This one’s a long one…a three-taper made in late Spring 1998 in the middle of my stint at HMV Records. This was kind of a transitional time for me — purging old personal drama, starting a brand new science fiction novel and writing more songs and poems, working down in the Belfry at night, going on long road trips, learning how to get rid of all that negativity from the first half of the decade. I stopped hiding and started living again, especially now that I could once again afford to do so.
This mixtape got a lot of play in my first car — a 1992 Chevy Cavalier I’d named the Mach V, in which I’d recently had a tape deck installed — and contains a mix from two sources: the current playlist of WFNX which I’d listened to constantly to and from work, and the extreme expansion of promotional copies of cds that I’d begun to acquire at work. Some songs are alt-rock radio standards today (Flagpole Sitta, The Way) while others are loved deep cuts (Playboys, Fall On Tears), Belfry regulars (God Lives Underwater, Superdrag) and soundtrack songs (mostly from Great Expectations, which I listened to on the regular).
Out of most of the multi-tape mixes, I think this one holds up as one of the best. It’s consistent with only one or two filler tracks, and it contains quite a few of my favorite late 90s tracks.
[Only one track missing and not available on Spotify: Foo Fighters’ cover of Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”, placed between Goldfinger’s “This Lonely Place” and Tonic’s “If You Could Only See”.]
Dang, how are we on volume 27 already? Or more to the point, how are we not at a higher volume, considering I started the series in 1988? Heh.
Either way, I’m happy to return to making mixtapes more consistently again. I’ve made it a point to give my listening habits a bit more breathing room — and paying attention once more to when a song or album catches my attention, and letting my brain latch onto it instead of just flitting onto the next shiny. I know it’s helping that I made that choice on purpose to tie in with my MU4 novel project, but the real point was to reconnect with why I love to listen to music so much. I’d lost track of that for a while.
[Note: One song is missing from this Spotify version of the mix, “Splinter” by Chatham Rise, which sits between Miss Grit and Beck as track 9.]
Technically, this next volume of Songs from the Eden Cycle would be volume nine, given that I’d started to make volume eight a few years ago but only got as far as nine tracks before abandoning it. But I digress.
As I start the actual writing of this new version of MU4, I’m thinking about what music I’d like to listen to this time out. As I’d mentioned previously, I’m trying to break out of the habit of hyperfocusing on new releases, so pretty much anything that catches my ear and/or gets me in the mood for the story is fair game. As you may have guessed, I’m currently writing this entry while listening to Wire’s 154, their third album from 1979 and my favorite of their Mark I era. “On Returning” is the first song to officially be added to the SftEC v8 mix.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve purposely done a deep dive into my music library to search for writing session music to this degree, so I’m sure two things will happen: one, I’ll default to some mainstays from the Belfry years (Blue Wonder Power Milk, Sea Change, And You Think You Know What Life’s About, and the usual 1997-2004 albums, soundtracks and compilations) when I can’t think of anything else to listen to…and two, I’ll rediscover some absolute bangers I’d completely forgotten about over the years. Add this to the new release which I promise I won’t obsess over, and I think that soon enough I’ll have myself another official soundtrack list. And maybe I’ll even post a few of them here as they surface…?
For your listening enjoyment, here’s my year-end mixtape! As expected, this one’s a bit all over the place and I’m sure I’m missing a few songs I should have put in there, but I think it still came out pretty well.
To be honest, it kind of mirrors my current status in life: all sorts of nonsense going on in the world, most of which is out of my control, but on the other hand I think I’ve managed to control what I can in my life, and that’s what really matters.
The title comes from the Cheekface song “We Need a Bigger Dumpster” which may not have been my top song of the year (that’s Hot Chip’s “Down”, firmly sitting as Track 5 as always), but it fits perfectly considering.
Hope you enjoy!
I’ll admit I didn’t have the time or the inclination to go into super detail with the end-of-year lists this year, so I will at least provide you with my top favorite albums. You can safely assume that nearly all of my favorite songs of 2022 made it to the above playlist, with a few exceptions!
