MIX TAPES FROM THE PAST, #1
April 2002

I totally stole this idea from Pitchfork, but I'm sure they stole it from someone else, so quid pro quo, id est (that's Spanish for "I am a badass.").

The theme of this tape, if I remember correctly, is spring, hence the month of its conception. I tend to overnostalgize the seasons, and usually have at least one mix for each one, usually two or more. For example, this year I've had a late summer mix, an early autumn mix, an autumn mix, and I have just begun compiling songs for my early winter mix. I will not actually dedicate it to recordable media until at least the first of November; this is not unlike my yearly ritual of waiting until at least All Saints' Day to put flannel sheets on my bed.

Anyone disgusted yet?

So, since we are on the opposite side of the equinoctial gyrosope from the aforementioned season (spring, if you're still with me), it should be interesting to see what songs I consider springlike. (I wish I could have dug up an older mix tape, but I'd have to go back to Grinnell for that. This is all I could find, especially since, with the recent installation of a CD player in my car, I have foolishly disposed of most of my cassettes. It is definitely the end of an era.)

1. Cornershop: "Sleep On The Left Side" ... I discovered Cornershop in the spring of 1998 when I bought When I Was Born For The Seventh Time used and immediately fell in love. (I'd been hesitant about Cornershop because I'd heard "Brimful Of Asha" on the radio and I must admit, removed from the album and decontextualized as it was, it annoyed the hell out of me. I mean, it is only three chords. Within the context the of the album, of course, it's lovely.) This song is perfect for spring: the lyrics make no sense, but they are hopeful nonetheless: "Sleep on the left side, keep the sword hand free/whatever's gonna be is gonna be." Last spring, Neil discovered the song and fell in love accordingly, and ever since, this song has been a nice reminder of my far-off friend in California. Here's a shout out to Neil, and to everyone in London who's rapping in Punjab.

2. The Sea & Cake: "All The Photos" ... I love the sprightly cadence of this song. That's right, sprightly. I love the organ on the bridge�I'm not sure what it is; maybe some kind of Hammond�and I've stolen the drum part from that section many times over. And of course the chorus�or let's just call it the third section�is such a great payoff. I love Sam Prekop's onomatopoeic vocal part here. Perfect sunny driving music. (But then, that's the case with nearly every song on this mix.) I am a geek.

3. Underworld: "Jumbo" ... Sadly, this is the radio edit, so it doesn't have the American fishermen at the beginning talking about the great deals they got on fishing vests down at Wal-Mart. It does, however, have just about everything else that's wonderful about this song and Underworld in general. This might just be the most unabashedly romantic song the group has ever written. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it. My favorite moment is the majestic synth washes after the second verse, but it's all good. "Random mornings I spoke to you/beneath the feet of the city/you disconnect from me/when you come to take your sanctuary ... " Or at least, I think those are the lyrics.

4. David Byrne: "UB Jesus" ... I may be committing heresy by saying this, but I found Look Into The Eyeball to be a bit underwhelming after 1997's Feelings. But based on most of the reviews I've read, the rest of the world feels exactly the opposite way. So let's move on. This is a great lead-off track, in any case, and it really rocks, which is not something David Byrne does that often. Another great driving song. (It's a bit strange to be listening to these songs, which evoke sunny expansive springtime afternoons, when it's fifty degrees and rainy outside. Contrasts, I guess.)

5. Eels: "Fresh Feeling" ... This song, and the other Eels song on the flipside, are just on here because I had just bought Souljacker and wanted to get some of it onto a mix. They're both pretty good spring songs, though.

6. Neil Finn: "Rest Of The Day Off" ... God, this song kills me softly every time. I bought the UK release of this album, One Nil, while I was over there in March. Then they released it over here with two different tracks and a new title, One All. I guess they figured Americans wouldn't know what "nil" meant. Anyhoo, the synth guitar throughout this song is such a coup de grace, it barely needs mentioning. My heart swells at 1'23" when it goes back into the verse. The bassline there is sublime. (God, could I be more effusive about a goddamn pop song? I am such a geek.) While I was in London and listening to this album nonstop, the weather was unseasonably warm and sunny�extremely atypical for England in March. And I had no obligations, no expenses; just got drunk every night with my parents and my aunt and uncle. Rest of the fucking day off, indeed.

7. Jason Falkner: "Holiday" ... More of a summer song than anything else. I think good old Jason "I Can Play Every Instrument Ever Conceived By Man With Virtuosic Prowess, And By The Way My Songcraft Is Exemplary" Falkner just wanted to write a song you could blast on the way to the beach, as if David Lee Roth had traveled forward in time from 1984 to 1999, picked up the members of Jellyfish on the way, and dialed down the Vegas just a bit. Or not. It's hard to picture Jason Falkner, with his Mark Paulson hair and fashion sense, in a convertible with a surfboard in the back.

