An Ode To The Mixtape That Got Stuck In The Cassette Deck Of My Mazda 323 in 1998
My Mixtape’s A Masterpiece is a weekly feature in which a guest compiles a playlist around some theme. This week, Jason Robinson assembles 12 songs from a relic of a more civilized time. Read Jason’s thoughts on each song and listen along to the Spotify playlist on top and/or the YouTube playlist at the bottom of the post.
It wasn't your fault, you did your best, but after the 300th rewind to hear the brit pop opener of Side A, something clicked. A vital piece of either you or the tape deck snapped. I could hear it, despite the speakers blasting, despite my friend Joe yelling about my taste in music from the backseat and despite the fact that both front windows were down since the A/C was busted years ago. You stayed locked in the brittle plastic and metal embrace of the cassette deck of that white Mazda 323 for just over a year. Once the car's tiny four cylinder engine started requiring gallons of oil a week to keep moving, it was time for me to move on.
You, on the other hand, had no choice. You were trapped in the car as much as I was. Driving from home to college my first year out of high school, my musical taste moving past what you had to offer, I only listened out of a lack of better options. Sure, I could have turned the radio on, but why bother. 24 years later, with a million other newer songs I could have chosen, I still wind up picking ones that were there, on you, the day that you got stuck. Sorry, old friend.
(Intro) "Kryptonite Condoms" by Jason Lee & Jeremy London (from MALLRATS)
Standard practice for me and my friends was to include a bit of movie dialogue as the intro to a mixtape. The best way to get it, before I figured out a complicated rig involving a TV with a 3.5mm jack, was to find a CD of the soundtrack and take it directly from the best-sounding source. The best dialogue on CD at the time was Kevin Smith movies, since he was keen on jamming it between songs himself.
1. "Delicious" by Sleeper
Once you set up the bit of dialogue, you have to deliver on a big first number and this noisy brit-pop does the trick. For an album that was found in the 25c bin at the Sam Goody at the mall, Sleeper's brittle "Smart" could always be counted on to get peoples' attention. A few years later their second album's big hit "What Do I Do Now?" would get covered by Elvis Costello which gives you an idea of lead songwriter Louise Wener's chops. This song about a girl who wants to "stay in bed and explore our darkest dreams" is way better
2. “Milk And Honey” by Fury In the Slaughterhouse
When you want to impress friends with the breadth of your musical knowledge, it's always advantageous to use a song from a band that's popular outside of your country. Germany's Fury in the Slaughterhouse had been active since 1987, but I didn't know that when my BMG delivery included a mixtape with this tune on it. (BMG was akin to Columbia House, pay pennies and get CDs sent to your home. DVD-era Netflix…but for music.). It's a solid slice of 90s-era rock n roll about things that are a bummer but hey, everything's chill dude. Modest Mouse's song "Float On" would make this same lyrical point years later and be a huge hit.
3. “Fuentes” by Missile Command
Another key to a good mixtape is to include weird one-offs from compilations that are outside of your usual genre. Asian Man Records, which is still in business, had some amazing cheap compilations filled to bursting with gems waiting to be unearthed. One of these was “Fuentes” (“Fountain”) , a song about how the lead singer had back surgery where they inserted rods into his back and how that was a metaphor for being heartbroken ("Now pain and I are at constant odds / Since I became a walking lightening rod"). The version that appears here is from the compilation Misfits Of Ska 2 and it's almost like a demo.
4. “Li'l Boots” by Pet
If you couldn't find anything on a decently-priced punk/ska compilation, you could always fall back on movie soundtracks. They usually had a few greats—sometimes even songs you couldn't find anywhere else. In the case of this soundtrack it was THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS. A live Iggy Pop tune, Bush covering Joy Division, Hole covering Fleetwood Mac, Tricky remixing Gravediggaz, an unreleased Toadies song and this, a fiery loud-quiet-loud jam from a band who I had never heard before. Pet would release one album (which was executive produced by Tori Amos) and quietly disappear. Thankfully lead singer Lisa Papineau has continued putting out music with Big Sir.
5. “Can't Find It” by Smoking Popes
If you had the patience, bargain bin hunting could really pay off. For the price of a single by a major label band you could find a full album hand-recorded by a band you could worship forever. Chicago-based Caterer brothers along with Mike Felumlee on drums make up this early version of Smoking Popes and this song, along with pretty much the entire record "Get Fired", are the reason why people still see them live. The thrill of hearing "Let's Hear It For Love" for the first time is a high I would later spend hours chasing. "Can't Find It" would re-appear on Smoking Popes' masterpiece Destination: Failure but with a slowed-down tempo and an alt-country guitar solo, making it the far inferior version of the tune.
