Top 19 -- Dazed and Confused: Soundtrack Volumes 1 and 2

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

I mentioned this yesterday, but I wasn't the world's greatest roommate in college. I thought that I was, but on further evaluation, I really wasn't. I was stuck in my ways, I wanted things to be my way, I wanted my roommates to be into the same things that I were in. Any pushback and I'd get offended. I didn't do act this way on purpose. A lot of times when you're the oldest child, you don't have to compromise mostly because if you do get pushback, you can just squash that little insurrection with a physical beating or psychological warfare. 

That's a bit difficult to do when your roommates are your age and can make up their own minds about who and what are cool. 

In September of 1993, a movie called "Dazed and Confused" directed by Richard Linklater was released. It didn't do very well. I remember seeing an add of an obviously stoned smiley face on a teal background (the first album in the above image) with the tagline, "See it with a bud". My first thoughts were, what is this movie about? But there were no other indicators about plot or character. I was stuck at school without a car to get to the movie theater, so I forgot about it. Apparently a lot of other people did too because it was gone from the theaters by October. 

Fast forward to the summer and I'm home and my friend Jesse said that I have to see this movie. "What is it?" "Dazed and Confused," he answered. "It's great." So we sat down and watched it. And he was right. It was great. At that point in my life, the best movie that I had ever seen was Oliver Stones' "The Doors" and this blew it away. I became completely and totally obsessed with this movie. 

The movie was about the last day of school in 1976 at a Texas high school. The incoming juniors spend the day terrorizing the outgoing eighth graders. Once the town-wide hazing ends, the kids get together and have a kick-ass party and then go try to get Aerosmith tickets the next day. That's it. That's what the movie was all about. If you never saw it, you should. It's well worth your time. Lots of actors got their start in that movie including Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams and a bunch of other people that you'd no doubt recognize. Not only is the acting good, but Linklater's script and direction is excellent. He really immerses you in this world and makes you care about the characters*.

* I cared so much about these characters that I spent a lot of time thinking what they did with their lives. Did they go to college? Did they get married? Did they ever leave their town? If so where did they go? What did they do? What were they doing in 1994? Would I be friends with them if I was in high school? How would I handle the hazing (both as a junior and an eighth grader)? Like I said, this was a complete obsession.  

I bought the movie on VHS tape and I watched it at least two or three times a week. I bought both soundtracks, and listened to it constantly. I even bought the Dazed and Confused companion book* (which was absolutely hilarious and added a lot of backstory to the characters). And I brought all of that shit back with me to college for my junior year. Like I wrote about yesterday, junior year was a bit of a rocky year for me and my roommates. We were getting along, but just barely. There was an underlying tension in the air, but we were all too cowardly to talk about it. The bottom line is that we all needed some space between us. And the space that we were in, practically being the only juniors in a underclassman dorm where we were still under the thumbs of the RAs, wasn't that place. Add in a dude who is wound way too tight, but now "loved" the 70s lifestyle and again, it was too much. 

* The first time that I went on the Internet and used a search engine was to look for stuff about "Dazed and Confused". I found an interview with Linklater who talked about the behind-the-scenes stories of making the movie and how much of a pain in the ass it was for him to realize his vision and all of the fights that he had. One of the interesting ones was that he wanted Led Zeppelin's "Rock n Roll" to be the first song in the first scene. He heard that if Jimmy Page gave his blessing, Robert Plant usually followed suit. Linklater got in touch with Page who loved the idea and said yes. Plant demurred saying that he didn't want to be remembered for Zeppelin, that he wanted people to focus on the music that he was making now. Linklater went bananas in the article recounting his interaction with the Zep front man. They used Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" instead. I printed out that interview and still have it. Bonus trivia: "Sweet Emotion" and Bob Dylan's "Hurricane" were two of the songs that were in the movie but not on either soundtrack. 

Like I said, I pretty much went all out on the whole 70s aesthetic. I bought a couple of tapestries and a lava lamp. My girlfriend at the time bought me beaded curtains--I was hinting around for months about this--that I put up in our room. And I played these soundtracks over and over and over again. 

These albums contain a lot of popular hits from the 1970s, it was basically a K-TEL Best of the 70s hit collection with a different package. KISS, Black Sabath, The Runaways, Ted Nugent, Peter Frampton, Sweet, The Edgar Winters Group, Black Oak Arkansas, The Steve Miller Band, ZZ Top and more were all part of the set. And a lot of these songs are quite famous and ones that you've heard before if you spent more than ten minutes listening to a classic rock station. But I didn't care, I listened to the over and over and over and over again. 

It got so bad that the one roommate that I was not angry at snapped the CD over his knee. We were all hanging around one night have a few beers and I announced, "I'm putting in Dazed and Confused." He said, "No you're not." "Yes I am, I can do what I want." And he said, "If you put that CD into my stereo (we were in his room) I am going to break it in half." "Fuck you, I'm doing it," was my response. 

