1. "Tennessee Fire"
   Cuba
   The Silos
   read about this song
   
   
2. "Mandinka"
   The Lion and the Cobra
   Sinead O'Connor
   read about this song
   
   
3. "Trampoline"
   Saint Julian
   Julian Cope
   read about this song
   
   
4. "We Love You Carol and Alison"
   Lolita Nation
   Game Theory
   read about this song
   
   
5. "Girlfriend in a Coma"
   Strangeways, Here We Come
   The Smiths
   read about this song
   
   
6. "Whiskered Wife"
   Three Squares and a Roof
   The Balancing Act
   read about this song
   
   
7. "The Saturday Boy"
   Back to Basics
   Billy Bragg
   read about this song
   
   
8. "Scotty's Lament"
   Boylan Heights
   The Connells
   read about this song
   
   
9. "King of Birds"
   Document
   R.E.M.
   read about this song
   
   
10. "The Lazarus Heart"
    ...Nothing Like the Sun
    Sting
    read about this song
    
    
11. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
    The Joshua Tree
    U2
    read about this song
    
    
12. "Hymn to Saint Jude"
    All Fools Day
    The Saints
    read about this song
    
    
13. "Thomas Doubter"
    Tiny Days
    Scruffy the Cat
    read about this song
    
    
14. "No New Tale to Tell"
    Earth, Sun, Moon
    Love and Rockets
    read about this song
    
    
15. "Big Decision"
    Babble
    That Petrol Emotion
    read about this song
    
    
16. "Ahead"
    The Ideal Copy
    Wire
    read about this song
    
    
17. "Could You Be the One?"
    Warehouse: Songs and Stories
    Hüsker Dü
    read about this song
    
    
18. "Happy When It Rains"
    Darklands
    Jesus and Mary Chain
    read about this song
    
    
19. "Just Like Heaven"
    Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
    The Cure
    read about this song
    
    
20. "Can't Hardly Wait"
    Pleased to Meet Me
    The Replacements
    read about this song
    
    
21. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
    Louder Than Bombs
    The Smiths
    read about this song

Track 1
"Tennessee Fire"
Cuba
The Silos

Back in 1987, the Silos seemed destined for mainstream success. They were named Best New Artist in the Rolling Stone critics poll that year after releasing their sophomore disc, Cuba, and were featured in the year-end wrap up along with the BoDeans, who were named Best New Artist in the readers poll after having taken the critics award the year before (in the meantime, the BoDeans had opened for U2 on the Joshua Tree tour, which accounts for their sudden popularity despite the lack of a true hit single). The Silos gutsy country-rock sound was somewhere between the BoDeans, R.E.M., and the Georgia Satellites, but the dueling voices and guitars of Walter Salas-Humara and Bob Rupe made them stand out in a landscape that was becoming rapidly overcrowded with southern rock acts.

"Tennessee Fire" will always be the definitive Silos song for me, the one that I automatically think of when I think of the band. The only time I saw them live, they kicked off the show with this track (even though the tour was in support of the follow-up to this record, the eponymous The Silos), allowing a tape of the rain sounds that open the album track to go on for 10 minutes or more before the band took the stage and tore into the song. So many of their songs seem to take place behind the wheel of a car, moving towards some uncertain goal (a trait they share with Modest Mouse). The first few lines of "Tennessee Fire" might be the most poetic ever written about driving around aimlessly, looking for god knows what:

Driving by the moonlight
I haven't seen a service station
In thirty miles or so
I'm running out of gasoline

All your letters, photographs
So far out of reach

Sometimes rock lyricists get away with stuff in the context of a song that a poet could never get away with on the printed page, but every now and then the minimalist nature of the medium produces some brilliant poetry, and these six lines pack as much imagery, depth, and emotion as the best haiku.

back to top

Track 2
"Mandinka"
The Lion and the Cobra
Sinead O'Connor

When I went off to NCSSM for my junior year of the two-year, science and math oriented high school, my first roommate was named Alan, and he was a complete tool, especially when it came to music. And at that age, I had opinions about music that bordered on fascist, meaning that I just couldn't tolerate you if you had bad taste. No matter what other redeeming qualities you might have, if you enjoyed listening to Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, New Kids on the Block, Melissa Gibson, or Madonna, I couldn't really forgive you for it and found it hard to be your friend (I'm slightly less radical now, but people still lose points in my book for liking crappy music). The day I knew that the BoDeans were lost to me forever after a brilliant first album was when I was playing their newly-released second album on my stereo and Alan wandered in from class and said, "Hey, I like that. Who is it?"

We had other conflicts besides music, however, and so within a month I found myself a new roommate, a senior whose first roommate (another junior like me) had flamed out and gone back home less than two weeks after classes started. His name was Greg, and he was completely insane (he did his work study in the chem labs, and he was fond of bringing dangerous but entertaining chemicals back to the dorm for everyone to play with, including mercury, liquid nitrogen, and pure sodium, a chunk of which will explode violently if you throw it into a tub of water). But his taste in music was decent, and he was out of the room so often that we only got into screaming matches every other week.

All year long, however, we waged a stereo war between our two favorite CDs: Throwing Muses' eponymous deput (mine) and Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra (his). Whoever got back to the room first would put on their favorite of these two CDs and play it endlessly, and even though I still really love the Throwing Muses disc, after a while I was simply playing it out of spite, since I usually managed to make it back to the room before he did (he had more friends). At one point, he got so sick of the Muses that he hid the disc from me and claimed that someone must have stolen it, or that I must have misplaced it, and so he was able to play Sinead without competition for a solid month before I discovered where he had stashed my missing CD.

