Good Songs XXIII

I Can’t Even Tell – Soul Asylum

Hurricane – Bob Dylan

Sex Type Thing – Stone Temple Pilots

Hey Joe – Jimi Hendrix

Connection – Elastica

My Hero Zero – Lemonheads

Disarm – Smashing Pumpkins

No Woman, No Cry – Bob Marley

Stand – REM

The Summer Wind – Frank Sinatra

The Maestro – The Beastie Boys

LA Medley – Jane’s Addiction

Linger – The Cranberries

Night of the Living Baseheads – Public Enemy

Love Rears Its Ugly Head – Living Colour

Fire Woman – The Cult

Cut Your Hair – Pavement

Warped – Red Hot Chili Peppers

I Will Follow – U2

This edition of Good Songs is a continuation of the last edition of Good Songs, complete with the TV Theme Songs* between every other song. It was created in the Summer of 1996 when I didn’t have much to worry about other than starting a career, getting out of my parents’ house, wondering if I’d ever find a girlfriend and battling the ennui of being done with school.

* I still can’t believe that I spent about $100 buying a bunch of TV theme song CDs. I mean I guess that I can believe it; I love television and this is something that I’d totally do (and in fact, did). But I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish here. I wouldn’t play them at a party, that’s insane. I wouldn’t listen to them over and over and over again like a Beatles CD, that’s even crazier. Best case scenario: I’d listen to discs once and put them back on the CD shelf. God damn, 1996 Byron, you sure knew how to waste money.

Even though my birthday is in September—and for the most part I don’t like my birthday—I love September. Football starts, baseball season is coming to a head and as much as I enjoyed my summers, by mid-August I was bored and wanted to get back to school (both high school and college). Despite coming at the end of summer/beginning of fall, September has an air of regeneration and newness.

Going to class was enjoyable because of the promise of actually sticking to a resolution that you were going to “bear down this year and get back on track”. Playing on a sports team was fun because the weather was nice and you didn’t totally despise your teammates quite yet. Going to parties (usually outdoors) was awesome because of the weather and the fact that you actually had things to talk about. Not to mention that there were new girls to talk to; a whole class of new girls that just started school—girls that might not have any idea of who you are and who might think you’re cool because you’re older.

This September freshness wilted as the days got shorter, but whenever I think of a time being completely happy, content and full of hope, I’m usually picturing some time in September.

September 1996 was different. For 17 years, it was engrained in my consciousness that September is when I was supposed to go back to school. But it didn’t happen that year because I graduated college in May. School was over for me, summer had passed and I was unemployed and alone.

A few years before I graduated college, my friend Brownie and I were playing Sega and bitching about the women at our colleges—as guys are wont to do. His older brother, who had graduated from college that year, heard us complaining and said something to the effect of, “college is the best place to find a girlfriend; they’re all  your age, you have a ton in common with them, they’re in the same income bracket and they’re literally all around you. When you graduate, it’s hard to find girls with the same interests.”

That bit of information stuck with me and now that I was out of college, it scared me. I had no idea where to meet women*, for so many years scores of girls were all around me. Now I was back home and there was no one. And even if there was a woman that I liked, I didn’t have the confidence to speak to her (no job and living with mom and dad will do that to a guy), so I was in the moebius strip of wanting a girl, but not being able to talk to one**.

* There was a farm stand about a few miles from my house. One day after I went to the gym (I went to the gym a lot because I was so bored) I stopped there to buy a Gatorade. The girl who worked there was cute and I couldn’t get the nerve up to ask her out. So even though it was out of my way, I’d stop by there every day to buy a Gatorade all with the intent of asking her out. I’d pound the drink on the way home and throw the empty bottle on the passenger side, vowing not o clean up the mess until I asked her out. I dumped the bottles three weeks later, numberless.

** The college I went to was about a half-hour from my house and the bars where we used to drink were about the same distance. Thursday nights were the big bar nights and I had a lot of fun going to these holes-in-the-wall and blowing off steam. During the Autumn of 1996, it would be about 11:00 at night, I’d be lying in bed and I’d legitimately wonder if I could make it to one of these bars for last call. Just stop by have a drink, talk to old friends and see where the night took me. I’m glad I never did it because that would have been the worst mistake of my life. Just thinking about it now is embarrassing as hell.

