I used to make a lot of mixtapes. Here, asked for by no-one, is a track by track account of one I made just before Christmas 1993.
Don't ask "Why?" Does everything have to have a reason?
Should you wish to 'listen along', the tracks can be found in their entirely by clicking here.
Or there's a kind of truncated version you can listen to here:
All For Love - Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting
We're instantly off to a terrible start. Why is this here? A leaden, plodding attempt to replicate the success of 'Everything I Do' from that Robin Hood film a couple of years previously.
My tastes at this point were generally fairly pedestrian. I think I was happy to be away from pretentious university proto-Hipsters, with their constant disdain for anything that might possibly appeal to people over 20. I liked a bit of Sting, U2 and Bon Jovi. But I think even I knew that this wasn't very good.
I do remember a friend of ours, with the improbable name Ceri, reacting with absolute horror when I put this on one evening. She went into a very long deconstruction of all the reasons it didn't work, and made it very clear that I was an idiot for liking it.
Though it must be said she was also angry with me for constantly trying it on with her sister. So there was that too. But in my defence, her sister had a very lovely face.
Drums of Heaven - Midnight Oil
This song starts with a frankly awful guitar sound, which I do not like. Wet and fuzzy and not the right way, in my opinion, to start a song. But it's OK, because when the whole ensemble gets going, everything comes together.
This is a very well produced song, with lots of really interesting components that all charge along together. Like that convoy of mad vehicles in Mad Max: Fury Road - all different and ramshackle, but presenting a formidable whole as they lollop through the desert.
I really like the piano that kicks in at about 2.42, swaggering in like an evil genius, and the way things build from there is formidable. Screaming, soaring guitars swoop above the song and massive power chords crash down... oh, it's so good.
Yeah. I haven't grown out of rock. Good.
Alive and Kicking - Simple Minds
Somewhere around this time I joined a club called 'Britannia Music'. This was like an early, much worse version of Spotify, where they would send CDs to your house every month and then it was your CD and you had to pay for it. Unless you remembered to cancel it. But you never did.
I can't remember what the benefit of this was. Maybe the CDs were slightly cheaper? It seems insane now, doesn't it? Like going to a shop when you want to brush your teeth or something. But this was a time when I only had about seven CDs, and there was no internet, and so this seemed like a glorious innovation.
Anyway. One of the CDs was the best of Simple Minds - somewhat conceitedly calling itself 'Glittering Prize', as if it had been brought back by Jason of the Argonauts as a sign that the gods were, indeed, benevolent and good.
This song is frankly excellent. It is big and Summery and imbued with glorious melody.
San Francisco Days - Chris Isaak
Another song that starts in a weird way. That solo vocal just sounds odd to me.
This is a pleasant song, though unremarkable. I had absolutely worshipped Wicked Game a few years before, and so bought this album without hearing anything off it. It's all very lovely and well produced, but it's basically music to be doing other things to.
Oh dear. This is four mid tempo bloke-rock songs in a row. Any more of this and I'll have to start presenting Top Gear.
The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned - Ultravox
Aha! Now this is more like it.
Early Ultravox are amazing, and this song is amazing, and the world would be a better place if more things sounded like it. It has a harsh, discordant edge, with that ragged violin cutting through, but then this tender, fragile heart to the lyrics.
This always made me feel beautifully lost, and confident, and free, and scared. It has lost none of its power in the many years since I first heard it. I still don't know what any of it means, or how these people decided to make these sounds. I hope I never do.
Every Little Thing She Does is Magic - The Police
This wasn't taken from my CD, if I recall. It was my housemate Andrew's, and I stole it because I was into Sting. And also to annoy Andrew. "Where's my CD?" he would bleat, as I chuckled and hid more of his things. Never did any washing up, Andrew. Not as a consequence of me stealing things. Just lazy.
This is an excellent pop song, and one which makes me wonder why I don't love The Police more. Partly, I guess, they just don't belong to me. I knew all their songs but, like most music in the 80s, it felt like music for the cool kids. And I was resolutely not one of them.