So you might think that, because of those circumstances, I would have to hate The Lion and the Cobra, but I don't really. I don't love it as much as Greg did, but I think it's far and away Sinead's strongest release, before she had her first big hit with the Prince cover and she started thinking it was her job to become the female Bono. There are several gems on here, the best of which is, of course, "Mandinka", with its strong, muscular guitar line and club-worthy beat. It's a no-brainer for this mix, and if the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" hadn't been released the same year, it probably would have been a contender for song of the year.

back to top

Track 3
"Trampoline"
Saint Julian
Julian Cope

Julian Cope originally made his mark on the British music scene with the Teardrop Explodes, an early 80s postpunk britpop band with strong stylistic and personal ties to Echo and the Bunnymen (Cope and Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch were in a band together at one point). The Teardrop Explodes had several hits in England, but they never made much of an impact stateside, and in the midst of recording their third album, Cope decided to break up the band and go solo.

The album that resulted from this, Fried, found Cope at the height of his borderline-psychotic, LSD-influenced glory: in addition to album art showing Cope crawling around naked with a giant tortoise shell on his back, the record also featured songs like "Reynard the Fox", which features allegorical, hallucinigenic retelling of an onstage incident where Cope cut open his stomach with a broken microphone, and "Bill Drummond Said", a sweetly venomous diatribe directed at a former bandmate. (Oddly enough, Cope would get even weirder after swearing off drugs and settling down to become a devoted father, but you'll get to hear more about that as we moved forward in the Year Mixtapes.)

No matter what the subject matter, however, the songs on Fried were brimming with the pop sensibilities which Cope would continue to refine over the course of his 80s solo career. These impulses found their apex in Saint Julian, which is packed with tight, catchy pop constructions that should have made him a star. It is still a wonder to me how this record failed to make more of an impression on the American charts; it finally brought Cope recognition on college radio, but that should have just been the beginning. "World Shut Your Mouth" was already a big hit in England, along with "Eve's Volcano", and except for the closing track, the operatic "A Crack in the Clouds", every track on this record is a candidate for a radio single.

I picked "Trampoline" more or less on a whim; it seemed to be a good segueway between the arena guitars on Sinead O'Connor's "Mandinka" and the oddball pop of Game Theory's "We Love You Carol and Alison". It still sounds great after all these years, and it's still fresh because no one else who came after Julian explored this particular tributary of the guitar-pop sound. Julian would go on to release several of my favorite records of the 90s, but never again would he produce an album as flawless as Saint Julian. The record is apparently out of print now, but you would do well to look for a copy on eBay; if Saint Julian were released today, bands like Franz Ferdinand and the New Pornographers would be scrambling back to the studio to figure out how to rip off his sound. As it is, they merely owe Julian a thus-far unacknowledged debt.

back to top

Track 4
"We Love You Carol and Alison"
Lolita Nation
Game Theory

Lolita Nation was the first album I bought by Game Theory, following my then tried and true method of finding new artists using the college music top 10 in the back of Rolling Stone. I got it right before my family and I left for our annual vacation to go skiing in the mountains, figuring the double album would give me a lot of new stuff to listen to on the all-day, 11 hour drive from our home in North Carolina to Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia (I can't read in the car without getting nauseous, and since, as a typical teen, I wanted nothing to do with my younger siblings or my parents, pretty much all I did on long family drives was listen to my Walkman in the back of our Suburban).

I really wanted to like this album——it was produced by Mitch Easter, whose work I tended to enjoy (he produced R.E.M., the Connells, and Waxing Poetics among many others, and he was also the frontman for Let's Active)——but I still hadn't really learned to love loud, distorted guitars, and Lolita Nation starts out with a bunch of those. The first track, "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" (which gives a pop culture nod to Dan Rather's infamous encounter with a mysterious stranger years before Michael Stipe reused the reference on the dreadful Monster), is nothing more than a series of song and spoken word fragments that abruptly lurches into skipping-needle opening bars of "Not Because You Can". This 3 minute mini-opus, which has two distinctive movements and only a smattering of lyrics, is followed by "Shard" and "Go Ahead, You're Dying To", two song fragments that together total less than a minute. The next track, "Dripping With Looks", is the first fully realized song on the album, and it's also the darkest and slowest, laden with distortion and feedback.

I'd had just about enough at this point. I just wasn't in the mood to have to think this hard about something I was listening to, and the heavy guitar sound didn't really appeal to me, either. So I reached for bag to get out another cassette (remember those, kids?), only to realize to my horror that I had packed the rest of my tapes in my main bag, which was now firmly cemented under everyone else's bags in the back of the truck, and there was no way I would be able to convince my dad to unpack it before we got to West Virginia. I was stuck with Lolita Nation for the whole trip——I had to listen to that or listen to nothing.

This turned out to be a good thing, because of course I chose to listen to a record I disliked rather than interact with my family, and on about the third time through I finally started to get it (it might have taken me months to give it that kind of chance otherwise based on my initial negative reaction to the first few songs); during our week of skiing and our trip back home, I don't think I played another record, even after I regained access to the rest of the music I'd brought along.

Despite some of the artsy, purposefully inaccessible aspects of Lolita Nation——lots of haiku-like song fragments, rapid shifting of styles, and sound collages composed of monotone spoken-word phrases and snippets from previous Game Theory releases (including a still-baffling track with an undecipherable title which seems to be an attempt at a philosophical treatise written in computer code)——it's actually crammed with lots of pop hooks and melodies that lodge forever in your cortex.