I put the disc in the stereo, pressed play and sat down as "Rock N' Roll Hootchie Coo" started blaring out of the speakers. My roommate, Scott, was one of the nicest, most passive (in a good way) guys that I know. He stood up, walked over to the stereo and, true to his word, snapped it over his knee. I was stunned. The room was quiet -- not just because there was no "Rock n Roll Hootchie Coo" but because this was an act of war. What would I do to counter this aggression? I did nothing. I sat there gobsmacked. I wasn't going to beat him up, he was one of my best friends and, to be honest, he did warn me. And it was his CD player. I wasn't going to cry, but when you're broke and having your favorite CD busted in front of you is a tough pill to swallow. 

Scott worked part-time at a record store called the Wall. Their policy was, as long as you have a Wall sticker on the disc casing and if there's something wrong with the CD--no matter what--you can return it for a brand new album. It's an awesome policy, but it probably cost the place millions, which may explain one of the reason why it's no longer in business. After what seemed to be like hours, Scott said, "Before you put the disc in, I had a couple of Wall stickers and put it on the back of the case. I have to work tomorrow, so I'll exchange this for a brand new one. Dude, I just couldn't listen to this shit tonight."

I think that little lesson changed my behavior because sitting there with a broken CD in my hand really sucked. Hearing my friend tell me that the music I was listening to was driving him nuts, sucked. I hope that I became a better person after that incident. I don't know if I did, but I can say that I became a bit more conscious of how things that I like affect other people. 

I still hold a soft spot for this movie. I think I bought three different versions of it on DVD/Blueray, but it's not my favorite movie any more. In fact, I can't recall the last time that I saw it. And to be honest, a lot of emotions come back when I hear the soundtrack or watch the movies. Mostly about the embarrassing way that I acted, how I wasn't always the greatest friend and how obsessed I was about this film. However there are a lot of good memories too; I mean this is an awesome movie. The soundtrack is pretty good. And I did have a lot of fun immersing myself in this world. 

I guess once you leave your teens and 20s, you never find yourself that deep in something anymore. There are bills to pay, work to do and kids to take care of; but every so often it's cool to go back and reminisce about something that you truly and deeply cared about. 

Top 19 -- INXS: Kick

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

When I was in junior high school, I was a good boy. This is not a brag, more of a declaration of fact. I was a member of the National Junior Honor Society, an altar boy and was so consumed by guilt that the mere thought of doing something bad* gave me a stomach ache. Make no mistake, it wasn't that I did good things due to a high moral calling. It's that I was afraid and embarrassed of being caught doing those bad things. 

* Two stories to illustrate my point. One, when I was in seventh grade, I received my first detention because the assistant principal, Mr. Gormaley, caught me running in the halls. I tried explaining that I was late for class, but he didn't care. He wrote me up. By the time I got home, I was so distraught that when I saw my mom, I started bawling uncontrollably over this transgression. "How will Harvard ever accept me now," I wailed. I'm sure my mom rolled her eyes, but she told me that everything was going to be okay and that getting in trouble was part of growing up. My mom was pretty cool, TBH. 

The second story is that pretty much everyone had gone through some sort of kleptomania phase when they were younger. I never did at the "appropriate time". Like I said, I was insanely afraid of getting caught and having to face my family, so I never took anything that wasn't mine. The one day I stole something was in my freshman year At Merrimack College. Every day I'd buy a copy of the Boston Herald and Boston Globe from the school store. There was an issue of the Hockey News next to the papers and on the cover was a picture of the new Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. It was the same jersey as the year before but on the shoulders was a maple leaf patch. For some reason, I had to have it and I didn't feel like paying the $2.50 for the issue. So I placed the News (which was printed tabloid style, so it looked like a newspaper) between the two Boston rags. I paid $1.00 (50 cents for each paper) and walked out the door. After awhile I threw away the Hockey News, but I still feel a twinge of guilt when I think about it. An issue of the Hockey News seems like a pretty lame thing to steal. 

I needed to set the table for this album because in order to fully get why I love it so much, you have to understand where I was at the time I first heard it. Growing up in the 1980s there were three things that I was sure of: AIDS was everywhere, drugs would definitely kill you* and Satanic Panic was real. 

I recall the first time that I heard INXS, it was a night in late March and I wanted to fall asleep, but the hall light was on. Either I had my radio on or my brother did and I heard "Devil Inside" floating over the airwaves. I had no idea who INXS was or where they were from of what they looked like, but I was convinced that they were devil worshipers. I had an idea in my head that even though they didn't sound like a heavy-metal band, what they were singing about definitely made them one. 

* I also thought that Huey Lewis and the News were "definitely into drugs" due to their song, "I Want a New Drug" which obviously glamorized drugs. Huey Lewis and his News might be one of the squarest bands of the 1980s. I'm sure they did drugs, but this song wasn't the 80s version of "White Rabbit". It was just a song about how being in love made you feel. As you can tell, I was a bit of an idiot. But if you read the Guns N' Roses entry, you knew that. 

Even though they had been around for a number of years, INXS blew up during the spring of 1988. "Kick" was massive and was everywhere. The videos for "Devil Inside", "Never Tear Us Apart", "New Sensation", "Mediate" and "Need You Tonight" were constantly run on MTV. The singles were played all over Top 40 radio. It became very apparent very quickly that INXS weren't devil worshippers like W.A.S.P. (it was an acronym for "We Are Satan's People", dontchaknow. And Blackie Lawless sang about fucking like a beast!) obviously was. They were just a fun pop band from Australia who made great hits and interesting looking videos. 

