I try to do a CD-length (old habits die hard) mix approximately once a season, of all the new stuff I’ve discovered in that time. It provides the background for my life – and it produces some pretty durable memories.
If I hear, for example, “Taxi Ride” by Tori Amos, my mind immediately jumps to the spring of 2003, sitting in the Pasco airport at 5 AM waiting for a flight, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Or if it’s “Balcony” by Birdmonster I’m walking through the streets of Oaxaca in the summer of 2006. Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi” puts me in a room at the Lexington Ramada (to which I will never return, inshallah). And so on.
I didn’t do a mix for the Spring, in part because I’ve been pretty low-key about listening to new stuff so far this year. Very little has blown me away, and I haven’t really been digging like I usually do. But another aspect of that is that I’ve been re-acquainting myself with some classics of my slightly-younger days.
That has included a major burst of R.E.M. – easily my most-listened-to band of the past six months – quite a bit of Oasis, loads of Nirvana, The Wrens, some of the deeper parts of the Modest Mouse catalog, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. Basically it’s been an alt-rock binge.
But, it has just occurred to me, this isn’t a good reason to abandon a mix for the season. It just means I should embrace the nostalgia of this moment. So instead of making a mix of new things, I’m going to gather together a bunch of these slightly-forgotten tracks into one place.
It’s a tricky thing, because I’m not actually looking to populate the mix with my favorite tracks of the past 20 years. I still listen to those regularly. This mix will be for songs I adore, but which somehow fell off the radar for one reason or another. So, no “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” or Neutral Milk Hotel or “Heart Shaped Box” or “Across the Sea” and the like.
Here’s a few to whet your appetite:
Your Woman – White Town
Time Ago – Black Lab
Female of the Species – Space
Enjoy the Silence – Failure
I’ll be posting somewhat regularly on this theme over the next week or two, as I take a stroll down memory lane. I invite everyone to join me. And to offer suggestions!
Remind me of some one-hit wonders from the 90s, or b-sides from big bands. What’s your favorite deep track from The Aeroplane Flies High? What song is most worth holding onto from the DGC Rarities record? Which version of “Fake Plastic Trees” is the best? The one from The Bends, the acoustic one from the Clueless soundtrack, or the live one from the Tibetan Freedom Concert? How good did that No Doubt record actually turn out to be? What’s the best early techno song? Is “Bittersweet Symphony” still rubbish?
Cornershop – Brimful of Asha. great song.
The first existentialist church in Atlanta recently had a yard sale, to which someone had donated a 90’s alt/grunge cd collection that was nearly identical to the one I used to have. Naturally, I bought the whole thing, and listened to almost all of it on a recent road trip. It seemed like something the teenage me would have wanted. Mostly, I was amazed at how good Nevermind still is (despite my previous insistence that Bleach and In Utero are Nirvana’s best albums), how different the order of songs on Siamese Dream sounds from what I remember, that I ever liked Collective Soul, that before I ever even heard “Jeremy” on The Magnetic Fields’ Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees, Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” was one of my favorite songs. Remember Blur’s “Song 2”? Local H’s “Bound for the Floor”? The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshman”? The Gin Blossoms, Live, Veruca Salt, Silverchair? I feel like my 13-year-old, converse one-star wearing self again just thinking about it.