"We Love You Carol and Alison" is one of the more upbeat numbers on this record, musically and lyrically, with shimmering guitars and toy keyboards sprinkled with bells tinkling like raindrops on a summer day, all giving a sunny backdrop to one of the most optimistic choruses frontman Scott Miller has ever written:

Will you take on our age's dream?
We love you Carol and Alison
And will you take us
Cause it's still a green land
And it still works as planned

It's yet another ode to our eternal American obsession with newness and possibilities (in fact, the title of the album, Lolita Nation, which is a jab at our youth-obsessed culture, comes from a line in this song), but Miller's not being ironic or insincere; despite the city-on-a-hill, morning-in-America visions that have been promoted by our politicians while they were busy preventing most people from being able to fulfill those aspirations personally, Miller, like most of us, hasn't given up hope. He still believes in the dream, no matter how many times that vision has been used as a cover for an ideology. And our collective ability to believe in this dream, so much that we can almost make it real despite all the obstacles, might be the most powerful thing about the American people.

I might be wandering a little far afield, but hey, this entry's already ranged a little farther than it should, and if you were still with me by that paragraph, I'm sure you made it down to here. So to sum up: Lolita Nation is one of the most brilliant records of the 80s, Scott Miller is a pop genius, and "We Love You Carol and Alison" was a good fit for this mix between Julian Cope and the Smiths. Is that concise enough for you?

back to top

Track 5
"Girlfriend in a Coma"
Strangeways, Here We Come
The Smiths

I remember when I first discovered that the Smiths, who were my first true musical love, had broken up. It was the summer before they released Strangeways, which was to be their premature swan song, and I was visiting my mother in her new, temporary apartment in Miami, where she was living with her boyfriend and my sister while they looked for a house in the suburbs. Though I was still technically in her custody, I had decided to stay in North Carolina with my father and attend NCSSM instead of going to Florida with her and finishing my last two years of high school there, so I had not participated in the move with my mom and sister and I was seeing them for the first time in a couple of months. It was a terrible building, more like a cheap motel than an apartment complex, but their unit was on one of the top floors and it overlooked the ocean. I remember mostly sitting out on the porch late at night by myself, drinking water with lemon, listening to New Order and the Replacements on my walkman, and writing in my notebook.

I would read sometimes, too, mostly science fiction novels, but with the occasional magazine thrown in for a change of pace. I read Rolling Stone religiously in those days, though I knew even then that it mostly sucked. But every now and then they would have a nugget of news on one of my obscure favorites, or they would review a band that would encourage me to try something new. So I was reading a new issue of Rolling Stone on the porch, flipping through the first few pages looking at the brief news items, and there it was: a tiny paragraph, no more than two or three sentences, saying that the Smiths had called it quits.

I was devastated. My heart dropped out of my chest. I didn't know what to do——I had no fellow fans to commiserate with; hell, I didn't know anyone at that point who had even heard of the Smiths, much less who loved them as much as I did. I stumbled inside and told my mom, whose response was, "So?" I tried to explain to her that it was like if she had just found out Bruce Springsteen (who was her favorite artist at the time) had decided never to make music again, and although that offered some perspective, she never had that same passion for music that I did, so it still didn't mean that much to her. I was distraught, and spent most of the rest of my time there staring morosely at the sea and listening to Power, Corruption, and Lies on my headphones at a volume that likely contributed in some small way to the now-constant ringing in my ears.

In the Smiths' catalog, Strangeways is probably superior only to Meat Is Murder, but that's like saying that the second circle of paradise is superior only to the first circle. It's still a brilliant album, and although it occasionally glances in the direction of the more pointed and preachy lyrics that were to become a hallmark of Morrissey's solo career, it's still a genuine Smiths album, equal parts Morrissey and Marr. "Girlfriend in a Coma" is a hummable little ditty that catches you off guard twice: first, when you think that Morrissey might actually be writing a sincere (if somewhat morbid) love song, and second, when you realize that his narrator is really not such a nice person after all. It was Seinfeld-ian before there was Seinfeld. When I was at NCSSM, I would spend a couple of weekends a month with my grandfather, who lived nearby and who was newly single after my grandmother died from a five-year battle with cancer the year before I started attending school in Durham, and I used to play Strangeways for him all the time when we were driving back and forth between my school and his house. "Girlfriend in a Coma" used to really annoy him (along with "Death at One's Elbow"), but I always secretly hoped he could see the humor in it.

Anyway. I loved this album and I loved this band. I'm still sad they're gone.

back to top

Track 6
"Whiskered Wife"
Three Squares and a Roof
The Balancing Act

You've likely never heard of the Balancing Act, and you probably won't ever hear about them again after reading this entry since their time on the music industry stage was tragically brief. Their sound is pretty unique, combining acoustic-rock with frenetic drumming, multi-part vocal harmonies, intelligent, literate lyrics, and a pop sensibility that keeps you singing along to even their darkest tunes. I heard about them when a friend of mine read a review of their debut EP, New Campfire Songs, comparing the drumming to the Violent Femmes, with whom my friend was then obsessed. I heard and liked the EP, but I didn't buy anything from the band until they released their first full-length, Three Squares and a Roof, which remains one of my favorite records from the 80s.