I know that I didn't get this album in the summer of 1988, mostly because I didn't need to. But I probably got this album for Christmas of that year and I wore it out. It was different than the metal that I was listening to at the time (again, see the Guns N' Roses entry for the trio of awesome albums that I first purchased) but "Kick" still rocked. It rocked in a way that Poison or GNR or Kiss or Def Leppard or White Lion didn't. The songs were catchy as hell and even the singles were great. The band did a cover of "The Loved One" that is so awesome, I listen to it a few times a month now, even 32 years later. I won't even bother listening to the original recording because this is the only version that I need. 

Not only did I unequivocally love this album, but it also brought me back to my eighth grade Spanish trip to Montreal (yeah ... I know. Amesbury Middle School was a strange place). Even though I didn't own this tape, I remember listening to it a lot in the hotel room and on the bus trip up to Quebec. This and "Appetite for Destruction" were the two tapes that were played over and over and over again. 

And while Junior High School was the worst three years of my life, when you are an ignored freshman in a big school, it seemed like a fond time. Listening to "Kick" as a ninth grader reminded me of the one truly fun time that I had during those three years. I guess it was my first taste of nostalgia and I liked it. 

This was the only INXS album that I owned, though I was a big fan of their newer albums. I thought that it was cool when my uncle and aunt bumped into band member Andrew Farris when they were in Hawai'i. I was really bummed out when I heard that Michael Hutchence died. My wife and I even watched their reality show when they were trying to find a replacement for Hutchence. They sorta fell through the cracks when people discuss 80s bands, but they shouldn't. They were excellent and an important part of my musical maturation. 

Top 19 -- Guns N' Roses: Appetite for Destruction

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

Looking back with rose colored glasses, one of the things that I liked about living in a pre-Internet world was that as a naive young boy, the world was much more interesting. I believed just about every story that I ever heard. Amesbury High School is a pretty small school in northern Massachusetts, the town sits at about 16,000 and the sports team are meh at best. But I heard two stories of AHS athletes who turned down full-boat athletic scholarships because each wanted to "stay in state due to their girlfriend" and completely believed both of them. Years later I found out that both of those stories weren't true at all. 

I'm not sure why I believe them, but they seemed plausible (at least for one of the guys) and it didn't seem like a malicious rumor (neither one of those guys would have started a rumor about themselves) but I think that I wanted to live in a world where I went to school with two super star athletes who turned down potential fame and fortune for a girl. Not that I would do that. But for someone else, that seemed sorta romantic--though I'd never admit that--and also sorta cool. "Yeah, I could have gone to a Division One school but I decided not too." Lots of self restraint there. At least that's how I looked at it. If this was true, the other perspective is that the athlete was too afraid to test his mettle in the big time. But like I said, this story was not true. 

This belief of off-the-wall stories wasn't just limited to Amesbury High School athletes. If you told me a story about a celebrity, chances are I'd almost 100% believe it. Not only that, but I'd tell the next person I saw. When Guns N' Roses first popped into my universe, they seemed to come out of nowhere. Who were these guys? Why were they dressed like that? Why did they act like that? Why did they look like? They appeared really fucking dangerous. I was in eighth grade when I first experienced GNR and I know that they'd kick my ass for my lunch money. And they were adults. 

They sneered, they appeared completely out of it (I don't think that I understood what being drunk was, never mind being high), they fought every body and they were all skinny and gross. But the most mysterious Gunner was Slash. Slash wasn't his real name, right? What does he even look like, you never get to see him with his mop of hair in his face or that goofy top hat. Like, seriously, who the fuck wore a top hat in 1988? Irony wasn't a heavily traded commodity back then, so the answer to that question is no one. I was top the reason why you never saw Slash's face and the reason why he wore a top hat is because he had AIDS in his face. 

AIDS. In. His. Face. 

Yup. I was such a dum dum, I thought that AIDS can be transmitted to specific body parts and poor Slash had it in his face which is why his hair was always hiding his eyes and nose and ears. Like I said, I pretty much believed anything and I sure as hell bought this. I probably told everyone I knew and I everyone thought that I was a big dipshit, but it's cool. Live and never learn. That's what I say!

Face AIDS aside, I remember buying "Appetite for Destruction", Poison's "Open Up and Say Ahhhh" and Kiss' "Crazy Nights" with my eight grade graduation money. They were the first tapes that I bought that were a bit out of my comfort zone. One tape was pretty terrible, the other one was okay but "Appetite" was incredible. I had never heard anything like that up until then. 

The songs were grimy and slick, enticing and off-putting, electric and aggressive and tough and drugged out and boozy and vulnerable and honest. Axl Rose was like a chameleon in his voice--I was sure that old AIDS face himself, Slash, was singing on "It's So Easy" because Rose didn't look like he could sing like that. I'm not sure what that meant, but I believed it. 

AFD was what I thought an adult album sounded like. There were lots of songs about drugs--though I didn't understand what they were singing about, sex--ditto and swearing. I knew the last part. To be completely honest, I'm not sure if I was ready for this yet, but I dove right into that pool. I can recall one day my brother and I were on the floor of my room playing with Legos and listening to this tape and on "It's So Easy" Axl (or was it Slash, I'll never know) sang loudly, "Why don't you just ... FUCK OFF!" before a guitar solo squealed in. At that very moment my entered my room and asked us a question. I don't recall what she asked about, but I do remember Jay and I looking at each other, eyes wide and mouths agape. 