The production's a bit weak, isn't it? This is a song which should sound vibrant and warm and exploding with lights. It comes close, but like a lot of Police, it sounds a bit distant.
Great lyrics, though. He can write, that Mr. Sting.
My Best Friend's Girl - The Cars
For. Goodness. Sake. Rob. What is going on? Are you trying to compile an album for people to buy when they suddenly realise it's nearly Father's Day?
And why are there no women at all here? Were there no women in 1993? There surely must have been. If there weren't, it would have been on the news.
Paths and Angles - Ultravox
In 1993 Ultravox - still then the big love of my musical life - released two CDs of B-sides and weird non-album stuff. They called these collections 'Rare 1' and 'Rare 2'. Which, you have to admit, fits perfectly with their carefully cultivated image of very precise, very boring people who somehow, nevertheless, make astonishing space music.
I was absolutely delighted with these releases and yummed them right up.
Nowadays, when pretty much all music ever is available, and there's no such thing as a 'rarity', this sort of stuff doesn't seem as impressive. But back then this was an astonishing glimpse at unseen treasures.
Listen to it! A weird, European labyrinth of beautiful nightmare sounds. This weird, atonal experience cracks open a door back to the early moments of me being a teenager, and first hearing music that sounded like the inside of my confused little mind.
The American - Simple Minds
I very much liked this at the time and I still love it now. If this was ever a big single, I missed it. And thus when it turned up on the 'Glittering Prize', it was fresh and unfamiliar. I'd heard most of the other stuff and it all seemed a bit samey. This distinguishes itself with a vocal that relies more on an overlapping, percussive vibe than on big sweeping melodies.
I shouldn't have put this after Ultravox. There's some perfectly good synth work going on here, but coming after the austere genius of Paths and Angles, it seems like a dog playing a kazoo.
The Loveless - Billy Idol
Every time I redeem this compilation with something interesting, I sabotage it with something horrible like this.
I've never been great at finding new music. and one thing that is clearly revealing itself here is an over-reliance on artists I used to like, but who have now totally run out of new ideas.
Billy Idol has three great album: daft, extravagant things which kept me very happy in the late 80s. So here I am, trying to like his new, terribly boring album. And, worse, inflicting it on others.
Every Breath You Take - The Police
A song so familiar it's almost redundant putting it on. All you have to do is think of it, and it will form perfectly in your mind, in all its stately majesty. But here it is, and I must say it's very nice to hear after that Billy Idol dirge. That main guitar part is godlike, the construction of the song itself elegant. Powerful enough to remain a thing of beauty, no matter how many idiots play it for the first dance at their wedding, because they haven't realised it's massively inappropriate.
Or maybe that's how their relationship rolls, I suppose. Murderous obsession and probable police involvement, followed by mutual orgasm. I shouldn't make assumptions.
Come Undone - Duran Duran
The third best song on Duran Duran's 'Wedding Album', made great mainly by that kick ass guitar sound.
The Durans are an exception to the trend of this compilation, in that I didn't really care for them in the 80s (too scratchy on the guitars, plus all that dicking about on boats), but then I heard this album and was totally won over.
There was a thing, wasn't there, in the 80s, of young energetic pop boys having to work out how to grow old. And the answer was almost always "Go slower and more boring". This album is a proper maturing of musical sensibility, and very rewarding.
Love is a Long Road - Tom Petty
This CD wasn't mine either... I wonder who I stole this from? Probably Andrew as well. As I gleefully put together this mixtape in my freezing attic room, he will have been sitting alone in his room with nothing to listen to but the sound of his own desolate thoughts. Perhaps that's why he committed those murders?
Just kidding, obviously.
This is a terrific song, precision tooled for driving along a big desert highway. Well, Mr. Tom Petty, I used it to soundtrack my trips to Morrisons and - occasionally - my parents' house in Bradford. I hope it brings you some comfort to know that it made those bleak journeys about 13% more exotic.
