The World
- Juliana Hatfield – Everybody Loves Me But You
We’re done with the Pixies, and never left their last album, which is a shame, but there you have it. Suzanne Vega is going to take another break after this, which is odd because there are a lot more good songs on that album. I sent a copy of this tape to Anna and Kurt once they were married and living in Mississippi, and though I expected her to like other stuff, the song that really grabbed her was “Jack Ass Ginger”.
- Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy
- Tool – Sober
- Stone Temple Pilots – Plush
This was the sort of stuff I was hearing on The Planet, and the novelty of it excited me. The Gin Blossoms was pretty standard jangle-pop fare, true, and Stone Temple Pilots were the band you signed because Pearl Jam was taking too long to come out with another album. Tool was probably the most radically different sound for me. Neither of the latter two really stuck with me. I was getting a little too old for the standard mope-and-angst stuff.
- Matthew Sweet – Evangeline
Matthew Sweet hit it big with Girlfriend, and it hit every right power-pop note for me. (I wouldn’t find out until later that this song was about a comic book character.) It’s strange that this is the only song from this album to make it onto one of my tapes.
- Murray Attaway – Living in Another Time
The former lead singer of Guadalcanal Diary had a solo album that, honestly, wasn’t that great. This was the track I saved from it.
(Fun Fact: Kelley had been very much into the music scene in Dallas, where she came from, and talked often of the musicians she knew there. When I saw Murray Attaway’s name in the record store, I recognized it, but thought it was her friend Murray she had talked about. I soon realized my mistake. But her friend was Murry Hammond, and her other friend was Rhett Miller, and they’re now the Old 97′s.)
- R.E.M. – The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
This song kinda really bugs me now.
- Belly – Slow Dog
I never got heavy into Throwing Muses and I’m not sure where I first heard Belly but boy do I love this band. This whole album is just delightful, and the second one was even better!
- The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
Yes, I know, this song was everywhere. But I can legitimately say I liked The Proclaimers before they broke huge.
- Dada – Mary Sunshine Rain
This song is dreadful.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Sugar Ray
My heart died a little when I heard this song used in a beer commercial.
- Depeche Mode – Rush
Hey hey! Has it really been four tapes since the last Depeche Mode Song? Songs of Faith and Devotion was pretty interesting, but the band’s newer grungy sound and fixation on guitars was not what I listened to Depeche Mode for. You’d never call anything of theirs “perky”, but the muddy sound here is such an unfortunate product of its time. Nirvana really did a lot of damage, didn’t they?
- Radiohead – Creep
Another one I got from The Planet and I’m not going to say as much here as I could. I’ll just point out that it’s the only Radiohead song to make it onto a tape and leave it at that.
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Blood and Thunder
Look who else has a new album out! You can’t imagine how excited I was to finally get some new Ultra Vivid Scene. However, Rev is…well, it’s a mess. There are a lot of plodding, dreary songs here, heavy on the guitar noodling. It was a huge disappointment.
- Brenda Kahn – Mint Juleps And Needles
- The Darling Buds – Long Day in the Universe
I picked up a compilation called Genrecide that I was hoping would provide a lot of listening fuel, but alas, not much on it stuck with me. (It would be bad enough if I’ve since gotten rid of it; the sadder truth is I have no idea, since I haven’t thought about it in years.) It did provide me with these two tracks, and this Brenda Kahn song prompted me to grab her album, Epiphany in Brooklyn. The Darling Buds song (and a couple more Britpop songs on the compilation) hint at the much more interesting stuff going on in England while we in the States were wasting our time with morose GRR GRR GRR dirges.
Me: Man, there is an ungodly amount of corn here.
Jeff: Ungodly?
Me: That’s right. Enough corn to make you doubt the very existence of God.
Jeff: HOW CAN THERE BE A GOD…WHEN THERE’S SO MUCH CORN?