"Do you think she heard that, By?"

"I think so. She was right here when he screamed it."

"Do you think that we're going to get in trouble?"

"I'm not sure."

I remember wondering whether I'd ever hear this tape again. And I remember trying to come up with an excuse as to why Axl (or Slash) said that and whether I knew about it prior to the purchase of the tape for plausible deniability purposes. But my mother never mentioned it. Ever. I doubt that she even heard it, or if she did, she was cool with it.

But that's the type of kid that I was. At the time, I was still sitting on the floor playing Legos with my nine-year-old brother listening to a tape of depraved junkies sing about the worst parts of humanity that they run into on the streets of Los Angeles. Unlike "Straight Outta Compton" I definitely didn't think that I was a bad ass. I was too young for that. I cared that people thought that I was a good boy, especially adults. I mean, I was still an altar boy during this time in my life* and would be for another year. 

* I've discussed this before, but my first job was working for the church where I served as an altar boy. I got paid $10 a week to open the church before Mass and get it ready for the day's celebration. If I didn't serve, I'd either go hang out at the rectory or sit in the sacristy and listen to my Walkman and wait until Mass ended. One day I was listening to my Walkman and the church pastor** came up to me and asked what I was listening to. I answered, "Kiss". He said, "Oh you mean Knights in Satan's Service?" and I'm sure that I stammered something out, but that made me feel like I was doing something wrong. I mean, he wasn't incorrect, I was doing something wrong (Kiss' "Crazy Night" fucking blows) but Paul, Gene, Bruce and Eric weren't devil worshipers. They were just four dudes who liked wasting money and trying to hold on to some semblance of relevance. 

** About 15 years after this interaction, the priest who asked me about this was found in the middle of the Massachusetts Archdiocese sex scandal. Though he wasn't into kids, he had a fondness for prisoners. He'd go to jail on the first Tuesday (in the article he called it "fresh meat day", which gross) and find his prey. 

No matter how you slice it, "Appetite for Destruction" is on a short list of the best debut albums ever. Guns N' Roses never again reached this level of greatness. They got bloated and couldn't deal with being famous, but for a little while, they were the absolute pinnacle of the rock world. They were mysterious and ubiquitous at the same time. "Sweet Child O' Mine" ran every hour on MTV, yet I knew nothing about them. 

It was a fantastic time to be a fan. 

Kevin Romine 1990 Fleer

On December 21, 2018 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

The BCB sent this bad boy a few days ago.

2019 Notes: This card is the definition of a "bad boy". Look at Romine there, the start of a mullet, mustache (even though by that time a mustache is passé) the squinted eyes staring off into the distance. Romine had all the swagger of a late 80s pro ballplayer. When someone asks you what a late 80s/early 90s back up outfielder looks like, show them this card. 

The passage of time is often times subtle. One day you notice gray hairs, wrinkles on your face and a little more cushion around the stomach. Time has a way of sneaking up on you and screaming “You’re old!” loud enough so that everyone hears. 

Sports is different. Sure there are still subtleties, like your favorite outfielder can’t quite catch up to a fastball anymore or your team’s quarterback can’t throw the ball more than 20 yards at a time. But, like life, then there are the big signs like when age sneaks up and yell at you, like when a player you remember as a rookie has two kids in the major leagues. 

Kevin Romine was a fourth or fifth outfielder for the Red Sox for most of his career. I remember him fighting Randy Kutcher for playing time for a majority of his career, which isn’t how he probably thought his career would end up. But his two kids, Yankee Austin and Tiger Andrew have each played in the league since 2011. 

That’s a long time.  

Anyway, Kevin didn’t have much of a career filled with notoriety. About the only real moment he had was in 1988 he hit a walk off dinger—his first major league homer—off Royals reliever (and future Red Sox) Steve Farr in the midst of Morgan Magic. 

I remember exactly where I was when this happened, when I was a kid I worked for my church. I was an altar boy and I opened the church. When I didn’t have to serve I usually sat in back of the sacristy and listen to my Walkman. Usually Kiss or Poison would be in the tape deck but this day I was listening to the ball game. 

When Romine hit his homer, Mass was still being said and I recall letting out a loud “YES!” which may have disrupted the celebration. 

As far as I know that’s about the only real obvious net positive effect that Romine had on a Sox game even though he played with them four more than four seasons. Yet every time I hear about him or his kids, I think about being an altar boy and then it hits me: that was 30 fucking years ago. 

Time flies, my friends. One day you’re cheering for Kevin Romine and the next your rooting against his kids.


2019: I was talking with my friend the other day and I said that if you ran up to me and asked me what year it was, I'd reflexively say that it was 1998 or something. It actually takes me a moment or two to remember that 2000 was 19 years ago. That there is a generation of kids who don't remember 9/11 or when the Patriots were horrible. Time passes by fast, more quickly than my mind can process sometimes.

I wonder what Romine is most proud of: his career in the majors or that two of his sons have had long careers in baseball? I bet that if push came to shove, he'd say the latter. Wouldn't you?