On the first day of school I sat in my house by myself. My parents were at work, my brother was starting his college experience in Western Massachusetts and none of my friends were around. I felt lonely and useless, as if I should be going somewhere or doing something, contributing to the betterment of myself or society. At the very least I should be experiencing something cool, like traveling across country or bumming around Europe for a month. But I was too afraid to do either of those things by myself*. There was a lot of shoe gazing and pity partying.

* I wish I had more courage during that time in my life to travel more. It’s the one thing I regret most.   

I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, ashamed that I was delivering pizzas without any direction. Fighting that feeling in my belly that it was time to go back to learning, that vacation was over until next summer. Looking back, the problem wasn’t that I was unsure about an unsettled future, it was that I had no schedule. One of the things that I like about school was that it was a structured environment; you get up, you go to class, you come home, you do homework, lather, rinse, repeat. I’m a person who abhors surprises and cherishes regularity. That September I was set adrift without any sort of roadmap. I’d try to convince myself that I missed the learning or I missed my friends (both true) but what I really missed was the day-to-day monotony. When every day is a vacation from the norm, nothing is really special.

To cheer myself up, I would drive to Hampton Beach with my dog and go for a walk. Since it was September, there was barely anyone there—even in the middle of the day. My dog and I would take long walks where I would glumly think about my future. The summer work schedule of 4:00 – 8:00 pm, so idyllic a month ago, was a cruel reminder of how pointless my life was. Eventually September turned into October which turned into 1997 and things got on track; I found a job, I moved out, the life of not being a student became normal. I guess that I grew up, but listening to these songs again brings me back to that time of complete and total uncertainty.

I know that Beck’s “Loser” is often held as the anthem for slackerdom, but Soul Asylum’s “I Can’t Even Tell” might be a better representation of that ethos. It has the same unattached point of view of the singer’s life mixed with a sense of frustration that Loser doesn’t posses. Loser seems proud of it’s title, while Soul Asylum lead singer David Pirner seems to be genuinely confused and unsure of what his life has become. This is confusion is seen from the singer osculating from accepting and almost celebrating his lot in life (“No one sees what I see, this is my blessing”) to wailing about his existence (“Is that what life’s about? I can’t even tell.”).

Yes, it’s typical 90s navel gazing wrapped in a clichéd “thoughtful” approach to the examined life and its minutia—this was the main theme for Kevin Smith’s first film “Clerks”—but at this time in my life, it felt as if this song was speaking directly to me. In the mid-90s, the intelligent approach to pop culture was always to be depressing, which is a simplified generalized statement, but it was true. The good bands sang depressing songs, good films were about depressing subjects, same with books and stand-up comedy were rants about how the world was completely fucked up. Even the fashion of the day was depressing, bulky sweaters and flannels for the ladies, same for the guys. The only thing that was still bright and shiny was TV, but that was considered a wasteland full of vapid, pretty people with idiot problems. Yes, there were plenty of other cultural touchstones that celebrated fun and enjoyment but it wasn’t taken too seriously. To be depressed meant you were thoughtful and serious and caring.

It’s no wonder I spent a good part of 1996 completely bombed or depressed.

Here are some quick hits before I hang myself with a guitar string:

The Lemonheads: I chose this song because Schoolhouse Rocks was something that I really loved as a kid. And without YouTube, this was literally the only way that I was going to be able to hear those songs again. I’m writing a blog series about a bunch of old mix tapes, so you know that I’m pretty interested in nostalgia. Here’s another example. And Evan Dando and Melissa Auf der Maur (one-time bassist for Hole) have a pretty fun give-and-take during this song. It’s bouncy, it’s sugary, it sounds like a lot of fun—like watching five straight hours of TV on a Saturday morning fueled by bowls of Trix and Lucky Charms.

Bob Marley: I already wrote about him, but I cannot hear this song without thinking of the scene from “The Office” (American version) where receptionist Erin (played by the awesome Ellie Kemper) emphasized the wrong words and added misplace punctuation to the song’s title, completely changing the meaning: “No, woman. No cry.” I’m sure that’s exactly what Marley had in mind.