8. Saint Etienne: "Erica America" ... Sometimes I think StE exists solely so we'll have something to listen to as we drive around the city in the autumn rain (which I did just tonight, when I put the brand-spanking-new Finisterre in my car stereo). 1998's Good Humor, which I got a Japanese import of in May of that year, is an exception. Great, great spring album. Also their first on Sub Pop (I na�vely like to think that's why they decided to use the American spelling of "humor"), and a definite stylistic departure. A lot more live instruments. Many music geeks consider this to be their most cohesive and therefore finest album. I can see their point, but picking a favorite Saint Etienne album is like picking which one of your fingers you'd chop off, if forced to make such a strange decision, and then chopping off all of your fingers except one, and then realizing the remaining one was never good for much in the first place, never even close to your favorite, not even in the top three, not even on your dominant hand, and then as if that's not enough, the government issues a new ordinance stating that you have to kill one of your children because the world is overcrowded, but it's such a tough decision to make because you hate them all equally, and it's hard to kill children with nine fingers missing, and you just want to get drunk, or stoned, or both, and that's a tough decision too. Life is full of tough decisions.

I'm actually surprised that "Goodnight Jack," from the same album, is not on this mix. It's by far my favorite on Good Humor, and one of my top ten StE moments. A couple years ago, I was so enraptured with the song that I wrote an email to my brother about it:

9. Yo La Tengo: "Our Way To Fall" ... This is such a desperately sad song, I'm not sure why it's on here. Which is not to say sadness is forbidden in the spring. Ohhhhh no no. "April is the cruelest month," after all. I guess this song's on here because this album came out in the spring, so I have associations. It's good music for pining over the girlfriend that got away, or the drummer you married and started an alternative rock trio with in New Jersey in the early 80s.

10. Burning Airlines: "Everything Here Is New" ... This song just simply rocks. I think it's impossible for anything with J Robbins' name on it not to rock, even if he is like sixty years old. Unfortunately, the band folded earlier this year (like Jawbox before it), along with the De Soto label, which makes me think that maybe the Plan better hustle their way onto another label before the curse gets them, too.

11. King Crimson: "Walking On Air" ... I refuse to apologize for my King Crimson fetish, for which there's an epic backstory I will not tell here. Suffice it to say that KC has a lot to do with why I play drums and why I play them the way I do. And they rock. Hard. This song, however, is actually a ballad, and a quite lovely one at that. From 1995's THRAK, which has erroneously been described by some critics as a reunion album recorded by prog rock dinosaurs, except that it's actually good.

And here the tape stops, not because it's the end of a side, but because audio cassettes are an endearingly imperfect technology, and the tape appears tangled or crinkled by the capstan. Cassettes may represent the nadir of recorded media, sandwiched between the "superior fidelity" of vinyl and CDs, but anyone my age will always have a nostalgic affinity for them the way our parents did for LPs. As for the youngsters out there already developing a nostalgic affinity for CDs, I can only say "Bah, humbug. Why, back in my day, we didn't have fancy silver shiny discs ... " Anyway, I think that song was the last, or almost the last, on that side.

So, we continue with Side B:

12. Genesis: "Me & Sarah Jane" ... Ah, yes. If King Crimson figured prominently into the maturation of my drumming skills, then Genesis started the whole mess in the first place. In 1986, armed with a pair of headphones and a cassette copy of Invisible Touch, I began taking private lessons with Phil Collins every day for the next eight years (yes, even when he was filming Buster!) I can't think of a better drummer to emulate if one wants to develop solid pop drumming chops. And early Genesis, of course, will school any aspiring "prog" drummer who's frightened by Neil Peart. I played along with it all in my basement throughout all of middle school and most of high school. My parents deserve a trophy of some kind for putting up with that racket. ... Anyway, drumming aside, this song is a wonderfully orchestrated pop song, though it doesn't really do it justice to call it a pop song, since it is six minutes long and consists of nearly a dozen non-repeating sections. It all fits together quite naturally, however. I remember I always used to tell Sarah Burk I was going to make her a mix tape with this song on it, since her middle name is Jane. I never got around to it, and then she moved to New Jersey. But who knows, maybe someday.

13. Orbital: "Illuminate" ... Here's an interesting choice. This song is from The Altogether, which everyone more or less agrees is their weakest album. And I avoided this particular track for a long time, if only because it features guest vocals from �berbland popmeister David Gray. But then I gave it a chance, and lo and behold, it kind of works. It's a pretty majestic pop song (I find it sounds best when driving home from a long night at work), and bridges the gap between techno and pop as effectively as any other attempts out there, which is what the brothers Hartnoll have been constantly trying to do since their beginnings in techno's embryonic late-80s.