TOP ALBUMS (listed chronologically with top favorite in bold)
Yard Act, The Overload The Beatles, Get Back: The Rooftop Performance The Reds, Pinks & Purples: Summer at Land’s End Spoon, Lucifer on the Sofa White Lies, As I Try Not to Fall Apart Beach House, Once Twice Melody Nilüfer Yanya, PAINLESS Bob Moses, The Silence in Between PLOSIVS, PLOSIVS Wet Leg, Wet Leg Hatchie, Giving the World Away Warpaint, Radiate Like This Dubstar, Two Porcupine Tree, CLOSURE / CONTINUATION Röyksopp, Profound Mysteries I, II and III The Beths, Expert in a Dying Field Alvvays, Blue Rev PVA, BLUSH The Beatles, Revolver Super Deluxe Edition The Cure, Wish 30th Anniversary Edition
What to name a mixtape you truly enjoy, but can’t come up with a decent one? By this time I had Walk in Silence, Listen in Silence, The Last Home Year, Cimmerian Candlelight, and so on…names for themed series. But what about a chaotic mix that was essentially my favorite indie tunes at that point in time?
And so the Untitled series was born. Cheeky, but it worked.
This is a mix of songs I’d heard on Amherst College’s WAMH, WMDK out of Peterborough, recent 120 Minutes episodes, with a sprinkle of deep cuts, records borrowed from Chris, and to top it off, promo singles he and I had “borrowed” from the local radio station that they were obviously never going to play. The original mix features versions taped from the radio or off the TV speaker as well as actual source material.
Like Listen in Silence II, it was a mix primarily made as a catch-all for songs I liked but didn’t necessarily have in my collection. This would explain the strong beginning and the somewhat meandering end…but yet it works and still stands up so many years later. Also like LiS II, it was a mix to be listened to while mowing the cemeteries for my summer DPW job. Since my favorite college radio station was off the air for the season, this was my mix to fill that gap.
[Missing from the Spotify mix due to unavailability: The Feelies’ “Away” (after “Makes No Sense at All”) and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians’ “Swirling” (after “Charlotte Anne”).]
I know, I know…I’m getting ahead of myself and getting excited about kitties lately, but the cat adoption agency has accepted our application this morning, and Jules (and soon her sister California) will soon be part of the household!
So of course I had to make a Spotify playlist to celebrate. Because cats.
The Memorex dBS 90 minute tape, my cassette of choice for several of my mixtapes.
I’ve been terrible about making mixtapes this year. By this point I’ve got at least three or four ready to go, but for one reason or another I just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve got a few false starts with maybe six or seven songs, but that’s about it.
I think I’ve gotten to a point where I’m just throwing a bunch of songs together but not always listening to them. Part of that has to do with my obsessive listening to KEXP when I can, but it also has to do with my even more obsessive habit of consuming new releases. I’ve focused too much on the New Stuff and not allowed that many songs to jump out at me and blow my mind. Sure, there have been a few over the last couple of years, but not nearly as much as before.
So I’ve been contemplating a mixtape rethink. I do like the format idea I’d come up with some years back of strictly following the forty-five-minutes-a-side rule, which makes it fun and creative, especially when I spend a good amount of time shifting the order of those mp3s until it sounds great to me. But again…what about the music that jumps out at me? The songs that make me focus on them?
I’ve been thinking about how I did this in the spring of 1988, when I finally took the plunge and planned out three mixes instead of leaning on the randomly created ‘radio tapes’ that I’d been making for the last several years. It was a learning curve, sure…a few questionable songs, a few terrible transitions, but listenable nonetheless. [I’d drop the themed bit soon after, finding it too restrictive at the time. I’d do themed ones later on, mostly ‘soundtracks’ to my novel projects in progress.] Thesaurus in hand, I came up with three themes based on my listening habits at the time: songs to listen to at top volume (Stentorian Music), songs that lean heavily on electronics (Preternatural Synthetics) and quiet and/or “dark” songs to listen to late at night (Cimmerian Candlelight).
Stentorian Music, created 20 May 1988.
Preternatural Synthetics, created 20 May 1988.
Cimmerian Candlelight, created 1 June 1988.
It’s something I’d like to do over again. Start fresh, give myself a tight focus on the mixes. Songs that set a specific mood or setting. Songs that blow my mind. Songs that I’ve rediscovered. I think one of my downfalls over the recent years is that the mixes tend to focus tightly on brand spankin’ new tunes and very rarely introducing older tracks. In retrospect I think that kind of limits what I want to listen to, really. Allow myself to add a song I haven’t heard in years, or an older song that some station slipped my way. Stop being so restrictive about it.
