For those of you who were anxiously awaiting the conclusion of my latest Adventures In Dating story, you’re going to have to wait a few hours longer. I would be drawn and quartered by a segment of the Swan Fungus readership if I were to skip a Sunday Mix Tape. Tomorrow night I will conclude the story.
And now…a mix tape.
RULES for uninitiated noobs: I give birth to a weekly Mix Tape to be deposited on your iPods or Zunes or Kingklangs or whatever the industry is currently pushing on you. Sometimes there will be themes that link all the songs together, other times I’ll just throw songs at a wall (not literally) and see what sticks. The theme this week is, “Shit I listened to in high school.” Basically, it’s an excuse for me to write all kinds of little vignettes about the stuff I listened to when I was a teenager growing up in Jersey.. The goal of this endeavor, as always, is to pique your interest in these artists so you’ll support the artists and buy their albums.
Sunday Mix Tape – Number 191
The High School Experience
01. Tsar – Calling All Destroyers – As a pimply faced 17-year old nerd, I took a summer road trip to follow Weezer up and down the east coast to celebrate their first tour in years. And in Washington DC I met these two kids named…Jason and….I don’t remember the other guy’s name. I didn’t know anyone in DC and had nothing to do all day, so I just went to the 9:30 club first thing in the morning and hung out there all day. Those two kids were there all day with me. We became fast friends, and spent most of the day talking about music. One of the bands I was told to check out upon returning to Jersey was Tsar. Total power pop goodness. I bought their self-titled CD and really only liked two songs on it. But one of the two songs was this one. And I would listen to it on repeat. A lot. There’s no denying it’s a catchy song, but I probably wouldn’t be caught dead listening to it now. (Buy from Amazon.com)
02. Jellyfish – That Is Why – The album Bellybutton came out when I was, like, seven years old. I can’t say I was into it at the time. It’d be an obvious lie. But it was hard to be into bands like Superdrag, Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, Lemonheads and Nerf Herder without eventually stumbling onto Jellyfish. And that’s exactly what happened. I would read interviews online and someone, somewhere name-checked Jellyfish. I heard Spilt Milk first, but Bellybutton was what sold me on the band. I still listen to it with some frequency. It’s a fucking amazing album. (Buy from Amazon.com)
03. Nick Cave – Stagger Lee – I don’t know if being a senior in high school counts for being “late” to the works of Nick Cave, but you have to remember the world was a much different place back in 2000-2001. The Internet was totally different. There wasn’t social networking. Nobody read Pitchfork. I mean, I did, but I’m not proud of it. I credit my college-aged friends with turning me onto most of the music that I discovered later in high school. The first Nick Cave album I heard wasn’t Tender Prey, Let Love In or what was at the time his most recent album, The Boatman’s Call. It was Murder Ballads. And the first song on the record I fell in love with wasn’t “Henry Lee” or “Where The Wild Roses Grow,” it was actually Cave’s rendition of the traditional blues/folk tune “Stagger Lee.” Go figure. (Buy from Amazon.com)
04. Pulp – Mis-Shapes – Brit-Pop dominated my musical tastes for most of my high school career. I’ve recounted before the times I saw Blur and Oasis in concert, my trip to London that was most memorable for my purchasing countless pieces of Brit Pop memorabilia, and the huge debt I owe to the Scottish camp counselor who turned me onto all the bands I came to love, including Radiohead, even before that silly OK Computer was released! Pulp was never my favorite band, but I respected them immensely. Supergrass was another band whose albums I owned but didn’t love. Ash…Ash was the band that combined my power-pop/geek-pop sensibilities with my belief that the best music of the ’90s was produced in the UK. So, uh…here’s a Pulp song I really liked! (Buy from Amazon.com)
05. Mary Timony – Poison Moon – I used to fool around with this girl who was a year younger than me in high school. She was really into me, but she ran with a weird crowd so I didn’t like seeing her outside of the times I’d let her blow me in the woods behind the high school or when her parents were taking weekend trips. Anyway, she had kind of a “riot girl” thing going, plus she really only liked bands fronted by women. She turned me onto Mary Timony and Helium. I think she learned about all those bands from her older brother, because her CD collection as a sophomore or junior in high school was more like that of a late ’90s college graduate. Mary Timony became one of the only musican crushes I’ve ever had. I’m not normally attracted to chicks in bands. Mountains is a phenomenal album, the cover photo kinda made her look like the girl I was fooling around with, and “Poison Moon” is a great tune. (Buy from Amazon.com)