REM: at first listen, this would be a song that I wasn’t too keen on. It was a little too shiny and happy for this person. But along came “Get A Life”, which was a TV show from the early 90s about a psychotic grown-man (the brilliant Chris Elliot) who lived with his parents and had a paper route and everything changed. “Stand” was the theme song for this TV show* and it beautiful juxtaposed what the show was about with the cheerfulness of the tune. I heard the song enough that I grew to like the song on its own merits.

* I was trying so hard to be so clever, a full TV theme song on a tape littered with TV theme songs? You rascal! Ugh.  

Frank Sinatra: this was before the whole “Swingers” fad swept the nation. I genuinely liked Sinatra, Dean Martin and the entire Rat Pack because it was so much different than what was popular during those days. My friend Brownie also liked them too and we’d listen to the Best of Sinatra while aimlessly driving around Amesbury in his 1978 (I think) Chevy Malibu. Once we took a ride with one of our friends to Hampton Beach and blasted it while cruising the strip. “We’re never going to get girls now,” my friend moaned from the backseat. You’re right Sluf, it was Frank Sinatra that was stopping you from getting laid that night. BTW, there is no doubt that this was my favorite Sinatra song because Martin Prince sang it on "The Simpsons". Man, I don't think anything has had more of an influence on me. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers: this is the only album that former Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro played on and it was a huge departure from RHCP’s normal funky, bass-soaked sound. I may be one of the only people who really enjoyed the hard, fast, guitar rocking direction of “One Hot Minute” because it’s universally ignored by RHCP fans. Bass solos can go straight to hell.

U2: this was U2’s first US single and I still think it’s one of their best songs. It’s not completely self-indulgent, it’s not overly serious, it doesn’t have something bigger to say; it’s just a good rock song. I don’t even know if Bono can write a song like this anymore (I seriously doubt it) but I wish that he would. Actually, strike that, I don’t wish that he would, I wish that U2 would just be done. There’s no need for bands to be closing in on 35 years of making music, that’s just overstaying your welcome.

Good Songs XXI

Stop – Jane’s Addiction

How Many More Times – Led Zeppelin

Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver – Primus

Tomorrow – Silverchair

Waiting for the Sun – The Doors

Evenflow – Pearl Jam

Hey Joe – Jimi Hendrix

Root Down – The Beastie Boys

Fortunate Son – Credence Clearwater Revival

No Woman, No Cry – Bob Marley

Can’t Even Tell – Soul Asylum

Live Forever – Oasis

Stutter – Elastica

Where Did You Go? – Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Shakedown Street – Grateful Dead

Territorial Pissings – Nirvana

My Wave – Soundgarden

Sex Type Thing – Stone Temple Pilots

Rhinoceros – Smashing Pumpkins

Deeper Shade of Soul – Urban Dance Squad

Spin the Bottle – Juliana Hatfield

NOTE: After I got done posting Tuesday’s Good Songs entry, it occurred to me that I made that tape right before I left for summer break between Freshman and Sophomore years in college. So, technically that entry should have been listed as the 17^th edition of Good Songs. I hope that this mistake doesn’t ruin the entire Good Songs experiment for you.

This playlist has a little bit of everything: classic grunge (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden), classic rock (Led Zeppelin, the Doors, the Dead), 90s British Invasion (Oasis, Elastica) even some crap (Silverchair).

Even if you don’t remember the band Silverchair, you’ll probably recall their most famous song, “Tomorrow”. And that’s because of the infectious chorus, “You’re going to wait too, fat boy. Wait for tomorrow.” I’m not sure why the lads (and these were Aussie teens, when this song came out the lead singer was 15-years-old which accounts for the terrible lyrics) had to get so personal with the chorus, but maybe that’s why it was one of the decades most memorable. Or maybe because the chorus was just so awful.

