CMJ Anniversary Compilation Part IV
1989

I’ve previously included a mix tape constructed by someone other than me in this nostalgic exercise, but this time is a little different. In some respects, this isn’t a “mix tape” at all.

Some explanation: In 1989, during my first year at the college radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the venerable trade journal focusing on the left end of the dial celebrated its twentieth anniversary. I can’t remember if the official name connected to the weekly New Music Report was College Media Journal or College Music Journal at the time. It’s probably irrelevant because it was always just CMJ to us. Back before “Pitchfork” and a thousand bloggers we’re keeping music fans abreast of developments on a minute-by-minute basis, CMJ was like a treasure map freshly redrawn every seven days (or so; the delivery schedule was as unpredictable as Iggy Pop on an amphetamine bender).

The anniversary couldn’t have arrived at a better time for me, still floundering around the shelves of obscure vinyl wonders, desperately perplexed after mistakenly studying the canon of great music as defined by the already antiquated tastes of Rolling Stone. During the summer, CMJ sent subscribing stations an amazing combination: a handsome trade paperback commemorating their two decades with troves of tightly written capsule reviews of the most important and memorable albums and songs released during the publications life, and an accompanying four CD set featuring many of the seminal songs. Needing the schooling, I took the discs into the production studio and made copies onto cassette (there was no means of burning them to CD-Rs or dumping them into computers, young people).

Within a few weeks, the CDs and the book were stolen from the radio station after I foolish left them out where they could be accessed by station personnel more dedicated to supplementing their own collections that preserving station property. Most of the songs of the CDs have made their way into my library in other formats, so the collection would be simply nostalgic for me now.

I’d love to read that book again, though.

SIDE ONE
FISHBONE, “Party at Ground Zero”
CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN, “Take the Skinheads Bowling”
LIL’ ED & THE BLUES IMPERIALS, “Pride & Joy”
BUTTHOLE SURFERS, “Moving to Florida”
This is one of the artists that existed in a netherworld of idle discussion completely disassociated from actual heard music before I on the discs that fed this mix. It was a dirty name that had enough recognition to earn some back hallway giggles amongst my friends and me in high school. We had no idea what they sounded like, but probably imagined it was akin to the sound of static on the radio in Hades.
JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, “Just Like Honey”
SONIC YOUTH, “Death Valley ’69”
…speaking of static on the radio in Hades…
LIVING COLOUR, “Cult of Personality”
METALLICA, “Battery”
SUGARCUBES, “Birthday”
This band was holding mighty sway on the world of college radio when I arrived in it. I, with a kneejerk skepticism of anything that could described with the term otherworldly, took some time to warm to it. It probably didn’t help that the albums which followed Life’s Too Good were, frankly, not very good. Eventually I came to see the thrilling ingenuity of this work, but it took longer than I’d care to admit.
THE CULT, “She Sells Sanctuary”

SIDE TWO
INXS, “What You Need”
LOVE AND ROCKETS, “No New Tale To Tell”
MIDNIGHT OIL, “Put Down That Weapon”
For awhile, Midnight Oil was the obscure band of the moment. Their album Diesel and Dust was championed in multiple quarters and MTV offered them saturation airplay, at least for one of their songs. It was significant just being introduced to the notion that another song was worth being singled out as the sole addition to a compilation aspiring to being definitive.
SINEAD O’CONNOR, “I Want Your Hands On Me”
THE CHURCH, “Tantalized”
10,000 MANIACS, “Don’t Talk”
This is the only song on this tape that I owned before packing up for college. My gradual development from someone who coveted the Eric Clapton box set to a devoted assembler of the entire Replacements discography included a few dalliances with the safer residents of the 120 Minutes nation. No matter what anyone says, In My Tribe is still a great record.
PIXIES, “Gigantic”
THE GODFATHERS, “This Damn Nation”
It’s often amusing to take stock of a collection like this several years after it was issued. There’s a tendency to include some of the bands of the moment, those performers who might be anticipated to become the pivotal artists of their era. I suspect if CMJ assembled a collection from their first twenty years now that the Godfathers would be entirely absent from the track list.
STEVE EARLE, “Someday”
DINOSAUR JR., “Freak Scene”
PUBLIC ENEMY, “Don’t Believe the Hype”
This three-song sequence represents something that I loved about college radio at the time, something that was almost revelatory to me. There was something stirring about going from a fierce song with a distinct country twang to a molasses-thick guitar rocker to a rap manifesto that sounded like the first guncrack of the new revolation, the trio unified by only one characteristic: they’re damn good. The treatise of what radio could be was contained into the pauses between the songs, the anticipation that anything could be coming next.