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
A Hand Big Enough to Slap the World (January 1993)
Kyle graduated from LSU in May of ’92, and I was looking to get away from that apartment complex anyway, so Kurt and I ended up moving in together around that time. We managed to find a place that wasn’t so close to campus that we were surrounded by fratboys and living on a football player street, but was close enough for the carless Kurt to get to school. We ended up in Place DuPlantier apartments on Lee Drive. Rent there was more than we should have paid, but it turned out to be a pretty good apartment. It was great living with Kurt, who was the best roommate I ever had. We had a lot in common, including a lot of the same habits, which led to a messy apartment but very few arguments.
My work was becoming more frustrating as I was starting to learn the joy of working tech support. I had the usual stupid user stories and headaches, and the usual clueless boss (not my immediate boss, but the head of the department) who made things extra difficult. I started to get dreams of becoming a network administrator in the private sector, and the huge dollars and respect that would garner me. It got to the point where a ringing phone would send my blood pressure up, even at home, because I had been conditioned to expect some annoying problem on the other end.
However, in other respects things were going great. Jeff and I were becoming really good friends and Becky and I had gotten more and more serious, to the point where by the time this tape was made, we were engaged.
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This tape is a lot less lazy, with a bunch of new stuff and some returning favorites.
- Pixies – Trompe Le Monde
- Pearl Jam – Alive
- Live – Pain Lies on the Riverside
- Nirvana – Lithium
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Poison
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Rollercoaster
- The Judy Bats – Our Story
- Teenage Fanclub – December
- T-Bone Burnett – Primitives
It’s the end of the road for Live, The Judy Bats, Teenage Fanclub, and T-Bone. I love this Ultra Vivid Scene song but I’m not sure why I never grabbed more from the first album.
- Nine Inch Nails – Wish
Trent Reznor took his sweet time following up his debut album, and therefore when Broken turned out to be slightly more than an EP, it was hard not to be disappointed. In fact, we coined the term “Broken” to describe any CD that annoyingly clocked in at under 45 minutes. I liked this song, but the rest didn’t do a lot for me, and neither did The Downward Spiral a few years later. What I’m saying is, Nine Inch Nails and I part ways here.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – Give It Away
This is the funnest song ever.
- Suzanne Vega – 99.9 F°
It’s been ten tapes and six years since we last saw Suzanne Vega. She had an album in between, but I had kind of lost track of her. This new album, of which this is the title track, knocked my socks off, and made me fall in love with her all over again.
- Sugar – Helpless
Bob Mould’s back in his “Sugar” incarnation. I dug the hell out of this album and was just as excited about more to come from this group as Bob seemed in interviews.
- Velvet Crush – Ash And Earth
I have no idea where I heard about these guys, but I remember scouring every record store looking for the CD until I finally had to get Parasite to special order it for me. And then I wasn’t sure what I had, as it was too fuzzy to be Material Issue but not moody enough to be The Jesus and Mary Chain. It took me a while to acclimate to the sound.
- Dada – Dim
What I remember most about this CD: it stunk. I don’t mean that figuratively, though I don’t own it any more and let’s face it, this is not a good song. I mean the CD itself had this horrible stench to it.
- Toad The Wet Sprocket – Hold Her Down
Out of all the poppy songs on this album, I chose a song about rape. Go, me!
- Soul Asylum – Runaway Train
I know, I know. I too bought this album for some reason, and I too eventually sold it back. I still like this song well enough, though.
- Poi Dog Pondering – Lackluster
For some reason I always associate these guys with Kelley, but here they are debuting way after we broke up, so obviously I got them from someone else. This album is a lot of fun, even if it does often stray into tie-dye-and-hacky-sack territory.
- The Lemonheads – Confetti
I had enjoyed Favorite Spanish Dishes and Lovey, so when It’s a Shame About Ray came out, I bought it right away. The loyalty of me and other fans was repaid when, a few months later, the album was reissued with a bonus track, their cover of “Mrs. Robinson”. Thanks! Evan Dando and company catch a lot of flack still, but this album is still a great slice of pop.
- Eugenius – Oomalama
Anyone remember these guys? I believe they were originally called Captain America, but a little-known comic book company had something to say about that, so they changed their name. When I was recreating these tapes on mp3 I had a hard time finding this track. Some may say the effort was not worth it.