Good Songs XVIII

Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles

Suck My Kiss – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Cut Your Hair – Pavement

Crush with Eyeliner – REM

Undone (the Sweater Song) – Weezer

Summer Breeze – Seals and Croft

Here and Now – Letters to Cleo

Rock N’ Roll All Nite – KISS

Down With Disease – Phish

Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan

Run Like Hell – Pink Floyd

Would? – Alice in Chains

Do You Feel Like We Do – Peter Frampton

Head Like a Hole – Nine Inch Nails

When I Come Around – Green Day

Crazy – Seal

Type – Living Colour

If I Only Had a Brain – MC 900ft Jesus

For some reason, the theme of television, and to a lesser extent movies, weaves its way through this edition of Good Songs. And that makes sense because TV is awesome. 

When I was a kid—and I’m talking really little, like three or four-years-old—I loved television. I love television now, but when I was a kid, I really loved TV*. However there was one problem with television back when I was younger, at around 1:00 am a majority of TV stations would stop broadcasting--especially the UHF stations (which were the only stations that broadcasted cartoons during the week). At the end of the day, there would be an announcement letting watchers know that the TV station was done with its broadcasting for the day, the National Anthem would play and that was it. Sometimes there was static, other times there was a test pattern.

If you’re too young or woke up after 6:00, a test pattern looked like this:

I’d wake up really early (5:00 or 5:30 am) and run into my parents room and demand that they’d turn on the small TV that sat on a little table at the foot of their bed. Chances are I wanted to watch New Zoo Revue or Romper Room or Underdog, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to watch TV, however there was no TV to watch. The only thing that was on was the test pattern. So I’d watch that for an hour (I thought that the test pattern was a show and I called it “The Wheel”) and wait for real shows to come on. The good thing was that WLVI was kind enough to simulcast an easy-listening AM radio station while their test pattern was running.

* My kids are just as obsessed with TV as I was, to the dismay of my wife. I understand their fascination and I do my best to stop them from watching so much TV, because I guess TV is bad for you (though I don't believe that at all). But it’s almost impossible to change something that is hard-coded into their DNA. Sorry about that Aly, at least they aren’t watching digital paint dry.

While watching The Wheel the one song that I most recall listening to was “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles. As a kid I loved this song and I thought that it was programmed specifically to coincide with the early morning when the sun rose. I can vaguely recall sitting at the end of my parents’ bed (they were asleep, or at least they had their eyes closed) staring at the tube and once this song came out, I’d look out the window to see if the sun was rising yet. The way I have it in my head, this song meant cartoons were coming on soon (after a message alerting us that the broadcasting day was beginning, the National Anthem and a daily prayer). But that's probably not 100% true.

This is one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs and I’m sure it has a lot to do about my initial exposure to the tune. I’m 40-years-old and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t get a half second of excitement that cartoons are going to be on real soon when my brain recognizes that first guitar chord. But it’s not just that, at the same time I’m getting that cartoon anticipation, I also feel a warmth that I don’t get too much any more. The warmth one has when they’re three-years-old and they’re sitting cross-legged at the foot of their sleeping parents’ bed. I hope that my children get that feeling 20 or 30 years from now and they run across an old episode of “My Little Pony” or “Avengers Assemble” and remember watching TV together in mom and dad's bed.

Speaking of obsessions, as I was looking over this play list I noticed that there were three songs from the “Dazed and Confused” movie soundtrack. Like I said in my last entry, I was completely consumed by this movie, so it’s really no surprise that I included this many songs on one tape.

“Rock N’ Roll All Nite” is a defensible entry, I think at this point it’s beat out NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” or Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” as the song that’s been on the most Good Songs tapes. Although the live version is much better (Ace’s guitar solo is so awesome, I can’t believe they didn’t add it to the studio version) the studio version is fun too. I probably have listened to this song over 10,000 in my life and today was the first time I noticed that someone screams “Woo!” at the 1:53 mark. KISS, you always surprise!

When it comes to Peter Frampton, I was influenced by Janeanne Garofolo’s character in “Reality Bites” who said that everyone had that album. Also, it’s a pretty good song. It almost makes me want to see Frampton in concert. Again, defensible entry.

But “Summer Breeze”? I’m not sure what I was thinking here. I could say that I added as a mood changer, slow the tape down, in case I was with a lady and we were staring at my lava lamp and relaxing to some good songs. But that never happened. I could say that, like “Here Comes the Sun”, it harkened back to my days of watching the Wheel. And there’s some truth to that, I suppose. But I guess I really just liked this song, which is kind of embarrassing.

When it comes to finding the “next big thing”, I’m not that great. I was terrible at prospecting baseball cards*, a lot of the TV shows that I jump on early usually get cancelled and bands that I think have the whole package usually are one-hit wonders. Letters to Cleo was one of those bands that I thought were going to be gigantic and they never received any notoriety aside from this single. I remember seeing their video on MTV and just being blown away. 

* For those that don’t know, prospecting baseball cards involve finding a rookie at a low price, buying as many of the same cards as you possibly could and then when the rookie turns into a Hall of Famer, selling that stack of cards for a tidy profit. This never worked out for me and I’m stuck with dozens of Mike Greenwells, Wally Joyners and Todd Benzingers.

