Music To Warm a House By, Volume One
1996

The title should make it fairly clear what kind of party this tape was made for. The house in question had already been heated adequately for me; I’d been living there for around a year-and-a-half at the time of the party. However, I had new roommates, including my fellow 90FM alumnus . Since I was anticipating a more social atmosphere with the new collection of residents (marathon sessions of simultaneously smoking pot, playing Nintendo hockey and listening to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness were the nightly default plan of the previous people who shared the lease), it seemed a perfect time to rechristen the house.

I made two mix tapes for the party. I think they got played at the very beginning, and then probably only once as a houseful of former college radio DJs tends to lead to people taking over the stereo for extended intervals. Also, this was during the era when the draining of hard liquor bottles inevitably lead to viewings of Muppets Tonight! so the music didn’t always last anyway.

SIDE ONE
TALKING HEADS, “Burning Down the House”
MADNESS, “Our House”
THE SMITHEREENS, “House We Used To Live In”
The ever-so-clever “house” song trifecta to kick off the tape. There’s immediate proof that I made the tape in the production studio of the commercial “new rock alternative” station where I was working at the time. I didn’t own any of these songs (or at least these versions, since I absolutely had “Burning” on a vinyl copy of the Stop Making Sense soundtrack.
THE REFRESHMENTS, “Banditos”
GOO GOO DOLLS, “Girl Right Next To Me”
HOLE, “Gold Dust Woman”
And there’s a triumvirate that provides a decent example of the fairly limited range of the music played on that “new rock alternative” station.
HUSKER DU, “Could You Be the One?”
FISHBONE, “Sunless Saturday”
And two songs that we had at the commercial station that got nowhere near the airwaves, except occasionally during the deadest spot of the overnight shift when I broke the rules by deviating from the computer-concocted playlist. This is why I tend to be unkind when I discuss my time in commercial radio.
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes”
NO DOUBT, “Spiderwebs”

SIDE TWO
BEN FOLDS FIVE, “Philosophy”
SMASHING PUMPKINS, “Tonight Tonight”
You know what apparently goes great with this song? Smoking pot and playing Nintendo hockey. For hours.
THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, “Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head”
LUSH, “Ladykillers”
THE POLICE, “Murder By Numbers”
I wonder if there’s any other instance of a solo career coloring perceptions of the band the solo artist came from as much as the exponentially increasing uncoolness of Sting’s solo career damaged retrospective views of The Police. They were a pretty cool, tight, even edgy band, but they’re rarely invoked by the cool kids. It’s like “Fields of Gold” echoed all the way back to the late seventies and early eighties and distorted the sound of all those other records. Weirdly enough, I think I included this song in part because I enjoyed the way it was used in the mediocre film Copycat.
BUTTHOLE SURFERS, “Pepper”
“I’m a surfer!” Sometimes I think Rod and Todd Flanders may actually be my favorite Simpsons characters.
THE MUFFS, “Kids in America”
ELASTICA, “Stutter”
RAMONES, “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”
HOWLIN MAGGIE, “Alcohol”
Here’s an instance where I don’t remember a song, not in the slightest. I assume I included it because of the title. It was a party, after all.
TRACY BONHAM, “Mother Mother”
CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN, “Pictures of Matchstick Men”
BEN LEE, “How Can That Be?”
R.E.M., “White Tornado”
This song, besides being one of those wonderfully short tracks needed to fill up the last bit of a tape, is notable for serving as the soundbed for the Trivia Focus team interview segments during the 1989 edition of The World’s Largest Trivia Contest. I have many, many unnecessary things in my head.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)