6. “Whip” by Fred Schneider
At the time, I really only knew The B-52s as the band that does "Love Shack" and didn't take it seriously when I saw their singer Fred Schneider's second solo album Just Fred was coming out. A year or so later a copy found its way into my hands and it really blew me away. Somehow fun, funny Fred had morphed into a seriously good rock star, even though his voice was pretty much the same.
Backed by a supergroup of punk/surf bands called Deadly Cupcake, Fred rips and roars on the record and "Whip" is an essential part of it.
7. “Sophomore Jinx” by Self
One of pop and rock's greatest unheard bands, Self found its way to me via the Sam Goody bargain bin and they've been in rotation ever since. A two-man band of Matt and Mike Mahaffey, Self is endlessly endearing for their DIY ethos which included forming their own label and creating their own samples to then use in future songs. This record is full of experiments, bouncing from style to style and fretting over the future. A perfect example here in "Sophomore Jinx" a song about the music industry chewing up and spitting out artists like himself. And the line about "being over my sophomore jinx" is prophetic since the second Self record, Breakfast With Girls, would be a bigger hit from the label's perspective than this one.
8. “Circus Envy” by REM
REM had always had a reputation as being soft boys after "Losing My Religion" which was simply not true if you listened to their back catalog. Their 1994 album Monster seemed to put any of that to bed, given that it's a noisy raw record full of snarling guitars and some of their best lyrics. Every track is great, but my favorite is the sneering "Circus Envy" which is built on layers of noise and a single pulsing riff that gives way to some classic REM sound on the chorus only to drop right back into a ‘70s arena rock groove. They never sounded more raw and haven't since, which is a shame.
9. “Kid Klone” by crumb
Some albums in the bargain bin you buy just for the title alone. Romance Is A Slow Dance is a solid record full to the brim of interesting takes on the emo/punk genre and really worth a listen for lead singer Robby Cronholm, whose talents are myriad. Robby can be heard in his most recent group Taxes which takes his pessimistic themes and emo style to their logical ends. Sadly it looks like they're not active anymore either.
10. “XXXMas Song” by Vinnie & The Stardusters
I grew up on Dr. Demento, my hometown kids’ radio station WFUN was always playing Barnes & Barnes' "Fish Heads," and Weird Al is my hero. Funny music is always going to be something I'm drawn to and Minnesota oddballs Vinnie & The Stardusters really went for it with their album Casual Music For Novelty Sex which includes this final track, a perverted holiday rewrite of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Elsewhere on this intensely goofy album they re-write Katrina and the Waves' unrelenting positive jam "Walking on Sunshine" and make it about self-harm; they take every song with the word "house" in the title and mash them together; take a weird turn messing with The Cranberries' tender drama of "Ode to my Family" and make it about being forced by your parents to have sex with a pig. Fun fact: Eric Dregni, guitarist and vocalist for the band, is a professor at Concordia in St. Paul, MN and has written travel books Never Trust A Thin Cook And Other Lessons From Italy’s Culinary Capital and In Cod We Trust: Living The Norwegian Dream as well as co-authoring not one but two different books on scooters and scooter maintenance.
11. “I Walked” by Wanderlust
Philadelphia is blessed with a lot of talented people, but Scot Sax is still somehow not a household name. Wanderlust was a victim of their own success, having been signed almost immediately to RCA, they released Prize and snagged a slot opening for The Who. And yet, for as-yet-unknown reasons, RCA dropped them, their second record never came out, and everyone went their separate ways. This song from that album is a longtime favorite and it's easy to see why as it's pretty much the distillation of what power pop was doing at the time and the chorus is straight out of an unreleased Squeeze tune.
12. “Bitter Boy” by Truck Stop Love
Shoutout to Manhattan, Kansas for producing some great rock records—several from Ultimate Fakebook and this one from the more Southern Rock-leaning Truck Stop Love. In fact, UFB drummer "Mean" Eric Melin plays on several tracks here, including this track which is a nice time capsule of their whole appeal, down to the sandpaper vocals and gritty guitars. Eric would later become, in no particular order : a TED talk presenter, film critic, alt-weekly columnist, creative director at an ad agency and 2013's Air Guitar World Champion.
