…where you used to play pinball
2005

This tape was made as a part of the flurry of mix activity that preceded a road trip to Athens, Georgia. Selections from this batch of cassettes have made prior appearances as part of this process of purging.

This particular tape was purely an exercise in nostalgia. I thought back to my days as an impressionable student at 90FM and tried to come up with some of the artists and songs, in roughly chronological order, that I connected with most dramatically at that time. Basically, I’d been concentrating so much on discovering new music at that point that I wanted to a couple of sides that let me revel in the “old.”

The photo on the cover accompanied an online article I found while conducting a Google Image Search. The water stain is not some attempt at artsy cover design. Instead, it’s merely evidence that I’m a messy boy.

SIDE ONE
GRAHAM PARKER, “Back in Time”
This is the one little cheat on the mix tape since the album that’s home to this song, The Mona Lisa’s Sister came out before I ever set foot on that college campus. It was close though, and the song’s theme of nostalgic longing for the simpler days of youth (and the futility of indulging in that longing) seemed the appropriate beginning.
LOU REED, “There Is No Time”
VIOLENT FEMMES, “Nightmares”
FROGS, “Smile”
In terms of the music chronology, the tape really begins with my time serving as Assistant Program Director at the station. I started merely volunteering in the role during our winter break. When we went upstairs to the Communication Department office to retrieve the stack of mail that had accumulated, there was a wondrous bounty of splendid releases, including 3, the “comeback” album for Violent Femmes, and New York, arguably the last really brilliant Lou Reed solo album. The Frogs song came from a self-titled album from that notoriously oddball band that was amidst of pile of older records we culled from the music cabinet. While almost ever other Frogs release kind of scares me, that album was a constant presence on my personal turntable through that spring.
ROBYN HITCHCOCK ‘N’ THE EGYPTIANS, “Wax Doll”
XTC, “Mayor of Simpleton”
ELVIS COSTELLO, “This Town”
THE REPLACEMENTS, “Talent Show”
TOO MUCH JOY, “Clowns”
I recently wrote about the powerful hold Too Much Joy had over us at the station. This is from the album that started that collective swoon, Son of Sam I Am. This song is a perfect example of why we identified with them so fully, the lyrics explaining how every authority figure could be defined as a clown (“A clown was my boss at every job I ever had/Clowns run all the record companies that ever said we’re bad”).
GUADALCANAL DIARY, “Always Saturday”
This was off of an album, Flip-Flop, that strangely took an awfully long time to arrive at the station. We didn’t get it upon its initial release and had to request it repeatedly before it arrived. This happened to us with some regularity with the smaller labels, but this was on Elektra. In a way, it wound up working out fine since its insertion into our rotation closer to summer suited the single “Always Saturday” just fine.
LOVE AND ROCKETS, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Babylon”
HOODOO GURUS, “Come Anytime”
BOB MOULD, “Sinners and Their Repentances”
Here I believe I was just trying to include a Bob Mould selection from Workbook that I hadn’t already put onto countless mix tapes.
POGUES, “Boat Train”
JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, “Blues From a Gun”
PRIMITIVES, “Secrets”

SIDE TWO
PUBLIC ENEMY, “Welcome to the Terrordome”
A fairly atypical song for me to include on a mix, but this song did provide the moniker for the house I lived in (with several other 90FM staffers) for one year. We had a band crash with us after a show they played and they were completely perplexed about the derivation of the nickname. They kept looking for the dome, which our crumbly, decrepit house certainly did not have.
MICHELLE SHOCKED, “On the Greener Side”
SINEAD O’CONNOR, “Nothing Compares 2 U”
Honestly, despite the sheer amount it was played, I don’t think I ever got sick of this song. It remains a stunning vocal performance.
CONCRETE BLONDE, “Joey”
SONIC YOUTH, “Mary-Christ”
SOUP DRAGONS, “I’m Free”
KITCHENS OF DISTINCTION, “Drive That Fast”
This was a song that didn’t really register for me when the album was at the station. It took some inspired testimony from a friend many years later to make me realize its charms.
GEAR DADDIES, “Wear Your Crown”
FEELIES, “Sooner or Later”
MATERIAL ISSUE, “Chance of a Lifetime”
MATTHEW SWEET, “I’ve Been Waiting”
VOICE OF THE BEEHIVE, “Say It”
U2, “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”
The release of Achtung Baby roughly corresponded with a break-up that I took fairly hard. It was nice to have this (and Workers Playtime, and Blood on the Tracks, and…) on hand.
THE JUDYBATS, “Margot Known As Missy”
R.E.M., “Sweetness Follows”
The inclusion of this song, or more accurately this band, had more to do the destination of the trip the tape was prepared for than any sort of rigid adherence to the tape’s theme.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)