In the 90s I had a car and in that car I played tapes of music that I liked. Luckily for you I recorded every single detail of those mixtapes and now I'm sharing them with you.
This one - hailing from the warm and enjoyable Spring of 1994 - is great.
Here's a link to the Spotify list.
And here's an exciting song by song account. At last, something to tell the grandchildren about.
Cursum Perfico - Enya
This being the mid 90s, Enya was very definitely not cool. I mean, she was never particularly cool even in the late 80s, but at least in those days people sort of bought into her peculiar blend of synthy witch-pop. Not so in grungy, guitary 1994. She was the antithesis of what young men like me should have been listening to. But I clearly didn't care. Here I am, leading the whole tape with one of her more peculiar tracks, and damn the consequences.
This specific song takes me back to a pub in Bradford, in 1990, sitting with Richard and Canadian Jim - my bandmates from terrible pub-rock band "The Dead Ringers". It was lunchtime, and so of course we were drinking and thinking of new songs we could attempt to badly cover. I put this song on the jukebox, and I remember Canadian Jim growling that it sounded a bit satanic for a nice Christian boy like me.
It does sound a bit weird and mystical. That's why I like it. I know Enya gets a bad rap for being bland and dreamy and that, but I think this sounds really strange and haunted. Plus at one point it sounds like she sings 'Purple Sandwich', which is amusing.
Red Hill Mining Town - U2
I first bought The Joshua Tree on vinyl, when it came out in 1987. Earlier that month my dad had kindly paid for my ticket to see The Stranglers at Bradford St. George's Hall, and as a result I had a spare five pounds. I didn't really know anything about U2, but everyone was going mad about this album and acting like it was the best thing ever. So I took a punt.
I liked it quite a lot, and I like it still. It's odd, in retrospect, that this song was one of my early favourites. Not one of the big hitters from the album, and merely 'fine' in terms of song-writing. But the chorus is beautiful and soars in a way which still moves the naive, delicate parts of my heart.
This is the second song in a row to hark back a few years from when the tape was made. I'm clearly buying up the CDs of my earlier favourites, and reliving what, at 24, passed for nostalgia.
Cover My Eyes - Marillion
I really am embracing the uncool, aren't I? This is among my favourite songs ever, by a band that I absolutely adore. To a lot of people it sounds a lot like U2, and I can hear that I guess. But there's something much more exciting about this excellent song, with its stacatto, chiming guitars and swooping vocals.
This is one of those songs that I don't really hear, in the proper sense. It doesn't matter that, to others, it's probably no more than a serviceable pop song with derivative guitar parts. It doesn't matter, either, that proper Marillion fans will treat it with somewhat sniffy contempt - a silly excursion into mainstream banality that distracts from the band's true work of making 17 minute songs about angst.
To me, this is a distillation of pop and joy and light and possibility. I love it.
Pretty Good Year - Tori Amos
Oh look - something contemporary! As in, contemporary for the time. Not contemporary for now. That would suggest that I could time travel, but used the powers only to construct better mix tapes. Actually, that does sound like something I would do.
I kept hearing Cornflake Girl on the radio, and I liked it a lot. I'd not heard anything quite like it and I was very thrilled, and I wanted it to be happening to my ears all the time please.
Ah, hearing new songs on the radio. I assume that still happens to young people, with their youth music.
Anyway, astute observers will have noted that this is not Cornflake Girl. That's because that brilliant song wasn't available to buy yet, much to my annoyance. So I went into town and found myself this lesser single, to see me through for the time being.
It's a very beautiful and sad lyric. I'm very moved by the vulnerability of men, for reasons which are probably obvious.
Wonderful Life - Black
I think this is from the 80s, but was back in the charts at around the time I made this tape. I can't be bothered checking, so let's just assume I'm right. Or you can go and check, if you must, but be prepared for me to ignore any facts which challenge my lazy assumptions, and simply shout my point of view over your attempts to correct me.
This is one of those songs that doesn't seem to want to play with the other songs. It doesn't feel like it was written, or arranged, or that musicians got together to record the thing. It just seems to exist - an elegant and self assured unfolding of melody and wonder.
I would like it if there was much more music like this in the world. Though maybe then it wouldn't feel so special.
