This one was made during my last summer living in Boston. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with a Berklee piano student on Brighton Avenue in Allston and working full time at the old Sony Theater that used to be up near Assembly Square Mall in Somerville. (A half-hour commute by the T, so of course I listened to a lot of tunage there and back.)
A lot of this mix came from different places: used CDs from Nuggets in Kenmore Square, album dubs from friends, a few Columbia House purchases, and a lot of taping off the radio, mostly WFNX. [I know, I know. I should have saved my money for things I needed, but I somehow made it work.] The title Untitled comes from a mix I’d made back in 1989, where I’d made a really great tape but could not for the life of me come up with a decent title. Calling it such seemed to fit somehow, and that particular series became one of my favorites to make. [I am currently on Untitled XXV, made last October. I need to catch up and make another one.]
There’s a lot of peak 90s bands here, and many songs that were highly popular with the alt-rock crowds. It was what got the most play on Boston radio at the time, plus there were some great tracks dropped then. I’d been listening heavily to Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies, Soundgarden’s Superunknown, Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple and Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral at the time (among other things) and they’d pretty much become my personal soundtrack for the 1994-95 season.
I really like how this mixtape worked out, and I still listen to it from time to time. It’s not as adventurous as some of my other mixes, but it’s solid from start to finish and has some of my all-time favorite mid-90s songs on it. It also has a sense of humor to it; silly and lighthearted songs bump up against gloomy and angry songs, and each side ends in extremely short and funny filler. And in early 2003 I’d make a two-cd “reissue” of this mix featuring nine extra songs from the era that I’d loved but couldn’t fit on the original.
Bonus: That U2 song, which would be featuring on the Batman Forever soundtrack later that summer, had been recorded off WBCN in early April when it was world-premiered by DJ Carter Alan, a close friend of the band.
Untitled VI, June 1995
Side A:
1. Bad Religion, “Stranger Than Fiction”
2. Green Day, “Basket Case”
3. Live, “I Alone”
4. Pizzicato Five, “Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy vs James Bond”*
5. Nine Inch Nails, “Closer”
6. Frank Black, “Headache”
7. Dig, “Believe”
8. The Flaming Lips, “She Don’t Use Jelly”
9. Alice in Chains, “I Stay Away”
10. Grant Lee Buffalo, “Mockingbirds”
11. Jeff Buckley, “Last Goodbye”
12. They Might Be Giants, “Spider”
Side B:
1. Blur, “Girls & Boys”
2. Danzig, “Cantspeak”
3. Ween, “Voodoo Lady”
4. The Afghan Whigs, “Gentlemen”
5. The Smashing Pumpkins, “Never Let Me Down Again”
6. Soundgarden, “Black Hole Sun”
7. Nirvana, “All Apologies”
8. Stone Temple Pilots, “Interstate Love Song”
9. Blur, “Parklife”
10. U2, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”
11. Bjork, “Army of Me”
12. Pearl Jam, “Bugs”
* – Not available on Spotify
Walk In Silence 