When historians look at history’s eras and epochs, the most challenging thing that they encounter is finding a definitive moment when an empire ends. Many people agree that the ending of the Roman Empire was in the 4^th Century when the Barbarians sacked Rome. Though you could probably counter that argument and say when the empire was split in two was the beginning of the end.  Or you could even point to the decades upon decades of insane emperors using the coffers of Rome as their personal band and its citizens as their personal concubine as a point when things went south. The point is unless you’re debating about the end of 80s metal era—and we all know that began around the time that Warrant busted out their first canister of AquaNet—determining when the milk goes sour is not easy.

When it comes to Grunge, many have argued that Creed was the Warrant of its day (or the barbarian horde) that destroyed 90s rock and they wouldn’t be wrong. That’s because most sane people hate Creed and love to blame stuff on them—personally, I blame Scott Stapp for ISIS. But for Patient X, you have to go all the way back to 1995 and Silverchair. Even Courtney Love, a person who can barely remember the Clinton administration, said, “So this young guy from Silverchair looks like my dead husband and sings like Eddie Vedder- how lame!” in 1995.* And guess what, she was right.

* I found this quote on a Silverchair fan site that was created using AngelFire. I love the ultranet, which is what my brother used to call the internet. But if I’m carefully maintaining an AngelFire fan site for Silverchair, this may not be the quote that I’d use. It kinda makes people think your favorite band sucks.

Silverchair isn’t the first grunge band that was accused of not being authentic (hello Stone Temple Pilots), but they were the first where the accusation stuck. And for 1995, that was a pretty big deal. After the Milli Vanilli and C+C Music Factory “controversies” of the early 90s, it was important for music acts to be authentic, or to at least give the appearance of being real. It didn’t just affect rock acts, hip hop artists were always touting their realness and where they came from. I don’t know whether Silverchair was or wasn’t “real” enough but I do know that they didn’t have another hit in them. After this song fizzled, they went back to a place where women glow and men plunder.

Speaking of poseurs, I’d like to tell you that I first heard Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” after I picked up a copy of “Natty Dread” from a second-hand record store. But I didn’t. I found out about this song the old fashioned way, by noticing that everyone on my freshman floor had Marley’s “Legend” and then running out to buy the cassette. Then, for a couple of weeks, I was “really into reggae and Marley” even though I had only one tape and a nickel bag.

I will say that I did not go the whole nine yards, I never bought a gigantic poster of Bob Marley smoking a spliff, nor did a buy a “drug rug” from the hippies selling overpriced crap in the Merrimack College quad. My only real crime was liking a greatest hits album.

And that’s the thing that sucks about “Legend”, everyone has it in their music collection and everyone is judged by it. But at the same time, it’s a really great greatest hits album and it was a jumping off point for a lot of people to get into reggae. That’s not a bad thing. 

I’ve written a lot about how women took a more assertive role with their lyrics during the 90s, but I think that Elastica’s “Stutter” is a great example of that. I can’t think of too many songs about impotency, much less one that’s as catchy as “Stutter”, but Elastica was able to take a topic that no guy (or even girl) would openly talk about and then sing about it from the female’s perspective. And it wasn’t a mopey tune about how it was the woman’s fault. The dude got drunk and couldn’t get it up and the women from Elastica were pissed because they were ready for action.

Another song on this tape that was about female empowerment was Juliana Hatfield’s “Spin the Bottle”. The difference between this song and “Stutter” was that Elastica took control of the situation while Hatfield’s song juxtaposed the chance of entering into a sexual relationship with her crush through a child’s game with her straight-forward thoughts. “She is such a sucker he (her potential paramour) don’t want to fuck her.”

Again, in an institution where women are traditionally ornaments, it was exciting to get a perspective from these “ornaments”. There was a lot of jokes made in the 1990s about the “sensitive male”, the guy who was the antithesis of the “fuck first, ask questions later” tradition of how a man should act. And that perception seemed to be true as rock stars and other male celebrities tended to care more about women’s feelings (at least publicly) but what wasn’t as highly reported* was the way that women also took control of their perceptions too, turning from shy violets to a person with opinions and perspectives.

* And yes, there was that one overly-cartoon character of the big-boned woman, usually named Roxanne or Big Bertha, who was loud, obnoxious and took what she wanted. But that’s not Hatfield or Elastica lead singer Justine Frischmann, they were “regular” women who wanted to be treated fairly.