For some reason, IRS (the burgeoning indie label that included once and future stars like R.E.M., the Go-Gos, Fine Young Cannibals, and the Bangles, among others) decided that the Balancing Act had Next Big Thing potential, and so for the follow up to Three Squares (the presciently titled Curtains), the label set them up with producer Andy Gill (who you might know better as a member of the seminal post-punk band Gang of Four) in the hopes that he could bring just the right amount of studio gloss to band's acoustic folkie tendencies. The colder, more mechanized production on that record was in direct contrast to the warm, natural tones that dominated Three Squares, and ultimately the confusing mix of wood and metal ended up alienating the group's core fan base without giving them the broader commercial appeal IRS had hoped for, and the group disbanded shortly after its release.

Three Squares remains their masterpiece, stronger, more confident, and better-produced than New Campfire Songs, but without crossing the line into the empty-studio production sound that took the soul out of the songs on Curtains. "Whiskered Wife" is a fairly representative track from Three Squares, with a layer of shimmering acoustic guitars and snare-heavy, high-speed drums shuffling under a Byrds-like electric guitar chime that anchors the music. The song tells the story of a man who has grown tired of the domestic web he has woven for himself, and so he leaves his family to start a new life somewhere else. No one knows what happens to him until years later, when his abandoned wife happens upon his picture in the paper. Here's the chorus:

This home is broken
No lights are on
There's someone hoping
Hope's not all gone

Pretty depressing stuff, right? But even though the lyrics have real emotional resonance (one of the best lines: "What's a family but a bill that's due?"), I guarantee that you'll be tapping your toes and humming along by the time the first chorus hits you. The Balancing Act were clever and quirky, the kind of band that could have developed a sizable and devoted following if left to their own devices, and it's still a mystery to me why IRS felt compelled to meddle with them in an attempt to acheive crossover success. The stresses from that experience were clearly too much for the band, and so their career ended after only two albums and an EP. I still feel like they had a fairly unique voice——they're one of those bands that, if they had never existed before and they put out their records today, would be hailed as the creators of a new sound——and it would have been fun to see where they would have gone if they had been able to make a few more records. Oh well. I'm just thankful we have Three Squares.

back to top

Track 7
"The Saturday Boy"
Back to Basics
Billy Bragg

Aside from his outstanding work on the first Mermaid Avenue disc with Wilco (in which he and Jeff Tweedy wrote new music to go along with unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics), Back to Basics is really the only thing you need to hear by Billy Bragg. He's still recording today, and occasionally gets some attention in the press for his outspoken political views, but when it come to his music, Basics is as good as it gets. Which is a little ironic, considering that it's a compilation of his first three releases that were all shoved together on this compilation CD in anticipation of his first major label release, Talking With the Taxman About Poetry.

Where Billy went wrong, I think, is getting away from his roots as a neo-electric-protest folkie, where it was just him, his thick cockney accent, and an electric guitar on the stage, with no backing band and nothing to get in the way of his raw emotion. In these early recordings, he was forced to do the job of a whole band by himself, and they really are his most vibrant recordings. When I first heard the CD, I loved it, but I was always wondering how his songs would sound if they had the power of a whole band behind them, and that was a mistake: Bragg has spent pretty much the rest of his career working with other musicians trying to flesh out this sound, and the only time it came even remotely close to working is on his previously mentioned sessions with Wilco on the Mermaid Avenue project. Otherwise, no matter who he has worked with, his music comes off as bland, midtempo rock almost completely devoid of life. I actually wish now that he'd go back and comb through his more recent catalog for his best songs and record them in the same stripped down fashion that he uses on the Back to Basics tracks; I have a feeling they'd come out stronger than they ever could with a full band behind them; that only seems to tone down Billy's emotions.

Normally my first choice for a track off this CD is "Strange Things Happen", which contains some of my favorite lyrics from the 80s: "Strange things happen when you're not around/Our love is so strong it moves objects in my house." But "The Saturday Boy", which tells a tale of a schoolboy's first unrequited love, is a close second, and is a good fit between the Balancing Act's "Whiskered Wife" and the Connells' "Scotty's Lament", both of which also deal with lost love. I guarantee you there's not a boy alive above the age of 10 that can't identify with this song.

back to top

Track 8
"Scotty's Lament"
Boylan Heights
The Connells

The Connells would later go on to a middling level of national recognition (think Death Cab for Cutie before their profile-raising release on Atlantic earlier this year), but when this record came out, they were just an up-and-coming college act from Raleigh, NC with a devoted local following in the Triangle area (the other two corners of which were composed of Chapel Hill and Durham). Their first disc, Darker Days, received some acclaim from critics and expanded their fan base, but Boylan Heights really got people's attention and set the stage for the success that would follow with Fun & Games, One Simple Word, and Ring.

Boylan Heights has always had a special place in my heart because the title comes from a neighborhood adjacent to my grandfather's house in Raleigh, and listening to it always reminds me of driving around at night with my high school friends. We never had any money, and there was never anything to do, and our futures seemed so uncertain. But for those few hours, there was nothing outside the car and the conversation, and everything felt alright for a little while.

The title track, which was running neck and neck with "Scotty's Lament" for inclusion on this mix, has that same kind of weird childhood longing that you get from the Smiths' "Back to the Old House" or, well, Billy Bragg's "The Saturday Boy", but I've always loved "Scotty's Lament" for its odd blend of an atmospheric irish-influenced instrumental swirl that suddenly changes tempo and morphs into a whirlwind of vocal tracks and pointed percussion. This used to be a favorite among the kids into alternative music (we'd call them indie kids today) at NCSSM school dances, along with the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and Sinead O'Connor's "Mandinka". And no, it probably wasn't the best dancing you've ever seen in your life.

back to top

Track 9
"King of Birds"
Document
R.E.M.