- They Might Be Giants – I Palindrome I
They Might Be Giants appeared before, and I had been listening to them since, but they never quite made the cut for some reason. Even though this song from Apollo 18 makes it, and there’s more where that came from, they will once again vanish for several tapes.
- Spin Doctors – Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong
Guys, I am so, so sorry.
If I had no scruples, this track would be thrown down the memory hole and replaced with something else, say…”Renee Remains the Same” by Material Issue, or “Our Swingin’ Pad” by Jonathan Richman, or “De-Luxe” by Lush. But no, I am a man of honor and this is what’s on the tape. I assume that I liked it at some point, but I honestly can’t remember this song…this band not irritating the hell out of me. This is the absolute nadir of the series as far as I am concerned, and I know a few things coming up.
- Juliana Hatfield – Lost and Saved
I don’t know anything about the behind-the-scenes antics of all these musicians, but I just assumed that every guy Juliana Hatfield sang about was Evan Dando. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Juliana was (and is, I think) immensely talented but always seemed to be holding back, like she was afraid of doing too well. She should have been much more huge than she was.
- The Sundays – Love
Remember this band? I didn’t think much of their second album, including the cover of “Wild Horses” that was in heavy rotation. This song was the only thing I salvaged before selling it back.
- Shriekback – Beatles Zebra Crossing?
It had only been four years since Go Bang!, but that album combined with the fact that the last one had been a pretty limp compilation had convinced me that this band was done. So I was surprised not only when Sacred City was released, but also that it wasn’t bad!
- Spiritualized – Step Into the Breeze
One of the bands that Spacemen 3 self-destructed into, Spiritualized kept up the theme of “like this chord? I hope so…it’s all you get for the next six minutes.” This is the band that finally convinced me that of all drugs, I liked the music that heroin inspired the best.
- R.E.M. – Nightswimming
Everybody loves Automatic For the People except me. I suppose I did at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight I now recognize it as the beginning of the end for R.E.M. This song I love, but the rest of the album is now just dreck to me (and even with this song, I wish I could hear a version without the piano and strings. Why do you pay a guy like Peter Buck and then slather goddamn strings over everything?)
Not much to explain here; it’s pretty self-explanatory. I was angry about something or other. A lot of people were bugging me, I suppose, and I needed a hand big enough to slap the world. The cover is a literal interpretation.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Up All Night, Talking (May 1992)
Fortunately for me, not long after my graduation a job landed right in my lap, and in early 1992 I went to work for the State of Louisiana, doing computer tech support and network administration. It seemed like a dream come true – I got to mess around with computers all day long and got to learn all kinds of new things about them. For a while it was a lot of fun and really interesting. With my first real job I was able to afford a new car, and soon I bought my first car. So I had a new(ish) apartment, a new job, new girl, new car, I was really moving on in the world.
Becky and I continued to get closer, and I was still hanging out a lot with Anna and Kurt, but I was also spending a lot of time at a bar called The Chimes, with Jeff and Martin and Doug. We drank pitchers of Abita Amber and dreamed about having a band which was first called “Buttered Hand” and later “Burlap Cat”. These were some of the less bizarre names we came up with in these sessions. That project never got very far.
In retrospect, I was now sort of living the life I’d fantasized about back in the summer of ’86. Here I was, with my friends, at our usual hangout. We had our girlfriends and our own places to take them to, we talked about a band, griped about our classes or work, and basically lived as normal adults. Strange how we couldn’t seem to find that just out of high school.
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There’s a fair amount of going through the motions here, with only a few standout tracks.
- Teenage Fanclub – The Concept
No idea how I found out about Teenage Fanclub, but their Bandwagonesque album is so right up my alley I’m amazed I never went any further with them. I’m also surprised this song made the Cool New Music Tape cut, being that it’s forty years long, with 28 of those years being guitar solo — not at all my usual thing.