14. King Of Convenience: "I Don't Know What I Can Save You From" ... I'll say right off the bat that the album from which this track is taken, 2001's Quiet Is The New Loud, is a great autumn album as well. Fuck, it's a great album by any means. What a perfect package, right down to the cover photo and the title, which has got to be one of my top five favorite album titles ever. To think this all the brainchild of a couple Norwegian nerds doing a Simon & Garfunkel impression. The lead guitar line towards the end, around 3'30", is heartbreaking. There.

15. Eels: "Woman Driving/Man Sleeping" ... The other track from Souljacker. I never really got into this album as a complete package, the way I did with Daises Of The Galaxy and especially Electroshock Blues (a concept album about death that works! Amazing!). Maybe I haven't given it enough of a chance yet. Anyway, this is a spare, elegant song, and the lyrics create a deceptively simple tableau. A good song for driving ... at night, maybe.

16. U2: "Playboy Mansion" ... Pop and Zooropa are constantly doing battle for the title of Most Underrated U2 Album. (Meanwhile, I think All That You Can't Leave Behind pretty much has an undisputed lock on Most Overrated ... ) Yes, this album is uneven, and yes, even U2 was not immune to 1997's Year Of A Thousand Ill-Advised Techno Crossovers, but there are some great moments here. I'll go out on a limb and say that "Miami" and "If You Wear That Velvet Dress", which bookend the song in question, are two of the most successfully realized U2 songs ever. I'm not sure why I put this song on instead, except that maybe it best captures the bittersweet excess and renewal of spring. (Did I really just say that?)

17. Death Cab For Cutie: "Lowell MA" ... This is yet another song chosen for this mix because 1) it rocks, and 2) it's a great driving song. I still have no idea if it has anything to do with Kerouac, seeing as how it's named after his hometown. But does it really matter? I've always told Dino that if Racecar Radar covers a Death Cab song, it should be "405", and then he says, "Dude, don't you want to do a song with drums, seeing as how you're a drummer? Dude?" and I say fine, if we have to do one with drums, it can be this one. There was a time when RR was going to be Death Cab for Halloween and play a whole set of their songs, but then we remembered that we have jobs and girlfriends and about 326 other bands we're in between the four of us, and we never really got around to it.

18. Neil Finn: "Dream Date" ... Every song on Try Whistling This is so good, I picked this one nearly at random. In fact, if my Spring 2002 had a soundtrack, it was that album. What a great fucking songwriter. Underrated, that's for sure. But I guess that's how we prefer our musical geniuses.

19. Jim O'Rourke: "Ghost Ship In A Storm" ... This man is among the best at draping sinister sentiments in bright, lush arrangements. No one's better at telling you to fuck off over the top of an elaborate orchestral arrangement or cornet flourish. In this case, the song's jaunty cadence and the pedal steel near the end of the song drives it home for me. "Fuck off, and get out of my way while I ride into the sunset."

20. The Dismemberment Plan: "Back & Forth" ... Ah, we're on the downslope now: You know how, when you're making a mix, there are so many great "closing" songs that you just end up piling them up at the end of the tape/CD, and so many good "leading" songs that you pile them up at the other end, so that the mix has an unofficial "intro" of maybe twenty minutes, with another twenty for the finale? Well, this song marks the beginning of the end of this particular mix. If I wasn't such a fan of variety, I would just say fuck it and make it the last song on every mix I ever make for the rest of my goddamn life. As it is, it's a tremendously sentimental song disguised in a trademark Plan jam. It might as well be the official song of every graduating class at Alternative Rock High School. It says: we're all going to die, and if you're truly fortunate you'll make so many friends in your lifetime that you'll never be able to stay in touch with every last one of them, and some if not most of them will probably die before you ever get to have that one meaningful conversation or send them that one consummate letter you keep meaning to send them. So just bear with it. That's life. "And sometimes that music drifts through my car on a spring night when anything is possible, and I close my eyes and I nod my head and I wonder you've been and I count to a hundred and ten, 'cause you'll always be my hero, even if I never see you again." There are times when, honest to god, that line makes me cry. Because I have friends like that. What keeps us from connecting with everyone we love? It's got to be more than geography or the price of long distance.

One of the best things about this mix is that I timed the ending perfectly, so that the spool clicks to a top right after the abrupt ending of "Back & Forth." That's rare. Usually I have, as I said earlier, about three "last songs" which create a false sensation of finality. This one worked out pretty well, though.

In closing, I am a self-indulgent geek. Go to bed. Get some sleep.

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Back & Forth