Now we get to the Big 3, the artists on this mixtape who were legitimate sales and radio forces in 1987. For U2 and R.E.M., the albums they released this year were their first bona fide commercial successes, and each spawned several hit singles, while Sting was contentedly chugging along with mulit-plantinum sales after years of huge sales with the Police and with his first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles.

So you'd think that I'd at least include some of those hit singles here, but aside from U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (which remains brilliant despite it's ubiquitousness), I decided against it. Let's face it: the hits from Sting's and R.E.M.'s albums just don't hold up the same way that the ones from the Joshua Tree do. "The One I Love" isn't a bad song, but it's a trick that R.E.M. has done so many times now that it's just not that interesting, and "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" has become a joke that isn't funny anymore.

So instead I selected "King of Birds", one of the last loveably quirky songs that R.E.M. would release before their creative rebirth in Automatic for the People. Combining a meandering sitar, a shuffling backbeat, and stream-of-consciousness lyrics, "King of Birds" appeals to me in a way that almost nothing else in their catalog from Document, Green, Out of Time, and Monster does; it's a weird, non-commercial moment in a string of otherwise very commercially-slanted (and successful) releases. The opening phrase, "a thumbnail sketch", sums up the tone of this track, lyrically and musically, and it's a nice respite from a band that was becoming overly bombastic and annoyingly blunt.

back to top

Track 10
"The Lazarus Heart"
...Nothing Like the Sun
Sting

"The Lazarus Heart" was never one of my favorite tracks back when this CD first came out (and in fact, ...Nothing Like the Sun was my least favorite CD from Sting until Ten Summoner's Tales, which began his slow but still-ongoing descent into mediocrity), but on re-listening to it years later (and again for this mixtape), the oblique references to the death of his mother hit home in a way that they never had when I was younger. The image of the narrator's age-weakened mother shooing birds off her roof with a broom says something very profound about the perseverance of human beings despite the inevitability of death. I've also grown to love the lilting guitars sliding in and out of the skittering keyboards and percussion that are the bedrock of the song; the combination is very much like the flapping of wings of a flock of birds as they alight from the ground, wheel in the air for a few moments, then settle back in their original spot.

back to top

Track 11
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
The Joshua Tree
U2

I know, I know——you've heard this song a million times and you're sick of it. Well, I thought I was, too, even though I would have still readily acknowledged that it was a great song despite being overplayed in its prime. But when was the last time you went back and listened to this song, or anything from The Joshua Tree? I know you've got it sitting there in your CD collection, gathering dust; we all do. It's so familiar that in your mind you don't ever have to listen to it again, you already know it so well. That's how I felt until I started listening to the record again in preparation for making this mixtape, and let me tell you, it's downright shocking how good this album sounds after all these years, and how vital and fresh it feels even though I know it like the back of my hand. I like to think that The Unforgettable Fire is U2's best work, because that was the first U2 record I really fell in love with and it has such startling insights into the American character, but in the less emotional parts of my brain, I know that The Joshua Tree is their real masterwork. So clean off the cobwebs, pop it in the CD player, and try to forget that you've heard every track hundreds of times. It won't take long for you to remember why you listened to it that much in the first place.

back to top

Track 12
"Hymn to Saint Jude"
All Fools Day
The Saints

There are those who still speak in reverent tones about the Saints' early career, when they were viewed as kind of the Beatles of Australian punk, but I've never really listened to the stuff from that portion of catalogue. In fact, this is really the only Saints record that I love; despite occasionally nuggets of goodness buried on their other releases from their later recordings, they would never even come close to recreating the sustained brilliance of All Fools Day.

"Hymn to Saint Jude" isn't the best song on the record, but it has the best line: "I have done my time on that island/And I'm not going back again." Maybe it's just my southern fondness for aphorisms, but I fell in love with the line the first time I heard it, and I love it just as much today. I've been trying to get it into the popular lexicon for years, with little success, but it gives me joy every time I'm able to work it into a conversation.

Anyway. If you can find it, All Fools Day is a wonderful little record, every bit of it. It's got that timeless quality to it——it could have been released anytime in the past 40 years and sounded like it belonged to that time, and yet there's nothing that sounds quite like it. If I had a choice between a 20-year career filled with mediocre albums or a single shot with one brilliant record, I'd choose the latter as long as the record could be as good as this one.

back to top

Track 13
"Thomas Doubter"
Tiny Days
Scruffy the Cat

I could have chosen practically any song off of Tiny Days for this mixtape, but I chose "Thomas Doubter" mostly because it underscores a major problem in rock today: a stupefying lack of banjo. Not to say that you can't make a great album without a banjo, but let me tell you, adding a banjo can turn a pretty good record into a brilliant one.

Scruffy the Cat's career bears testament this truism: for their first two releases, High Octane Revival and especially Tiny Days, they had a full-time banjo player who added that indefinable extra something to every track, another layer, another texture, something that set the band apart from their peers. But he decided to quit after the Tiny Days tour, so their next record, Moons of Jupiter, was entirely banjo-free. And it wasn't all that good; it was flatter, duller, less interesting. Some might point to the bloated tracklist, the overly-slick production, and the slower pace of the songs, but no: the real problem was the lack of banjo. Had they but had a banjo, the other issues would have resolved themselves. They still put on a hell of a live show, but it just didn't translate that well into studio recordings, and the band broke up shortly after the release of Moons.