- The Cure – High
The Cure are back but don’t take their jackets; they’re not staying. Wish just didn’t grab me, as it seemed way too fluffy and cutesy even for The Cure (as this song attests, I think). I didn’t keep it long. I also didn’t succumb to the omnipresent single, “Friday I’m In Love”.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Far Gone and Out
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Staring at the Sun
- The La’s – Feelin’
- Dramarama – Haven’t Got A Clue
- Straitjacket Fits – Missing Presumed Drowned
- Head Candy – Soul Grinder
- Nirvana – In Bloom
- Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – Grey Cell Green
- Toad the Wet Sprocket – Is It For Me
- Power of Dreams – Talk
- Voice of the Beehive – Say It
- The Trash Can Sinatras – Only Tongue Can Tell
- R.E.M. – Near Wild Heaven
- Trout Fishing in America – Lost in Her Lips
- Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Times Like This
Despite now having a real job and being fabulously wealthy, this is a lot of repeats, though the Jesus and Mary Chain track is from a new album. At some point I found the followup to Melt by Straightjacket Fits. It was called Blow, and it did. “Soul Grinder” is not a good song, but I like the guitary bits.
- Live – Operation Spirit
Last time I referred to Crash Test Dummies as one of the most insufferable bands in history, but if these guys aren’t the champs, they’re at least way up there. Let’s look at the full title of this song:
- Live – Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)
Yeeeaaaahhhhhh.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – The Power Of Equality
I had been exposed to the Chili Peppers in the past, of course, but they never really clicked with me. This was partly because they were a bit too “California” for my tastes, but also because, being so very white, the funk that fuels them so much just didn’t do anything for me. But I guess by this time they had watered down their sound enough and I had loosened up enough that suddenly we were overlapping, and I could really appreciate the fun behind this album. It’s only this moment, though, as the albums after this left me cold again.
- Pearl Jam – Even Flow
On April 11, 1992, Pearl Jam was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, which Becky and I were regular viewers of. Neither one of us was familiar with the band, but Eddie Vedder’s intense performance of “Alive” had me (and practically everyone else I knew) out buying Ten the next day. I was too old for the grunge movement to be any kind of anthemic thing for me, and its founding fathers didn’t really keep my interest as long as they seemed to for many others. But I have to admit, Ten has held up fairly well.
- Pixies – Motorway to Roswell
I have a short story loosely based on (more “inspired by”, really) this song, but I’ve never written it down. It’s not that great of a story, honestly.
- Material Issue – Valerie Loves Me
In true power-pop fashion, Valerie isn’t aware this guy exists.
- Uncle Green – I Don’t Wanna Know About It
Not a great song, and the rest of the album is worse. Shortly after this they got on a major label and their debut there — Book of Bad Dreams — is awful. Shame, because there’s a really good band in there.
- Michelle Shocked – Come a Long Way
Michelle is back but this new album, Arkansas Traveler, just never did it for me. I stopped following her after this, which is my loss; she’s still putting out good music.
- The Judy Bats – She’s Sad She Said
This is the weirdest damn band. They have the sound of one of those small bands from England in which every song mentions some bit of local geography that you’re just supposed to know about. Thing is, they’re from the American South, and instead of England, they refer to bits of culture there. I love the first verse of this song.
- Crash Test Dummies – Here on Earth
This song is very difficult to listen to now. Don’t worry, this is it for them. There will be no “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”.
- T-Bone Burnett – Humans From Earth (alt)
One of the items in my collection of soundtracks to movies I never saw is the Until the End of the World soundtrack, which features this version of a track that’s also on his album, The Criminal Under My Own Hat (which was purchased based on this song). I like this starker version of the song better.
- Jonathan Richman – When She Kisses Me
Hey look who’s back! Jonathan played at a club in Baton Rouge and I fell in love with him all over again and stated buying his solo CDs which, for some reason, I had ignored before.
This was a poke at Jeff, who had told me that he and a certain girl had been “Up all night…you know…talking.” I thought it was funny at the time. The cover is a remixed version of a 1950s romance comic book.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Me and the Soviet Union (December 1991)
Just before I moved out of my apartment in the summer of ’91 I decided to call a girl I’d met in one of my creative writing classes, Becky. I finally got my courage up to ask her out, but before I could do so, she mentioned a new boyfriend she had. However, shortly after that the boyfriend was no more, and I decided to ask her out. We started dating on August 14th.