Even Better Than The Real Thing - U2
A perfectly good hit single from Achtung Baby, though not one that massively moves me. It is a little too obvious in it's "Look at us, we're reinventing ourselves and my, aren't we the poppiest?"
It's good, I suppose, and certainly enjoyable to drive to, which I suppose is the point of these tapes. It's not like I made them thinking, "Best be careful in case my future self writes a hyper critical blog about the sequencing and choices!" Well - more fool you, 1994 Rob. Of course that's what we were going to do.
Revelation - Ultravox
This is that version of Ultravox that doesn't contain any of the original members apart from maybe one confused looking guy, staring around wondering who all these new guys are. Not really the same band, and a bit of a con trick, played on idiot completists like myself.
Well, the joke is on them, because I actually really like it. These are perfectly good electronic pop songs, if not especially clever or ground-breaking. It's actually better than the last Midge Ure era Ultravox album, and it at least sounds like some effort has been put in.
Minus points for the end, though, when they seem to fall asleep while playing the same rather uneventful riff, over and over until someone has the good sense to fade them down. It's quite possible that they're still playing it...
True Love Ways - Buddy Holly
Well this is a change of pace. From the adequate to the utterly beautiful. I love this song, and let's hope you do too because if you don't, bad news - you're a robot!
It's just so delightful in it's construction. I love the little saxophone part that wanders along behind the main melody, happily tootling along like a puppy beside its master. I was always very intense about love, always trying to make it happen, and happen right. But part of me knew that the better path was to wander along in a similar manner, unhurried and loose, like this lovely, perfect thing:
Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me) - Sting
My quest to use up every single song on Ten Summoner's Tales continues with this triumphant piece that is both supremely accomplished and just very slightly self satisfied.
Mary Jane's Last Dance - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Another CD single, pulled from the Our Price Basket. This one was a total winner, and still great to drive to. Lots of space for the instruments to play in. They like that, the instruments. Space. Makes them happy.
I stole the main riff for this for one of my songs, but didn't notice until years later. So deeply had the song cut, I felt it was part of my own musical expression. Luckily for me, I am unlikely to ever face a lawsuit - partly because Tom Petty is no longer with us, but mainly because I will never make any money from that song because it isn't very good.
The Hollow Man - Marillion
Marillion had not released an album for three years, and that was too long for this boy. A new album was on the way, and I was very excited.
My days allowed for a lot of free time, back then. I was working shifts at the LaserQuest, in what now seems like a rather too on-the-nose job to have in the mid 90s. During the days, I would listen constantly to Radio 1, waiting - foolishly - for them to play the new Marillion single.
This seems super-ridiculous now, but wasn't quite so mad back then. Marillion were a fairly regular chart presence in the early 90s, though by now I think most people had realised that they would rather listen to something else.
Anyway. Thanks to listening to the radio all the time, I accidentally got into Tori Amos, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. And then Marillion released their new single, which was this.
What is wrong with you, Marillion? Have you ever, ever listened to the radio?
This isn't what people do on the radio, Marillion.
Earth and Sun and Moon - Midnight Oil
Another entry from this very enjoyable album. This is the title track, and I don't know about you, but I'm always a little suspicious of title tracks.
They always seem a bit self important, don't they? Ooh, look at me. I'm the best song. Sure, there are other songs on the album, but which one did they choose to name the album after? That's right - me, the best one.
That always makes it seem, to me, like the song has to be kind of emblematic of the whole album. Like it has to somehow represent all the different stuff that's going on musically and thematically. Well that's no way to be interesting. The best albums are made of disparate, quirky songs that leap to all sorts of different corners.
Anyway. All that said, this is a pretty good song and trundles along pleasingly. But yeah - it's a bit middle of the road.
Walking With Mr. Wheeze - Madness
I must have stolen this from a CD belonging to housemate Richard. I'm pretty sure he owned a big Madness 'B-sides' collection, and I'm very certain that I didn't.
This was a real jump back into the past, even then. This song doesn't belong to 1994, but to at least a decade earlier. Someone lent me the 7 inch single of Our House, and it is no exaggeration to say that I played that single to death.
On the back of that single was this glorious piece of music. To my young ears it was a total revelation - the soundtrack to a crazy, imaginary film full of strange, intoxicating things. I liked the way the song wandered through different sonic sections, all the different noises and new feelings.