The first time I ever heard Scruffy was when hallmates in the room next door started blasting them in the middle of the day, and I instantly fell in love. I'm kidding about the banjo——sort of, because it really does add something special——what really attracted me were the clever, funny lyrics and the simple, direct pop songs enhanced by loud guitars, harmonicas, and, of course, a banjo. "My Baby She's Allright" remains one of the best teen crush songs ever written, "Shadow Boy" is the most charming song about a stalker I've yet heard, and "Upside Down" makes a trivial act (writing someone's name upside-down) sound like a fate worse than disemboweling——but in a humorous way. And that's just the first three songs——they're all keepers, which is miraculous when you consider the songs on Moons of Jupiter, which doesn't have one decent single (don't get me started about their jokey cover of "I Think We're Alone Now", which had been most recently revived in the minds of teens everywhere by Tiffany's cover).

Tiny Days seemed like a blessing, it was so perfect, but Scruffy flamed out pretty quick after that. Too bad, really, because not only did we miss out on more gems like Tiny Days, Tiny Days itself was quickly forgotten by all but those lucky enough to grab it during the few years it was in print. It's a shame that I can't tell you where to buy this now, because even after all these years, it still retains its punch, its joy, its youth.

back to top

Track 14
"No New Tale to Tell"
Earth, Sun, Moon
Love and Rockets

There was a time, however brief, when Love and Rockets occupied a special place in my heart. I fell in love with their second album, Express, whose strange optimism and casual references to non-western spirituality were in perfect harmony with my adolescent mind (although, not yet acquainted with Bauhaus, the band from which Love and Rockets was born, I can understand why fans of the earlier group pledged allegiance to frontman Peter Murphy's baroque darkness and forever swore off the psychedelic sunshine of Daniel Ash and David J). The follow-up to Express, Earth, Sun, Moon, featured a lot of Beatles-esque acoustic guitars, a more polished production, and songwriting that was radio-friendly enough to score the band a minor American hit with the single "No New Tale to Tell", which was quite a feat in the pre-Nirvana days where the bands on college radio and the bands on the top 40 almost never overlapped.

I actually went to see Love and Rockets when they toured behind this record, and that was the first glimpse I got of the future of alternative music. Their opening act was the still-unsigned Jane's Addiction, who blew the headliners off the stage. After an overpowering set by the Janes that left the audience breathless and stunned, Love and Rockets took the stage for a very short set in which they seemed irritable and not-quite-there. Daniel Ash in particular was pretty pissed, sometimes swapping out guitars four or five times in a single song and never seeming any happier with the replacement than he was with the one that came before, and there was a palpable sense that, however high they might be on the charts at the moment, the band knew that this was their high-water mark, and they were desperately trying not to slide back down the ladder. This actually wasn't the high point of their career in America; their next record, the self-titled Love and Rockets, went gold and spawned an even bigger hit single in "So Alive". But still, touring with a band like Jane's Addiction has to do something to highlight your own shortcomings——the audience that came to see Love and Rockets that night certainly came away more impressed with the openers than the main act, and that couldn't have escaped Daniel Ash and company.

I used to really like Earth, Sun, Moon, but over time, it's charms have dimmed and I found myself nearly unable to select a song from it for this mix, simply because I couldn't find one that still meant enough to me to include it here. Really, the only reason the band made this mix is because they were really popular among my peer group (and me, too) back in 1987, and I have a lot of vivid memories of that concert. "No New Tale to Tell" was as good as song to choose as any on here, and it gets an extra boost for being one of the most recognizable tunes from their catalog. I don't know quite what was lost between 1987 and now, but considering how much fondness I still have for most the stuff I was listening to at that point in my life, it's very curious that this one record has little or no emotional effect on me today. But I still love Express.


back to top

Track 15
"Big Decision"
Babble
That Petrol Emotion

That Petrol Emotion never had the time in the sun that they deserved, a fate shared by such contemporaries as House of Freaks, Game Theory, and Julian Cope, among many others. A five-piece with a mostly stable lineup of three Irishmen (two of whom were brothers), one Scot, and an American vocalist with a Scottish last name, they trafficed in politcally-oriented rock back when you could do that sort of thing with a straight face. The harmonics of the band remain unique in my mind, their signature sound defined by interweaving guitar lines that run the gamut from serpentine to angular. The drumming was tough and muscular, and the sinewy guitars added a touch of menace to many of their best tracks.

Babble was the band's first release in the US, although they had released the sometimes-stunning but often hit-and-miss Manic Pop Thrill the year before in their native UK. They would go on to release five albums total before calling it quits in 1994, and all of them still have their charms today. End of the Millenium Psychosis Blues, which was supposed to be their breakthrough record, is the weakest of the bunch, but surprisingly, Fireproof, their swan song, finds the group in top form, and you have to wonder at the timing of their disbanding, especially given the swarms of indie guitar bands that were finding mainstream success at the time.

"Big Decision" was the big single for this record, and it's uncharacteristicly upbeat despite the anti-big business tirades tucked away in the lyrics. I prefer the more agitated sounds of "Swamp", "Split", or "Creeping to the Cross", but there's hardly a weak track on this record, and "Big Decision" wins because of it's A-side status and because it's friendlier pop overtones fit in better with the overall tone of this mix.

