Okay, so before we go any further, I have to show you this picture.
[Miraculously, I managed to find a somewhat recent picture of it online. I can confirm this is indeed 213 Beacon St #5C, the same place I lived from September 1993 to August 1994.]
This was the shoebox apartment. Almost the entirety of it. What you see there is 95% of the apartment itself: a single room with a single window and a tiny loft — the photo is taken from the narrow kitchen/entryway that also included the stove, a sink and a fridge, and the super tiny bathroom is around the corner to the left. It really was that small, and it cost $500 a month. I could have looked for cheaper, but that would have meant moving to one of the outer neighborhoods and depending wholly on public transit to get anywhere. By living here I had much better and walkable access to work, entertainment and the few people I knew who still lived in town.
This is where my adult life started. This is also where my writing career started.
My plan was to start at Day One with the writing. I had my spiral bound notebooks and my typewriter, a foldout table, a TV and a hand-me-down VCR, my stereo and boombox, and most of my music collection, and that’s all I needed. I knew I had to start somewhere, so I relied on the reliable: yet another attempt at writing the Infamous War Novel, at this time called Nocturne. This must have been the fourth or fifth iteration, but the first not to explicitly take place in a small town. I also attempted a resurrection of the Two Thousand project I’d started a few years earlier in my sophomore year.
I was broke, I was lonely, I was always hungry, I had a smoking habit (Newport Light menthols at the time), and I was moody as hell, but I was also committed to writing. I wasn’t about to let that go.
I just had to keep going. I learned how to find entertainment cheaply if not freely: T rides up to Harvard Square to hang out and people-watch, walks on the Esplanade and through Back Bay, visits to Waterstones Books to read and chill, visits to Tower Records to see what they had in the listening booths and rent a few movies for a few bucks, and digging for gold in dollar bins at the used record stores.
Mixtapes, Good Grief, More WAUGH!!! Vol 3 and The WAUGH!!! That Wouldn’t Die… Vol 4, created September 1993. These two cheesefest mixes follow up on the “songs I like but don’t have in my collection at the moment” and clearly sourced from the family collections over the years with a few of my own dollar bin purchases thrown in. These were my favorites of this series and got quite a lot of play on my headphones. Noted: the Volume 3 title is a nod to the Charles Schulz Peanuts paperback I owned as a kid.
U2, “Lemon” single, released 1 September 1993. This oddball track from Zooropa got some pretty heavy airplay on WFNX. It’s my least favorite track on the album, but I’ll admit it’s catchy as hell too.
Chapterhouse, Blood Music, released 6 September 1993. I really liked this record, even though it unfortunately didn’t get much airplay anywhere that I knew of, other than hearing “We Are the Beautiful” on WFNX every now and again. It’s a much headier and heavier record than their previous one but it’s just as great. A few years later I’d discover that a UK edition had a remix cd entitled Pentamerous Metamorphosis by a duo called Global Communication added to it, which would become a Belfry writing session mainstay.
Prince, The Hits/The B-Sides, released 10 September 1993. I never had the money to buy this until years later, but it was hard to resist wanting it considering it was the first official ‘best of’ collection for him. For the time being I made do with the cassettes of his I already owned.
Counting Crows, August and Everything After, released 14 September 1993. It was hard to escape “Mr Jones” that autumn, as it was played EVERYWHERE, constantly. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the band and ended up lumping them in with the earthy-crunchy 90s hippie bands for a while, but I eventually grew to enjoy them. I did in fact like the single “Round Here”.
Morphine, Cure for Pain, released 14 September 1993. These local boys always put out fantastic blues rock with their unique bare-bones sound that sounded just that little bit boozy. I picked this one up on cassette and loved it, especially the deep cut “In Spite of Me”.
Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth, released 14 September 1993. This one got some seriously heavy play in the shoebox during my writing sessions. I’d always loved their work, but this record went in a slightly different direction, sneaking out of their chamber music style and veering towards folk music but not without dropping an amazing nightmarish goth staple in “The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove” single.
Soundtrack, Judgment Night, released 14 September 1993. I remember seeing this movie with JA but I’ll be damned if I remember any of it other than the heavy-as-fuck soundtrack made up of hard rock/rap duets. Helmet and House of Pain’s “Just Another Victim” got some major play on WFNX that season.
Cocteau Twins, “Evangeline” single, 17 September 1993. Three years later and the trio finally release an absolutely lovely — and yes, autumnal-sounding — single preceding their upcoming new album. I’d hear this one all the time on the radio and it would make it onto one of my next mixtapes as well.
Buffalo Tom, Big Red Letter Day, released 21 September 1993. I loved this local band since first hearing “Birdbrain” a few years previous, and this record proved they weren’t going to stop putting out amazing albums any time soon. I’d hear “Soda Jerk” on the radio all the time, but my favorite track from this album is “I’m Allowed”, which I know I’ve posted here a few times already. Highly recommended.
Curve, Cuckoo, released 21 September 1993. I was so on the fence with this particular record that I ended up not picking it up for a few years, but when I did it became a Belfry staple for a good number of years. While not as tense and dense as Doppelganger (which I loved, especially “Fait Accompli”), this album is just as moody if not more atmospheric. It’s since become my favorite of their catalog.
Nirvana, In Utero, released 21 September 1993. It took me a while to grok this third album of theirs, and it still feels a bit disjointed and desperate, but it also features my favorite Nirvana song “All Apologies” which would pop up on a few of my mixtapes over the years.
Melissa Etheridge, Yes I Am, released 21 September 1993. I remember this album being a huge thing when it dropped because at the time mass media rarely provided us with such a positive message of sexual and gender self-expression. Not to mention that the glorious “Come to My Window” was one of her biggest hits ever.
James, Laid, released 27 September 1993. Yes, that band with that one song of theirs most alternative stations will ever play, and sadly it’s become my least favorite because of that. It’s a great album regardless, especially with a single like “Sometimes”.
Pet Shop Boys, Very, released 27 September 1993. It had been a good couple of years since their last studio album (Behaviour in late 1990), and this was quite a welcome return. They were still slowly moving towards the heady techno sound that would become their style for the next several years, but this one still had the feel of their last couple of albums, creating a nice middle ground.
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Next up: A chance video rental and a trip to the laundromat changes the course of my future.