My take on LTC was that they had a really pretty vocalist (Kay Hanley) who sang well and looked great on camera, good musicianship and well-written songs. They came from Boston (always a plus in my book) and made a splash on MTV when women were making huge strides in the rock world. I bought their debut “Aurora Gory Alice” and was impressed with what I heard, unfortunately no one else was and they kind of faded into the ether of the 90s.

Hanley is a die-hard Red Sox fan, so she’s fun to follow on Twitter especially during baseball season. She’s a favorite of Peter Gammons and will perform at his annual Hot Stove Cool Music festival in Boston and Hanley writes the music for the kids’ show Doc McStuffins – which is where I hear her the most now. On the TV show “Parks and Recreation” one of the characters (Ben) wore a LTC t-shirt and they regrouped for a special Pawnee concert.

Oh well, like Todd Benzinger, Letters to Cleo had their moments too.

Quick hits:

There’s only one song on this playlist that I don’t particularly like any more and that’s Green Day’s “When I Come Around”. Like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m just sick of Green Day being ubiquitous. I don’t even care that they are “serious artists” now, that’s an inevitability. You can’t be a 40-year-old married dude with a couple of kids and still act like an irresponsible 23-year-old. People would see right through that and it’s a pretty pathetic mask. After the release of “American Idiot”, I needed a Green Day time-out. Ten years later I still do.

Is there a better name than MC 900ft Jesus? I wish that he was more popular. We need more 900ft Jesuses.

“Cut Your Hair” is still my favorite song on this tape—and did ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption ever admit that they stole that show’s opening theme from Pavement? It’s the same damn song and someone (probably Stephen Malkmus) needs reparations! One of my friends was a die-hard Pavement fan from the very beginning. I told him that I wanted to buy “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain” because I liked CYH. He told me that I wouldn’t like the tape, everything else was way different. He wasn’t being a jerk about his assessment but I took it the wrong way and it only emboldened me to buy the tape and prove to him that I liked Pavement.

He was right, I didn’t like it that much. It’s weird how when you’re younger innocent remarks like what my friend said could get under your skin and how you need to prove to others that they were wrong. There are a lot of great things about being young, but things like this aren’t one of them. 

Good Songs XVII

Would? – Alice in Chains

Sabotage – The Beastie Boys

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds – The Beatles

Tones of Home – Blind Melon

Cannonball – The Breeders

Fire Woman – The Cult

Peace Frog – The Doors

Box of Rain – Grateful Dead

Rock N’ Roll All Nite – KISS

Alison’s Starting to Happen – The Lemonheads

My Sister – The Juliana Hatfield Three

Is There Any Love in Your Heart – Lenny Kravitz

LA Medly – Jane’s Addiction

Dazed and Confused – Led Zeppelin

Some Day I Suppose – Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town – Pearl Jam

Fee – Phish

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic – The Police

End of the World as We Know It – REM

Rocket – Smashing Pumpkins

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes

Fire – Jimi Hendrix

This is a very long (over an hour and a half) Good Songs mix, so I’m starting to write this entry as I’m listening to it. Technically this is a no-no, but since it’s my blog, I’ll allow it.

I recorded this mix in the spring of 1994 and when I was thinking of college-era Good Songs tapes, this is what I was thinking of. A good mix of newer grunge-era stuff, mixed with some older stuff. The good news is that aside from one song, there’s nothing there’s nothing really embarrassing. In fact, a vast majority of these songs appear on upcoming Good Songs, so this is kind of the back bone of the next generation of Good Songs.

That translates into, what I was listening to when I was 20 is basically what I’ve been listening to for the rest of my life. In retrospect, that’s more than a little depressing. The one thing that jumps out at me about this mix is that there is no rap or hip-hop. Another thing that jumps out at me is that the tracks (aside from Hendrix) are listed alphabetically by artist – which answers my question from earlier today, “Why did I start this mix off with Alice in Chains?” I like AIC, a lot actually, but I don’t remember liking them that much that I’d start a Good Songs with them.

Since the track listing is not based on how I was feeling, but the alphabet and these songs repeat in subsequent editions of the Good Song catalong, I’m going write out 24 quick thoughts (FIVE bonus thoughts!) on these 24 songs.

Alice in Chains – if there is a quintessential song that not only sums up the mid 90s and the zeitgeist that surrounds it, AIC’s “Would?” does the trick. AIC was one of the four most popular groups from the Pacific Northwest and this song is featured prominently in Cameron Crowe’s ode to Seattle “Singles”. With its tuned-down guitars and lyrics that are dark, depressing and full of self-involved angst, it perfectly captures the mindset of Generation X. Layne Staley essentially heroined himself to death a few years later, which also captures the mindset of that same generation.

The Beastie Boys – this is my favorite video ever. And there’s nothing even close. But when I think of the group, I think about the two times I saw them live: once at a gym at the University of New Hampshire (with the Rollins Band and Ice Cube’s group Da Lench Mob opening) and once at Lollapalooza. The former site was excellent, the latter was a dystopian hellscape that actually featured the death of a concert goer. In 1994 Lollapalooza was held at the Quonset State Airport in Quonset, RI. It felt like 100 degrees, there was no shade, no water and most of us were completely dehydrated thanks to the amount of alcohol we consumed in the 50-mile traffic jam on the way to the show. The lineup was awesome: A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, the Breeders, L7, Smashing Pumpkins and Georgeo Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars. The venue sucked. Hard.