For a while there in the early 90s, in the wake of Virgin signing the band, the cutout bins were practically overflowing with copies of Pyschosis Blues and its successor, Chemicrazy (a much more solid album, though unfortunately named, and one with enough hooks that it should have broken them to a larger audience), but you'd be hard pressed to find copies of these records now. The first two albums, including Babble, were reissued in the UK a few years back, so if you're lucky you might be able to dig up a CD version on one of the online sites. It's well worth it to try——the thundering drums, blistering guitars, and politcal rants make That Petrol Emotion the godfathers of bands like Rage Against the Machine, and you can still feel their flames still burning almost 20 years later. It's just a shame they're not around to pour more gasoline on the fire.

back to top

Track 16
"Ahead"
The Ideal Copy
Wire

I'm not going to do any research to back this up, I'm just going to say it: Wire is the most important band to come out of the punk/postpunk era of the mid to late 70s who are still active and recording today. They're on their third life now, exploring new territory initially broached by 2002's Read & Burn EPs (which culminated in the Send full length from 2003). The Ideal Copy, which came just over a decade into the band's existence, ushered in the band's second major phase, which substituted dense, complex sequences of beats and synthesizers for the abstract, mechanical guitarwork that were the group's hallmark up until that point. The guitars on The Ideal Copy, in contrast to their earliest records, are reflective gossamer threads that add the occasional moonlit spiderweb to the labrithine song structures, but do not anchor the songs in the way they did on, say, Pink Flag. The unrelenting teutonic forward-motion is still present, but on The Ideal Copy, it's the bass, drums, and sequencers that create the momentum.

Since I was still but a wee lad when Wire released their seminal early works, The Ideal Copy was my first exposure to the band, and although it was very different from most of what I was listening to at the time, I was instantly hooked: brainy, brawny, unyielding, and frail all at once. Looking back, I have to say that The Ideal Copy changed my view of music in the same way that Radiohead's OK Computer would 10 years later, and I could easily apply the same four descriptors to that album. (A more apt comparison might be Kid A, which found Radiohead pushing the ideas introduced on OK Computer to their extremes, to the point where the guitars almost became secondary. But I digress.)

"Ahead" opens with a grandiose series of four guitar notes repeated twice, and then charges ahead fearlessly with multiple staccato synth and drum tracks that give you the feeling of being on a train that is going dangerously fast. But even as the terrain is whipping past at hundreds of miles an hour, you find yourself calm and relaxed. "Who cares," you ask yourself, "if we're breaking the speed of sound? This machine is working so perfectly that there's no way anything can possibly go wrong."

back to top

Track 17
"Could You Be the One?"
Warehouse: Songs and Stories
Hüsker Dü

Looking back now, with more than a decade's worth of quality work with Sugar and on solo albums, it's easy for us to say that Bob Mould was obviously the creative genius behind Hüsker Dü. Grant Hart, the drummer and other songwriter in this trio, made a couple of post Hüsker records, but nothing that managed to acheive notable critical or commercial success, while Mould went on to become a major force in the alternative rock scene (and by that I mean the real scene, the college kids and record store weirdos scene, not the "alternative" rock that was an overproduced derivative of the grunge craze from the early 90s).

But back in the 80s it wasn't so clear——there were definitely differences in the songwriting, but Mould and Hart complemented each other very well musically, to the point where it was sometimes hard to tell who wrote the song (even though they were pretty faithful to the rule that says you write it, you get to sing it). You didn't spend much time thinking about whether a track was a Mould song or a Hart song——it was a Hüsker Dü song, and that was that.

Warehouse: Songs and Stories turned out to be the swan song for Hüsker Dü, but what a way to go out: a sprawling double-album that is accessible and accomplished without sacrificing the guitar fuzz and percussive assault that they built their early reputation on.

"Could You Be the One?" is kind of a whimsical choice to fill this spot——a fairly straighforward shot of power pop that isn't as representative of the tone of Warehouse in the way that, say, "Standing in the Rain", "It's Not Peculiar", or "No Reservations" (just to name a few) are. If I was really going to be nice, I would have chosen a Grant Hart tune, because this is really his last shot to show up on one of these year mixtapes, while I'm pretty sure that you're going to get many more helpings from Mr. Mould. "Actual Condition" is kind of Hart's complement to "Could You Be the One?"——a raucous little pop song influenced by 50s rockabilly that's decidedly distinct from the other Hart-penned tunes on Warehouse. Hart's best track is proabably "Back from Somewhere", although "You Can Live at Home" is a close second.

But I chose "Could You Be the One?", so that's what you get.

back to top

Track 18
"Happy When It Rains"
Darklands
Jesus and Mary Chain

I remember seeing an interview with William and Jim Reid, the brothers at the heart of the Jesus and Mary Chain, on MTV's now-defunct 120 Minutes. Jim, who did most of the singing, was prattling on in response to a question, when he suddenly realized that William had been silent for entirely too long, so he prompted his brother to add to the conversation. William, who clearly did not enjoy the spotlight as much as Jim, paused for a second, then looked straight into the camera and deadpanned, "I completely agree with everything he just said."

That story is apropos of nothing, it's just another of the many memories I have of sitting in the dorm lounge after midnight on Sunday with my friends from NCSSM, playing cards and watching videos from our favorite bands that no one else had heard of. With Darklands, their sophomore effort, the Jesus and Mary Chain (I refuse to use the now-popular JAMC acronym popularized by a track from Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism) went from being known primarily for the intense washes of feedback and 30 minute shows that left the audience's ears ringing to a legitimate college radio contender who would eventually go on to a reasonable amount of commercial success in the US.