Yeah, I know…it’s been over thirty years since I created those three mixtapes and changed how I listened to music, but honestly: is that really a concern, when I’m still obsessed over music at this age, to this extent? I’ll always embrace music, no doubt about that. I don’t see myself drifting away from it anytime soon. And I think that making a new generation, a new brand of mixtapes for myself is just what I need to do to give it a refresh.
As soon as I have more, I’ll let you know, Spotify playlist and all.
Here we are, as promised — my end of year mixtape! As with the last few years, my listening habits have pretty much been listening to KEXP online or whatever tunage I happened to download. And this time out I’ve created a Spotify playlist out of it for your listening enjoyment!
This past year has been kind of a strange one musically — a lot of records made during lockdown, incomplete sessions rejiggered as EPs and standalone singles, and songs that have been kicking around in the vaults for a bit — so while there may not be as much coherence or intensity behind some of it, the gems that are out there were pretty flippin’ phenomenal. Stay tuned for my best-of-year lists on Thursday!
SIDE A 1. Imagine Dragons feat. JID, “Enemy [from the League of Legends series ‘Arcane’]” 2. Roosevelt, “Echoes” 3. The Clockworks, “Throw It All Away” 4. Girlfriends and Boyfriends, “Your Touch” 5. Miss Grit, “Blonde” 6. Grandbrothers, “What We See” 7. Celeste, “Stop This Flame” 8. Arlo Parks, “Hurt” 9. Flock of Dimes, “Price of Blue” 10. Yola, “Stand for Myself”
SIDE B 1. Yard Act, “Dark Days” 2. Parquet Courts, “Walking at a Downtown Pace” 3. Siamese Youth, “So Far from Home” 4. Flyying Colours, “White Knuckles” 5. Sleigh Bells, “Locust Laced” 6. Dry Cleaning, “Scratchcard Lanyard” 7. K/DA, “Villain” 8. Jungle, “Keep Moving” 9. Wolf Alice, “The Last Man On Earth” 10. Teenage Sequence, “All This Art” 11. Nation of Language, “A Word & a Wave”
SIDE C 1. Seatbelts, “TANK! [Flix Mix] 2. The Beatles, “I’ve Got a Feeling [2021 Mix]” 3. Nation of Language, “Across That Fine Line” 4. Bachelor, “Stay in the Car” 5. Breeze, “Come Around” 6. Coldplay, “Higher Power” 7. CHVRCHES, “Cry Little Sister” 8. Snoh Aalegra, “In Your Eyes” 9. New Candys, “Twin Mime” 10. They Might Be Giants, “Super Cool” 11. Geese, “Low Era” 12. Duran Duran, “Invisible”
SIDE D 1. Goat Girl, “Sad Cowboy” 2. Hooverphonic, “The Wrong Place” 3. Sleaford Mods, “Nudge It” 4. Jack White, “Taking Me Back” 5. Fotoform, “Running” 6. Hatchie, “This Enchanted” 7. Amyl and the Sniffers, “Guided By Angels” 8. Film School, “Superperfection” 9. Public Service Broadcasting, “People, Let’s Dance” 10. ABBA, “I Still Have Faith in You” 11. Ambar Lucid, “Space Cowgirl”
SIDE E 1. Foo Fighters, “Waiting On a War” 2. Bill Janovitz, “Coming Up Close”* 3. Ora the Molecule, “Die to Be a Butterfly” 4. IDLES, “The Beachland Ballroom” 5. Thom Yorke, “Creep [Very 2021 RMX]” 6. Sleaford Mods, “Mork ‘n Mindy” 7. Wet Leg, “Chaise Longue” 8. tUnE-yArDs, “nowhere, man” 9. Grandbrothers, “Silver” 10. Roosevelt, “See You Again”
SIDE F 1. Field Music, “Orion from the Street” 2. Danny Elfman, “True” 3. Ambar Lucid, “Get Lost in the Music” 4. Low, “Days Like These” 5. The Goon Sax, “In the Stone” 6. Makthaverskan, “Maktologen” 7. Anna Schulze, “A New Way” 8. Ghost of Vroom, “Rona Pollona” 9. Shame, “Human, for a Minute” 10. Jane Weaver, “The Revolution of Super Visions” 11. The Verve Pipe, “Forever Reaching”
SIDE G 1. RUFUS DU SOL, “Alive” 2. Big Wreck, “Beano” 3. Goat Girl, “Badibaba” 4. Jose Gonzalez, “El Invento” 5. Delvon Lamarr, Organ Trio, “Call Your Mom” 6. Lucy Dacus, “Hot & Heavy” 7. Dropkick Murphys, “Mick Jones Nicked My Pudding” 8. Lost Horizons, “Every Beat That Passed” 9. Pond, “America’s Cup” 10. Porcupine Tree, “Harridan”