06. Ryan Adams – My Winding Wheel – One of the annoying, mousy Jewish girls in my group of friends told me about Ryan Adams during our last year of high school. She’d heard about him from her older brother. I really liked Heartbreaker for a few years, and then when my tastes began to vary and expand I realized that Ryan Adams not only kind of sucked, but for every song of his I liked I could listen to ten other albums and hear better variations of the same songs. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, I could have just listened to The Basement Tapes, or Grievous Angel. I just didn’t know any better. (Buy from Amazon.com)
07. Hum – Why I Like The Robbins – One of the only things years of dedicated Smashing Pumpkins fandom rewarded me with was Hum. I found this album in ’98 and it’s still one of my favorite records of that decade. It’s just so good! And this is my favorite song on the album. The songs are all great, the recording techniques are incredible, and I remember watching them play live on Howard Stern’s E! show, which (for me at the time) was the coolest thing ever. Dig it. (Buy from Amazon.com)
08. Joy Division – The Kill – What kind of high school experience would I have had if someone didn’t tell me about Joy Division? I was lucky that — since I didn’t have a sibling old enough to school me in good music — my friends had older siblings. I’ve never been a huge Joy Division fan. I didn’t go through a phase when I thought of them as one of the greatest or most important bands in the world. I’ve never had that feeling like, “I’m not listening to enough Joy Division!” I just kind of respect the music and don’t hate it if it comes on. I think I liked it more in high school and during my first couple years of college. (Buy from Amazon.com)
09. Fountains Of Wayne – Denise – Opened for the Smashing Pumpkins during that ’96 tour! Thanks for the introduction. My first band, the Ian Weinberger Trio, was comprised of four kids who basically just liked Weezer, Fountains of Wayne and Radiohead. Most of our practices included running through songs off Utopia Parkway and the band’s self-titled album. Plus, FoW were from Jersey, and we loved them even more for it. “Denise” was one of my favorite songs of theirs to play. That or “Sink To The Bottom.” I just listened to this album for the first time in years, and I smiled during “Denise,” so I chose it to be included in this mix. (Buy from Amazon.com)
10. De La Soul – Magic Number – Another overnight camp discovery. None of my friends in New Jersey growing up listened to hip hop. Only my camp friends and counselors did. I first heard 3 Feet High And Rising when I was between fourth and fifth grade. A counselor named Josh used to play it in our bunk, and I wanted more than anything to earn my elders’ respect, so I learned to love whatever they introduced to me. This one actually stuck with me for many years, and was one of the five or ten hip hop albums I listened to when I was in high school. No, I never went through a phase with hip hop like I did with Brit Pop. I was never obsessed with anything. Well…maybe one thing…(keep reading) (Buy from Amazon.com)
11. Leadbelly – You Don’t Know My Mind – You couldn’t be a Nirvana fan without eventually stumbling onto the recorded output of Huddie William Ledbetter. We all heard or saw that infamous cover of “In The Pines” (or “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” if that’s how you want to know it) on MTV Unplugged. But I didn’t actually buy my first Leadbelly CD until my senior year of high school. It was called King Of The 12-String Guitar. That was my first real introduction to the blues. Now I might even go so far as to call myself a blues aficionado. Well, maybe country blues. (Buy from Amazon.com)
12. Soul Asylum – Just Plain Evil – If you didn’t listen to Soul Asylum growing up in the ’90s…I don’t know, you probably…hung yourself in your garage or something. I know Clam Dip…came out almost ten years before I got to high school, but I liked it when I was 16! It took another five or six years for me to realize that the artwork ripped off Herb Alpert. What rock ‘n’ roll high schooler doesn’t love huge riffs? A loser, that’s who. This EP begins with one of the band’s greatest riffs. How could you not love this? (Buy from Amazon.com)
13. Black Star – Definition – Now THIS was a hip hop album I was pretty much obsessed with. It came out in ’99, and I remember that summer at camp my bunkmates and I listened to it multiple times every day. The second (and last) hip hop concert I saw was right after high school graduation, I saw Black Star at a club in New York with the girl whose brother introduced us to Ryan Adams, and my high school girlfriend. We were the only three white kids in the venue. It was ridiculous. I hated the show. I appreciated the talent, but it was a fucking shit show. No one showed up on time, each song they performed lasted about 30 seconds, and the cops showed up at one point because I think someone in the crowd pulled out a gun. I don’t remember exactly, I was probably high at the time, but I think they ended the show early because of it. For at least a full year, getting high with my friends was given the cod name, “Hooking Up With Mos Def and Talib Kweli.” (Buy from Amazon.com)
14. Jeff Buckley – Dream Brother – Another one I learned about as a sophomore or junior from my older, wiser friends. Jeff Buckley was for nearly a decade my musical hero. I think that says enough about how much I loved — and still love — his music. Hopefully I won’t get sued for sharing this song, I hear his mom can be a little bit unreasonable when it comes to shit like this. (Buy from Amazon.com)