"Happy When It Rains" is the perfect representative from this record, which veers between angst and exuberance, and as someone who first listened to it as an moody teen, it holds a very special place in my heart. The ringing guitars and propulsive beat can remind you of U2's cheerier moments, but it's cut by the revelation in the lyrics that the singer is talking about someone he loved who is no longer part of his life. And it's a mistake to compare these Scots with their world-changing contemporaries in Dublin: even when the Reid brothers are unleashing their biggest hooks and coming as close to actually singing as they ever would, there's still a somber note of quiet, graceful longing that lends a tinge of gloom to even the most upbeat tracks.

But I don't think you need to be a mopey depressive with raging hormones to appreciate the unique charms of this album: even now, nearly 20 years later (good god that's hard to believe) and mostly removed from the moodswings that alternated between sad, angry, and happy, this is an eminently listenable record. And Darklands really is the perfect name for it.

back to top

Track 19
"Just Like Heaven"
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
The Cure

Look, if you're reading this and you don't know who the Cure are, or you've never listened to Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, or you've somehow managed to avoid ever hearing "Just Like Heaven", well, then I just don't get you. This is the song that Robert Smith was born to write, that the Cure were born to play. This is it. This is The Single. Yes, we can all agree that Disintegration, which followed Kiss Me, is the band's masterwork, but this song trumps everything on that disc in the singles category (although "Pictures of You" comes close, or at least it did until it was used in that HP photo campaign last year). There's simply nothing else to say. So why are we still talking?

back to top

Track 20
"Can't Hardly Wait"
Pleased to Meet Me
The Replacements

I didn't experience the Replacements' slow climb to greatness, borne aloft on homemade wings pieced together from Paul Westerberg's sadness, irony, pain, and humor; I arrived just in time to see them reach the pinnacle of their flight, hang in the air for a moment that seemed to last forever, and then plunge with sickening velocity to the ground far below.

Maybe that's a little melodramatic, but man, these guys went from the best band America to one of the worst with a speed unmatched by few other bands in the brief history of rock. I mean, they had Let It Be, Tim, and Pleased to Meet Me right in a row; if entrance into the Hall of Fame was based on something besides name recognition, these three would make them a lock for entry no matter how bad the rest of their catalog might be (and that's a good thing, because, well, some the stuff that came after Pleased to Meet Me is pretty bad).

Pleased to Meet Me was my first Replacements album, and so while I understand that some of their older, hardcore fans see it as a relatively slick record that was a big step down the slippery slope to mediocrity which the band would slide headlong into on their next record, Don't Tell a Soul, it still, in my heart of hearts, my favorite Replacements record. Let It Be and Tim are amazing, and although my brain knows that Let It Be is clearly a better record and you can make a pretty good argument for Tim being better as well, Pleased to Meet Me wins because this was the record that made me fall in love with the band and be motivated to buy their earlier work.

"Can't Hardly Wait" is a solid mid-tempo rocker that, unlike its many cousins on Don't Tell a Soul, fails to suck. This track, along with "Skyway" and "Nightclub Jitters", show how the band could have evolved and explored new musical approaches without abandoning the damaged charm that made them famous. These tracks all cover some new territory for the band, but they don't seem out of place next to more traditional Replacements fare like "I.O.U." and "Red Red Wine". Unfortunately, this would be their last decent album, and really the last of this kind of record made by primary creative force Paul Westerberg, who would go on to issue the odd great single here and there, but who would never again put together an album's worth of solid songs that were faithful to the Replacements' sound or ethos.

back to top

Track 21
"Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
Louder Than Bombs
The Smiths

This track is hard to place chronologically: It was originally included on Hatful of Hollow, a collection of b-sides, singles, and Peel Session tracks released in England in 1984. That record was never formally released in the US, although by the time I became a Smiths fan in 1986, it was pretty easy to get as an import. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" was, in fact, the first song I ever heard by the Smiths by way of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, which I bought because it had tracks from INXS and Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark (this record also had tracks from Echo & the Bunnymen and New Order, and it essentially served as my initiation into the world of college rock). The song's first relase on a Smiths album in the US was on Louder Than Bombs, which contained six new songs and a whole wagonload of tracks that were previously unreleased stateside, including much of the material that had been compiled on Hatful of Hollow. Together with Strangeways, Here We Come, from which I've already pulled a song for this mixtape, Louder Than Bombs was part of a wealth of material that the band released in 1987.

Unfortunately, this would also be the last material they would ever release, aside from a medicore live album that was clearly aimed at picking up a few more dollars from the newly swelling ranks of Smiths fans who had nothing new to purchase. Sure, it wasn't too long before Morrissey was cranking out solo albums, and Johnny Marr would go on to pop up on records with Electronic, The The, and Billy Bragg, but everyone knew from the second they heard about the band's breakup that no one from the Smiths would ever go on to do anything as remotely good as the Smiths.

Snide hipsters like to see "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" as some sort of ironic take on teen longing, but you know, Morrissey could actually be quite sincere when he wanted to be, and I don't think he's being anything but genuine on this little gem. I think you could have made a fine 1987 mixtape using nothing but selections from the copious amount of material released by the Smiths this year, but in this format, the most I could justify working in was two, one from each of the major releases. Savor them now, because the band tragically won't be appearing on any future year mixtapes (although Morrissey will certainly get his due, at least for his first couple of solo releases).

back to top