SIDE H 1. Garbage, “No Gods No Monsters” 2. Django Django, “Glowing in the Dark” 3. Billy Bragg, “Mid-Century Modern” 4. Nation of Language, “This Fractured Mind” 5. Sneaker Pimps, “Alibis” 6. Matt Nathanson, “Even Better Than the Real Thing” 7. Japanese Breakfast, “Be Sweet” 8. Mr Twin Sister, “Fantasy” 9. Elbow, “Flying Dream 1” 10. CHVRCHES, “How Not to Drown” 11. The Beatles, “Get Back [2021 Mix]”
I’ve definitely talked and written a lot about 1988, considering it was a high point in my teen years socially and emotionally, as well as creatively. Everything just fell into place in a positive way. I knew this feeling wouldn’t last, but I chose to embrace it and let it lift me up while it lasted, and I’m glad I did. I used to return to those memories sometimes out of desperation, especially during my mid-90s slump, but nowadays I can return to them with fondness and maybe a bit of amazement. I really did have a lot more personal clarity then than I thought I did, and I sometimes use that as a reminder of how to live in the present.
I’d been making proto-mixtapes for years taping stuff off the radio, but 1988 was when I made the deep dive into the alchemical science of creating personal mixes. And since 1988 had been not just a personal high but a musical high as well, I was determined to celebrate that with a year-end mix. This was my first attempt at a multi-tape (non-radio tape) mix of this kind.
DTDDTS: The Singles 1988 is admittedly not my best mix work, as I was still feeling my way in making these things. It sort of rambles halfway through and drifts to a close with a sigh rather than a cheer…my mistake was overloading the first tape with so many great songs! (Whenever I listened to it I usually stuck with that first tape.) It does kind of redeem itself near the end, though, and in retrospect, I think it mirrors my mood at the time: once my friends left for college, the last couple of months of the year weren’t nearly as exciting or positive for me. Still: I do like this mix, and it contains so many songs that have remained personal favorites for years.
Side Notes: –Most of these songs were sourced from original albums or singles, but several on Sides E and F were lifted from recent 120 Minutes episodes or taped off WAMH or WMDK. There are a lot of album cuts on this one, which really shows how closely I was listening to a lot of these albums. –I made several “reissue” versions of this over the years, partly to fix the flow but also to add more songs that I’d left off or replace songs I no longer had in my collection. (I have in fact created digital versions of all of them.) This playlist is the original created 27 December 1988 during Christmas vacation. –The title comes from the last song on Side B, “A Public Place” by Wire. Years later in 2013 I named a year-end mix ‘We Sing and Dance as We Go: The Singles’ after another Wire then-current lyric. Sort of a personal 25th anniversary thing, I suppose. –This contains exactly one Flying Bohemians song which is thankfully not on Spotify as it is embarrassing as it is hilarious. Why I didn’t use “Night” or one of our better tracks, I’m not sure. “Nothing Spectacular” was me and Chris fucking around on guitars and making a hash out of a moody 80s riff, with Jim H scratching one of Natan’s Van Halen records while he was in the other room. Chris provides an amazingly torturous guitar solo. –I put my favorite song ever at the time, The Church’s ‘Under the Milky Way’, on Side A Track 5. When I revived the year-end mixes in the 45-minutes-a-side format in 2013, I also revived that as well. My favorite song of that particular year will always have that spot.