Things were great – Becky wasn’t like most of the other girls I had dated. She was less prone to self-destructive behavior stemming from a terrible family life. In a lot of ways, although she was younger than me, I found her very intimidating. Still, we got along very well and were fairly serious in a short amount of time. Through her I expanded my circle of friends to include Jeff, Sean and Joanna, Deshae, Martin, and Doug. Most of these were people I had sort of known before, but she knew a lot better.
I tried to get into writing some more at this time, since I was still toying with the idea of going to graduate school for an MFA in Creative Writing, but that plan was slipping further and further away the more I realized I just wasn’t interested in doing it. Problem was, I didn’t know what I was interested in. So I graduated from LSU in December of 1991 with a degree in English and absolutely no idea where I would go from there.
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This isn’t a bad followup to the previous, and still has a good variety.
- Dramarama – Until The Next Time
I don’t remember how I got into these guys, but Vinyl is a whole lot of fun. I have a memory of this song: the power had flickered off in the middle of the night and come back on, and my CD player just started playing what was in it. I slept through it until, suddenly in my ear was “BANG AND HERE WE GO!”
This was also the time when bands were playing with the CD format. There’s a hidden track on this album called “Steve is Here” which is about a minute long. Except instead of being one minute-long track, it’s 60 one-second long tracks. You won’t know this unless either you’re watching the track counter on the player go up or, in my case, you’re got six disks in the player on shuffle and keep hearing it load a list, play one second of sound, and then load a different disc.
- Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – Kill Your Television
More of the fun music coming out of England at the time. There really was something in the water over there.
- The Trash Can Sinatras – Obscurity Knocks
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Three Stars
- The Lightning Seeds – The Nearly Man
- The Charlatans – The Only One I Know
- Bob Mould – Out Of Your Life
- R.E.M. – Half A World Away
- The Lemonheads – Ride With Me
- Material Issue – Very First Lie
- Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Woyaho
- The Sundays – Can’t Be Sure
- The Stone Roses – Waterfall
These are the holdover from previously. It’s the end for the Lightning Seeds and The Stone Roses, and The Sundays are going to take a break. Bob Mould is leaving us as well, but he’ll be back soon.
- Toad the Wet Sprocket – Butterflies
These were the new indie darling, and for good reason: Fear is a damn fine album (this track sort of belies the jangle-pop rest of it.) I’ll eventually use three tracks off of it but not “Walk on the Ocean” or “All I Want”, the two biggest songs from it.
- The Soup Dragons – Mother Universe [Remix]
- Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – Midnight on the Murder Mile
“Mother Universe” is another track from the Indie Top 20 CD I got so much mileage out of on Dead Fly in My Nehi. Speaking of which, I said before that only one of the bands was one I would continue to follow? Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine is that band. I have 101 Damnations and still love it (and its title) and I used to have 30 Something but I don’t know what happened to it.
- U2 – Mysterious Ways
I managed to make it through their early career, their serious phase, and their first bombastic phase without paying much attention to U2, (and, fair enough, I owned and liked The Joshua Tree) but they finally hit paydirt for me with Achtung Baby, despite it being a little bit of all of that rolled into one. Nevertheless, this is one of only two songs by U2 that will make it onto these tapes.
- Head Candy – Mona Lisa Overdrive
Not a great song by not a great band that nobody but me has ever heard of, but hey, they had the comic character “The Vision” on their CD cover and a song named after a William Gibson book, so I gave them a shot. Something tells me these guys listened to a little Blue Oyster Cult.
- Pixies – Subbacultcha
Yes, I didn’t get into the Pixies until Trompe le Monde, which is the album the true fans all hate, mostly because it got people like me into the band. I’ve since bought their other ones and I like about half of each one, but honestly, I can do without the songs that are just Black Francis screaming, and this album has less of that than the others.
Jeff and I used to try to turn this into a “Subway” sandwich shop ad. “SHE WAS HAVING A TURKEY SUB I WAS HAVING A TURKEY SUB WAY DOWN DOWN DOWN IN THIS…Subbawaya!”
- Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit
Speaking of screamy bands, in 1991 you were obligated to own this, since it was of course Changing Everything. And it did…in hindsight, not exactly for the better. Things are about to get a lot more dour and miserable in the American music scene, folks.
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Head On
I don’t know why it took me this long to get to THE song off Automatic (it’s the fifth track I’ve pulled off it.)
- Voice of the Beehive – Adonis Blue
Voice of the Beehive are back with their second album, Honey Lingers (it was going to be called something else that sort of rhymes, but their label balked.) It’s okay, but it didn’t consistently grab me as much as the first one did.
- Uncle Green – I Don’t Know (I Just Wish)
Speaking of disappointing follow-ups, Uncle Green’s What an Experiment His Head Was is just…well, it’s not good, people.
- Power of Dreams – Maire I Don’t Love You
Remember Rob? I briefly got in touch with him again at this time. He was living uptown in New Orleans and doing something that got him promotional CDs. This was one of two he gave me, and I liked it pretty well, though I eventually got rid of it. In fact, when compiling these mp3s I figured this one would be impossible to find but it turned out my library had a copy of it.
- The La’s – There She Goes
I have a very vivid memory of dropping Becky off at her dorm one night and this song coming on after it and me just feeling this overwhelming sense of joy.
- Trout Fishing in America – Sleepytime Cartoon
Becky had a friend in Shreveport named Deshae. They were such good friends, in fact, and Deshae was such a great person, that I felt like I really wanted to make a great impression on her. This was a band that Deshae and her friends really dug, and they’re great fun. It’s two guys, and they just make this nice, fun music. When they tour, they tend to do two shows: a kid’s show during the day and an adults show at night. (They play many of the same songs.) We saw them a couple of times and always enjoyed it.
- Crash Test Dummies – Comin’ Back Soon
This is a clever song in its way but oh my god this is one of the most insufferable bands in history.
- Straitjacket Fits – Down in Splendour
The other CD Rob gave me. I love this song and could just listen to it on endless repeat. The rest of the album, Melt is similarly moody and haunting.
On August 19, 1991 there was a coup in the Soviet Union that failed, basically putting the final nail in the coffin of the USSR. A few days earlier I got a new girlfriend. I had told someone, “A lot has happened in the past week for me and the Soviet Union.” The cover design is a rather literal interpretation.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
Dead Fly in My Nehi (July 1991)
And the beat went on. My betrayal of Kelley’s trust culminated in me cheating on her with, of all people, Katie. Had she known this at the time she would have gone ballistic, as she hated to hear anything about Katie (which I suppose is understandable, up to a point). In addition, I was trying to make plans for graduate school (I would graduate in December) and Kelley and I both noticed they didn’t include her. So we called it quits. When I think about it, I’m kind of surprised we lasted as long as we did, because we really didn’t have a whole lot in common. Breaking up made a lot more sense than us ever being together, actually.
Predictably, as soon as it was all over and I was free to tango with whomever I want, all the women I’d been cheating on Kelley with disappeared. I even wanted to try to get together with Katie again, but that was a lost cause. I went back to her place once and we were just sitting around talking and suddenly I felt incredibly uncomfortable and realized I hardly knew this person. I bolted first chance I could.
That was the bad stuff. On the other hand, this is possibly one of the best tapes I ever made and has a lot of good memories associated with it. It was summer, I was driving for Domino’s again so I was making some money, I had that weird giddy feeling you get after you break up with someone, and things seemed good, actually. I was hanging out a lot with Anna and Kurt, and also Kyle (who I had met through BBS) and Chris, and we had a really good time. We were playing a lot of role-playing games, like Talislanta and Champions, along with other games like Illuminati! and Talisman. It was a great, fun summer, and Anna and Kurt and I still have a lot of in-jokes from this time.
Towards the end of this period, Kyle’s roommate suddenly lost her mind and moved out, leaving Kyle in the lurch for a roommate. My rent was going up on my smaller place, so I decided to move into Tiger Plaza with him, changing my address to a different street named after a different football player.