My joy in this song has not diminished over time.
Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud) - The Beautiful South
The exact mid point for this band, where they turned from sprightly, arch songsmiths into smug MOR dullards. This song was super popular at the time, and although I never loved it, I loved the way it made everyone in the house dance and sing. Our house was always full of people, and the tensions that that brought with it. But when everyone sang, it was great.
Song For Guy - Elton John
This occupies the same place in my head and heart as Walking With Mr. Wheeze. Music that lets thoughts and narratives uncurl in your head.
If I remember rightly, this formed the soundtrack to a BBC comedy called Happy Families, in which Adrian Edmondson played a rather sad man called Guy, who may or may not have driven a mini.
These are my only thoughts on this song.
Shapes That Go Together - Aha
Nowadays I consider Aha to be one of the best bands ever, and get very excited at the thought of them. That, however, is because they released a load of really good albums in the 21st century and wrote many, many songs that sound utterly amazing.
Back here in the mid 90s, they are not doing quite so well. They've stopped being sexy teen pop puppies, all hair and keyboards, and they've also moved beyond the regulation 'mature and moody' phase that all pop stars must enter once the shine has worn off.
This phase here, though, is not great. This is a very pedestrian piece of work, that shows none of the melodic invention or sonic power that their earlier and later incarnations would shoot about like laser beams.
This was another 50p Our Price bargain, and frankly that was the right amount to pay.
Love is Blindness - U2
I was incorrect about this song for a long time. Which is to say, I didn't like it for ages, and then I realised it was very good indeed.
Coming at the end of Achtung! Baby - an album which, you'll remember, I very much like - this initially seemed like a misstep. After all those great, pulsing pop songs, they end with this clunky, drifty weirdness.
Then one evening, a low sun was cutting through the kitchen and the weird guitar break hit me properly for the first time. Stuttering and wrong, nervous and alien... listening now, it's like a counterpart to that horn part in True Love Ways. It doesn't quite fit with the song, rhythmically or - in this case - sonically. But for a song about love... yeah, that nails it.
Honey - Tori Amos
My desperation for the new Tori Amos album becomes more and more apparent as I resort to secondary tracks off the "Pretty Good Year" CD single I included earlier. I was going to call it a B-side, but that's not right for a CD single, is it? Is it? I honestly don't know.
It's actually a very good song. If there's one thing I'm learning from going back to these playlists, it's that having a really small amount of music made me discover some really nice stuff that I might otherwise have ignored.
Lady Let it Lie - Fish
Sure, Marillion are exciting and cool, but what's this? A new album by their former front man Fish is also coming out? What blessed times we surely live in!
I was not, in truth, massively excited about a new Fish album, but I still enjoyed the mad old Scotsman and I believe that I even went to see him live at some point around this time. He was the reason I fell in love with Marillion, and even though they had won my fandom in the divorce, I was still happy to visit him every now and then.
This is yet another CD single. The purchase of such things strikes me as complete lunacy now. We used to go to shops, and rake through bins of plastic discs that, on a medium capable of holding over an hour of music, decided to give us ten minutes at best.
This song is basically inoffensive, but it is way too long and does not have sufficient ideas to sustain that length. Nice chorus. Cut the song down to 4 minutes and maybe people would have enjoyed it rather than just sort of sighing and wandering off.
Lemon - U2
Here's a fantastic glimpse into a much more interesting universe where U2 decided to be fun and weird and create genuinely interesting music. The sounds on this thrilled me the second I heard it, though it took me a while to include it on a playlist because I am sometimes scared of unusual things, and this felt a bit silly.
I am, of course, an idiot. This is a tremendous song, marrying a bizarre soundscape with great ideas. The whole thought process behind this album - about the surfaces, and how we lose ourselves in images of who we think we are - was fascinating to me and chimed very much with my then current state of total confusion as to who I was.
Winter Trees - Marillion
Back on the C90 this was a bit of filler to play out the last 40 seconds or so of the tape. A bit of inconsequential nothingness from the Hollow Man single, that I didn't mind getting cut off.
In fairness, it's almost like they designed it for this purpose.
Go back in time to Winter 1993
Or forward in time to Easter 1994, here.
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