The Beatles – pretty good band from Liverpool. Or so I’m told. This is their first appearance on a Good Songs tape and I’m sure the lads are touched. A real crowning achievement in their careers. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is the greatest psychedelic song ever recorded. Like the B-Boy’s “Sabotage” video, nothing comes close.

Blind Melon – the death of BM’s lead singer, Shannon Hoon disproves the axiom that the death of lead singer increases a band’s popularity. Blind Mellon released another album after this one (this is the one with the Bee Girl song, “No Rain) but it did nothing and people remember this band for their Bee Girl mascot. Hoon also shows up as a background singer in the Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t Cry” video, so there’s that.

The Breeders -  I still enjoy this song. The bass line is infectious and I like to think that lead singer Kim Deal is singing to an actual cannonball. Or some guy doing a cannonball in a public pool. There’s probably some real interpretation to what the cannonball represents, but there are times where I like the Sigmund Freud version: “Sometimes a cannonball is just a cannonball.” Due to seeing this video (conservative estimate) over a thousand times, I think that even though the drummer in this band is a dude, I have a feeling that he used to get the crapped kicked out of him by the rest of his band mates on a regular basis.

The Cult – I think that the name “The Cult” is among the best names for a band. I don’t know whether it has to do with an extreme form of fandom or whether it harkens to spooky, mind-controlly type guru thing from the 60s, but loving a band is a lot like being in a cult. Especially when you’re young. I remember getting all fired up if someone said they thought the Doors sucked. The Doors! “How could you not like the Doors,” I’d wail. “They’re awesome!” And then I’d make up some bullcrap about how Jim Morrison redefined the role of rock star, was a thinking man’s* front man and how the rest of the band were extremely talented musicians (true). Then I’d start attacking the other person’s favorite band. Get a grip 20-year-old Byron, it’s just a band. Who cares?

* Yes, I actually once said that. God.

The Doors – I mumbled something about the Doors in a previous paragraph.

Grateful Dead – I have a couple of very long and thoughtful paragraphs about a band’s fans and how that can have an adverse reaction to that particular band’s music. But I think that I’m going to save that until I reach the Dave Matthews portion of the Good Songs universe – and that’s coming. But it’s hard to get past Deadheads (especially when you’re in college) and the Grateful Dead. This is a really sweet song that invokes a lot of things that one should be: a sense of community, sharing, helping out a person in need. And it’s not overly preachy too, which is nice. Juxtapose this with the scene in “Freaks and Geeks” where Lindsay is dancing in her room and you feel good about listening to this song. But talk to a Deadhead about this song (or any Dead song) and you’ll be lead down a labyrinth of bootlegs, concerts that occurred before you were born and minutia. Forest for the trees guys, forest for the trees*.

* That’s just not a Huey Lewis and the News song either.

Kiss – you know how I feel about Kiss. I don’t think that I need to restate my thoughts on this band. But I will say this, the only reason this song is included on this tape is because I was going through my incredibly annoying “Dazed and Confused” phase. To say that I was compulsively obsessed with that movie is just scratching the surface. I often wondered where the characters were right then (not the actors, the characters). Did they go to college? Did they leave their town? Did they enjoy the Aerosmith concert? How did the football team do that season? How did the coming of punk influence the incoming freshmen? The first thing I looked up on a search engine wasn’t porn (that would probably be the second), it was “Dazed and Confused”. And while I was thinking about the characters, I did everything I could to warp back to those times: lava lamps, beaded doors, the music, TV shows on Nick at Nite, it’s probably why I was equally obsessed with “Sabotage”. I felt as if I was a man out of my own time.

The Lemonheads – this was the first and only real band that played a concert at our college in the four years I went there. And it was the day after Kurt Cobain shot and killed himself, so there was a rumor that Evan Dando wasn’t going to show up, you know, out of respect for Cobain. I managed to get really wasted, almost fight someone in the mosh pit and spent a lot of time screaming for them to play “Mrs. Robinson” (they did not). Oh yeah, I had a friend, who didn’t go to college at Merrimack, came to visit me and got so incredibly wasted that instead of passing out in my room (like he said that he would) he walked 10 miles to his girlfriend’s house. He did not inform me of this change in plans until I found a note on my desk hours after the show ended – for awhile, I thought he was dead.  It was an eventful night. Years later I made a mix CD for my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time. This was the first song on the tape. I’m lucky she thought it was sweet.

Juliana Hatfield – if you were a woman and could play guitar, the early 90s were your salad days. I don’t think that there has ever been a time in popular music where women were so welcome to the show and weren’t treated primarily as sex objects. That being said, I had a big crush on Juliana Hatfield -- especially the image at the top of this entry. Feminism only goes so far, I guess.

Lenny Kravitz – as far as Lenny Kravitz songs goes, this is probably the best one out there. If that’s not damning with faint praise, I don’t know what is. From my understanding Kravitz is a notorious lady killer (I don’t mean that literally). But in this song he takes the point of view of jilted lover. He does a pretty good job of bitching and complaining about all the things she did to him. I bet Lisa Bonet tells people she doesn’t like this song, but really loves it. “Fuck you Lenny. How do you like it? Asshole.”