SIDE A:
1. Morrissey, “Will Never Marry” 2. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “The Mercy Seat” 3. Jane’s Addiction, “Jane Says” 4. Front 242, “Headhunter (Version 1.0)” 5. The Church, “Under the Milky Way” 6. The Primitives, “Crash” 7. The Godfathers, “When Am I Coming Down” 8. The Timelords, “Doctorin’ the Tardis” 9. The Smithereens, “Only a Memory” 10. Peter Murphy, “All Night Long”
SIDE B:
1. Siouxsie & the Banshees, “Peek-a-Boo” 2. The Sugarcubes, “Coldsweat” 3. Cocteau Twins, “Carolyn’s Fingers” 4. ‘Til Tuesday, “(Believed You Were) Lucky” 5. They Might Be Giants, “Ana Ng” 6. Camouflage, “The Great Commandment” 7. Erasure, “Chains of Love” 8. The Art of Noise feat. Tom Jones, “Kiss” 9. Information Society, “Running” 10. Wire, “A Public Place”
SIDE C:
1. Ministry, “Stigmata” 2. Grace Pool, “Out of the Wild” 3. The Jesus and Mary Chain, “Sidewalking” 4. Morrissey, “Everyday Is Like Sunday” 5. Shriekback, “Dust and a Shadow” 6. The Flying Bohemians, “Nothing Spectacular” * 7. A House, “Call Me Blue” 8. Information Society, “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)” 9. REM, “Orange Crush” 10. Cocteau Twins, “Blue Bell Knoll” 11. Pet Shop Boys, “Always On My Mind”
1. Pixies, “Gigantic” 2. Graham Parker, “Get Started, Start a Fire” 3. Camper Van Beethoven, “Turquoise Jewelry” * 4. Crowded House, “Mansion in the Slums” 5. Living Colour, “Cult of Personality” 6. The Godfathers, “Birth, School, Work, Death” 7. Sonic Youth, “Within You, Without You” 8. The Church, “Reptile” 9. Joy Division, “Atmosphere” 10. The Primitives, “I’ll Stick with You” 11. Wire, “Kidney Bingos”
SIDE F:
1. New Order, “Fine Time” 2. Marc Almond, “Tears Run Rings” 3. The Fall, “New Big Prinz” 4. Cowboy Junkies, “Sweet Jane” 5. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, “My Bag” 6. The Feelies, “Away” * 7. Hunters & Collectors, “Back On the Breadline” 8. Sparks, “So Important” 9. Hugh Cornwell, “Another Kind of Love” * 10. Ministry, “Flashback” 11. Morrissey, “Suedehead” 12. Information Society, “Make It Funky”
* — Not available on Spotify, but I’ve added the YouTube link if it’s available.
I started writing Meet the Lidwells! A Rock n’ Roll Family Memoir during the summer of 2017, and like any other book project I’ve worked on, I created a mixtape for it. Surprisingly, for a novel that leans super heavily on music, there’s only one volume! Still, it’s not as if I could create a mix containing music that, y’know, doesn’t actually exist in real life.
Most of these songs are from the early 90s, which is when most of the book takes place, and are inspirations for songs written by the Lidwells in the book. I did choose to add a few then-recent songs as well just to balance it out, but for the most part these were all songs that I loved and listened to during my college and post-college years in Boston.
Some side notes: –The prevalence of EMF hints at the poppiness of the early Lidwells releases, as they were more of an alternapop band at the start of the novel. –A number of songs (and scenes) were actually pilfered from a trunked novel of mine called Two Thousand that I’d worked on in the 90s. The La’s track “Looking Glass” in particular was originally supposed to be part of the climax of that story but used instead as the “Listening” scene with Thomas talking about when they performed that song live. The remix of that Real People song (sadly not available online right now, it’s a banger) was also once part of that novel as a denouement scene. –I added Belly and Veruca Salt to hint at what Amy and Hannah’s songs would sound like. –The Stone Roses’ “I Am the Resurrection” is mentioned in the book as one of the main influences on The Lidwells’ first hit “Grapevine” with its stomping beat.
[SHAMELESS PLUG: The ebook is available at Smashwords for $2.99!]
SIDE A:
1. EMF, “Children” 2. REM, “Pop Song ’89” 3. The Real People, “Window Pane” 4. Belly, “Gepetto” 5. EMF, “Girl of an Age” 6. The Cure, “Friday I’m in Love” 7. The House of Love, “You Don’t Understand” 8. My Bloody Valentine, “Soon” 9. 9 Ways to Sunday, “Come Tell Me Now* * 10. Belly, “Now They’ll Sleep” 11. Matthew Sweet, “Time Capsule”
SIDE B:
1. Veruca Salt, “Seether” 2. The Black Keys, “Gold On the Ceiling” 3. Guster, “Barrel of a Gun” 4. Fenech-Soler, “Kaleidoscope” 5. Belly, “Super-Connected” 6. Matthew Sweet, “Girlfriend” 7. The La’s, “Looking Glass” 8. The Stone Roses, “I Am the Resurrection” 9. The Real People, “Window Pane [12″ Extended Remix]” *
Walk In Silence 