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This is a great tape with only a few missteps on it.
- DiVinyls – I Touch Myself
I’ll hear nothing bad about this song! Seriously, this song is hilarious; I especially like the part where, in case you doubt her sincerity, she assures you, “I honestly do!”
- Ultra Vivid Scene – Lynn-Marie #2
As soon as I fell in love with Ultra Vivid Scene’s second album, I knew I had to have the first, self-titled one as well. I put in a special order at the indie record shop and soon fell in love with that album as well. Could Kurt Ralske and Co. do anything I didn’t love?
- The Shamen – ProGen
- Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine – Sheriff Fatman
- Birdland – Sleep With Me
- New Fast Automatic Daffodils – Big
- McCarthy – Get A Knife Between Your Teeth
On some fateful day in 1991 I wandered into Paradise Records (which we called Parasite) and purchased the Melody Maker Indie Top 20, volume 9 (a descendent of the Indie Top 20 Records that had served me so well back in my radio station days.) It was a goldmine of great British music. England was going through its whole “Madchester” scene and a lot of really catchy, fun music was being produced. There are no fewer than five tracks on this tape from this one CD alone. Only one of these bands became one I would stick with, but I loved all these tunes.
One I’m surprised didn’t make the cut was “Monster in the House” by Finitribe. One day we were listening to the Indie Top 20 CD and Anna and I were singing along to this song. Chris asked us to stop because, “I can’t hear the lyrics.” The punchline is: there are only two lines in the song, repeated over and over, so we told him, “The lyrics are ‘A thing like this could warp his mind for life!’ and ‘Just who the hell do you think you are?’ Now you know them.”
- Bob Mould – Stop Your Crying
- Uncle Green – A Word Of Advice
- World Party – Take It Up
- The Replacements – Bent Out of Shape
- Nine Inch Nails – Down in It
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Here Comes Alice
- The Sundays – I Kicked A Boy
- The Stone Roses – Made of Stone
- The Lightning Seeds – Sweet Dreams
Much fewer holdovers here, and only a couple that have been around for a while. I had definitely gotten out of the rut I was in! It’s the end of the line for The Replacements, though, and probably a bit too late.
- Inspiral Carpets – This is How it Feels
- The La’s – Timeless Melody
- EMF – Unbelievable
- The Charlatans – White Shirt
- Ride – Taste
- The Trash Can Sinatras – Circling the Circumference
Complimenting the sounds from the Melody Maker disc were a bunch of new British bands I had also discovered. Laugh if you will at EMF here, but you know you love that song. This stuff sounds like pure, undistilled summer to me.
- R.E.M. – Losing My Religion
A bit of a downer, sure, but listening to this song, you knew it was going to be huge. And it actually doesn’t completely not work in the context of the rest of the tunes here.
- Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Black and Blue
This one from these folks’ more-or-less ignored second album also works pretty well.
- James McMurtry – Terry
But this one? God knows I love me some James McMurtry but wow, does this song bring the whole party to a crashing halt. It’s a good song but boy, is it out of place. What was I thinking?
- The Lemonheads – Different Drum
My first exposure to this band that would, before too long, blow up huge, was their EP, Favorite Spanish Dishes, which featured this cover (as well as covers of “Step By Step” by New Kids on the Block and “Skulls” by Danzig. It’s well worth finding.) The screams that you hear around the middle were a thing running throughout the EP.
- Material Issue – Diane
And THIS bit of Britpop — ha! Fooled you! They’re from the US, but their British-tinged brand of full-force power pop melds completely with the stuff from this second British invasion.
My beverage of choice at this time was Lemon Nehi, and one day I was cleaning up and discovered a half-drunk bottle that now had a dead fly floating in it. Why did this prompt the title of a tape? I have no idea, but the title is kind of funny. For the cover, I went a bit literal, while the back cover is a character sheet from the Champions RPG, based on my character from those days, Killerwatt, the electrical alien.
Click on the player below to listen to this mix!
(xspf player courtesy Lacy Morrow and Fabricio Zuardi.)