Jane’s Addiction – around this time, I really got into Jane’s Addiction. And this song was on a rarities album that my friend found in some rare record shop in Boston that cost at least $40 (big money back then). I downloaded it off iTunes for $1.29 a year ago. TECHNOLOGY! The beginning of the song is a cover the Doors’ “LA Woman” (which is still my favorite Doors song) and includes “Nausea” by X and “Lexicon Devil” by the Germs. At the time it married my two favorite bands and I still dig it. 

Led Zeppelin – this isn’t one of my favorite Zep songs, I guarantee I chose it because the movie was named after it. Man.

Mighty, Mighty Bosstones – in 1997 I was working at a job that I despised for a company that I hated. There was no email or internet connection (I worked for a bank and they were afraid we’d smuggle secrets out, I guess, no one knew who the internet worked back then) but we were able to listen to the radio. Most days I listened to Howard Stern in the morning (really low) and in the afternoon WBCN would come on and play music. This summer the MMBs blew up with the song “The Impression That I Get” and one day the DJ came on the air after the song and said, “Years from now when you hear this song, the first thing that pops into your mind will be the Summer of 1997.” And you know what, he’s right. Even when I hear another song by the MMB, that particular time pops into my head. I am so damn suggestible sometimes. I would have made a great cult member.

Nirvana and Pearl Jam – in 1994 if you were to ask someone who the more popular band was; Pearl Jam or Nirvana, I bet more would choose the former. Whether you base on album sales, concert sales or just accessibility, Pearl Jam was the clear winner, this is something that Bill Simmons writes about every so often. Pearl Jam had a friendly second album (“Vs.” over “In Utero”) and they were riding high. Cobain was unreliable, had a horrible wife and released an album meant to alienate fans*. Then Cobain shot himself and instantly became the martyred voice of a generation. Pearl Jam soldiered on, doing what they do and some how got slagged for not having a band member kill himself. It sucked that Cobain killed himself for a number of reasons (and this was always going to happen, I think) but the worst part was that there were a lot of “conversations” about what it meant to be a rock star and what were a rock star’s responsibilities and crap like that. Then OJ Simpson killed his wife and a waiter and everyone forgot about Kurt Cobain.

* I’ve read that In Utero was recorded to be the opposite of the “Nevermind”, in other words less poppy and relatable, because Cobain had grown to despise his new audience. The ones who were singing along to the chorus “Here we are now, entertain us” were the types of kids that beat the crap out of him when he was younger. While I’m sure he appreciated the irony, he knew that the audience were completely unaware.

Phish – I went to school with two guys with the last name Fee. They were both really funny, really cool dudes. I pray that’s the reason why I put this song on this tape because Phish is not my type of band. Though I will say that my skin still crawls when I hear the line, “Sliced him on the nipple” followed by a piece of paper being ripped. That’s just some good production, Vermont hippies.

The Police – I just finished a really good biography of the Clash called “Fashion is the Passion”. One of the things that made me laugh is just how much the Clash hated the Police. One example is when the replacement drummer for Topper Headon (I’m pretty sure it was Pete Howard) was brought on, he was on the bus minding his own business listening to a Police tape. The Clash’s manager bitched him out for a solid two hours, the dude was almost in tears. This is a good song though and I really like the ending parts where Sting is singing “There’s a big enough umbrella, but it’s always me that ends up getting wet” over and over like a mantra. That’s some self-loathing any kid can get behind.

REM – in 1995 I saw REM in concert because I thought that everyone in that band was going to be dead within two years. They were not and the concert was actually pretty good and the coolest part was the next day I went on-line to an REM usenet group where I was able to get a bootleg of the concert from some girl in Chicago. That’s when I realized that the Internet was going to be a big thing. The opening act of the REM show was none other than Radiohead. I’m not sure if they played “Creep” but if they didn’t, I was probably pissed.

Smashing Pumpkins – I never knew whether the word “smashing” in Smashing Pumpkins was a verb or an adjective. There is a huge difference. I saw them at Lollapalooza with the Beasties in Rhode Island and they were terrible. Their sound was shitty, they seemed drugged out, they just didn’t care.  Lead singer and Smashing Svengali Billy Corgan made guitarist James Iha tap dance for us, which seemed incredibly demeaning. Until the Pumpkins broke into the collective conscious in 1993, they were always this weird, ethereal, mysterious group. As much as I loved “Siamese Dream”, I kind of liked it that way better.

Urban Dance Squad – when I was in high school I really wanted this tape, but didn’t have a set of wheels. I would bug my friend to drive me to the mall (about a half hour away) and see if Sam Goody or Record Town or Tape World got “Mental Floss for the Globe”. More often than not, they didn’t. One fine day, one of those places did and I will never forget my friend’s words, “I hope that this tape is fucking awful.” Even if it was (it kind of was) I would tell him how great it was. Pretty much every day. I’m a hell of a good friend.

Violent Femmes – this band and especially this song is so college, the Violent Femmes Greatest Hits CD should come with every acceptance letter.

Jimi Hendrix – I’ve written over 2900 words. I can’t write anything about anything any more. Sorry Rover. San Dimas High School Football Rules!