Cradle of Love - Billy Idol
More Billy Idol, I'm afraid. This really is intolerable.
Why don't I own Rebel Yell at this point? Or anything, really, from the first three albums? I must have spent money on this wretched thing. So why not buy, at the very least, a "Best Of" or something?
I suppose I was quite poor. I was still working at the Laserquest, and this was barely enough wage to survive on. And I will bet with huge confidence that this CD was massively discounted within seconds of being released.
There's a nice quiet bit in the middle, which almost makes sense of this song. Just make an album of that, Billy Idol.
Outbreak of Love - Midnight Oil
Another 'of love' song. I'm not massively in love, here in the Winter of 1993. I have a GF, from college, but that relationship has settled by this point into background noise.
Music like this is, at 22, what I want love to be. A mad, passionate, indescribable eruption of dazzling and unpredictable joy. Although I think this song also knows that within that joy is contained the seeds of the decay that starts almost the second love begins.
The music here perfectly captures that sad beauty, as it unfolds like a flower and collapses like a dream. Wonderful. I forgive myself for the Billy Idol.
Just For a Moment - Ultravox
Right - this is proper stuff. This is music that pretty much defines who I am. Or who I want to be.
I love the sparseness and weirdness of the instrumentation. I love the distant, spooky vocals. I love the way it attempts to articulate something slightly unknowable and untouchable.
I love the warmth that floods in for the final verse. I love that the instruments sound like voices and the voices sound like machines and I can't tell the difference.
I love this song and if people don't like it, well... I put up with it. Because lots of people don't like it, and I'm not so popular I get to be picky.
But imagine if they did like it. What then?
Seven Days - Sting
Another incredible piece of music from Ten Summoner's Tales, an album that would - for many lesser artists - be their Greatest Hits. A clever lyric, a slightly show-offy time signature that works really well, and some lush guitar sounds.
This mixtape is making a late bid for becoming brilliant. Who's betting it all goes wrong for the last couple of songs?
Move Along - Chris Isaak
Yeah... this is fine, I guess. It comes really nicely out of the last song and has some pretty good dynamics. But it's hard to really engage with Chris Isaak when he's singing about being lonely and sad. Have you seen his face? It's like Jesus carved his cheekbones out of wishes and masculinity. He smoulders with such beauty, it's impossible to imagine him being lonely for longer than the time it takes Netflix to log in.
Anyway. This is quite a good bit of atmospheric soul searching, with a seductive groove. And then - inexplicably - a batshit organ bit at the end which absolutely delights me and is, now I come to think of it, the reason I put this on here.
Call of the Wild - Midge Ure
And from the sexiest man in the world to someone much more my speed. I love you, Midge Ure, but I can't imagine that very many women bang their heads against walls screaming "I must have him or my soul will perish!"
I very much like this song, though it should have come much earlier on in proceedings. It's all a bit lightweight. Midge is relying a little too much on wishy washy guitar overdrive at this stage, in my opinion, and not foregrounding the synths as he surely should be if this was a sane universe.
My main memory of this song is not from 1993 but from 1987. I had my first Walkman, and wandered alone one Summer evening, listening to this and feeling the true pleasure of being by myself and beholden to no-one. It doesn't matter how uncool the music is if you're alone, you see. You can just enjoy it.
Love is Stronger than Justice (live) - Sting
On the original mixtape, this only lasted for about 30 seconds. I had a little tape left, and thought this would be good to make up the distance.
I was under the incorrect impression that this was not a great song. Too complicated for me, I think, and too ridiculous in its premise.
I'm very stupid sometimes.
Well, that's the end of that. It was, I'm sure you'll agree, mostly awful. But the good bits were worth it, I think, and we all learned an awful lot about the importance of friendship, and of really committing to a strong electronic signature if you want to impress me at age 22.
Go back in time to Autumn 1993
Or forward to Spring 1994
No comments:
Post a Comment