The popular tide was turning and women were being looked upon as the rational ones, the intelligent ones, the ones who used reason to handle problems. Guys were starting to become the cavemen, the dingbats, the person who wasn’t in control of their emotions. In the coming decades, other media followed suit as the man-child (think of the main characters from most of Judd Apatow or Adam Sandler movies, or the male stars of most CBS sitcoms) took center stage. Father no longer knew best, but he did know who all the characters in the Mos Eisley Cantina were. 

The tables were being turned in the 90s and it wasn’t just in rock. I can remember feeling uncomfortable when Salt N’ Peppa were at their peak. They were doing what men were doing for years, turning the opposite sex into mere objects. But this time, I wasn’t the one doing the ogling, it was women and they were looking at dudes who were in far better shape, packed more in the pants (according to Salt N’ Peppa) and who could “fuck like a volcano” (which is an awesome line from Liz Phair’s hit “Supernova”).

It wasn’t until sometime later did it occurred to me that women were probably insanely uncomfortable in 1980s when videos from David Lee Roth or Whitesnake or practically any popular band had a gigantically chested, over-sexed, impossibly hot bikini model frolicking over a car (“Here I Go” video) or on some “nerd” (“Hot For Teacher”) or with pastry (“Cherry Pie”). As a pubescent boy, I loved those images. As a father of two girls, I wonder what it did to the sanity of the girls who watched those videos every day.

I’m not saying that the rampant sexism in the 80s (and earlier) was wrong, it was a part of its time. And I definitely did not choose these songs for this tape because it made some sort of feminism statement. If that was the case, there would be a lot more Tori Amos on this tape and that would be the worst. What I am saying is that when females finally grabbed control of the conversation and discussed sexuality and relationships openly and honestly (girls get horny? WHAAAAA?) the music started getting better.

Hiding behind clichés, demureness and innuendo like Madonna* or the Bangles or the Go-Go’s is childish and silly. Authenticity and realness, the two words that folks coming of age in the 90s hold so dear, are what moved records and influenced minds back then. And that openness (or appearance of openness) is what ruled.

* Madonna as a “feminist icon” is so overblown it makes me sick. She’s just not. She’s a sexual icon, there’s no doubt in my mind about that, but she played to the most base stereotypes of what a woman should be and how a woman should act. So she wore a pointed bra and kissed a girl? Who gives a shit. That stuff wasn’t done to make a statement, it was done to sell records – which is fine, she’s in the entertainment industry. But don’t tell me someone who unironically referred to herself as a “Boy Toy” or who defined by whom she happened to be sleeping with is the Gloria Steinem of the 80s and 90s. Christ, Cyndi Lauper was more of a feminist than Madonna.

“Stutter” and “Spin the Bottle” were the opposite of Stone Temple Pilots’ “Sex Type Thing” which was a song done from the perspective of a male rapist. Rock music is littered with many depictions of women as nothing more than sex objects and STT is an aggressive continuation of that tradition. Let me state that I don’t think that just because you write and record a song from the perspective of a rapist, it makes you a rapist. According to Wikipedia, lead singer Scott Weiland said that he wrote the song after an incident where his girlfriend was raped by three football players.

I’m not sure why he wrote it from the point of view of the rapist though, seems like a strange choice for Weiland to make. Another interesting tidbit about this song is that it was their first single off of Core (their debut album) and their first video to be run on MTV. In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, Weiland was angry that he had to defend himself as anti-rape just because he wrote a song sung from a rapist’s POV that was the debut single off his band’s first album.

Quit being so rapey, STP, Jesus.

Good Songs XIII

Round and Round – Ratt

Lay it Down – Ratt

You’re in Love – Ratt

Suck My Kiss – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison

Wait – White Lion

Informer – Snow

That’s a Lie – Too Much Joy

Who’s Gonna Drive Your Wild Horses – U2

Drive – REM

Somebody to Shove – Soul Asylum

Rusty Cage – Soundgarden

Outshined – Soundgarden

Synchronicity II – The Police

Born to Be Wild – Steppenwolf

Magic Carpet Ride – Steppenwolf

The Hitman – AB Logic

Summer of ’69 – Brian Adams

Fool in the Rain – Led Zeppelin

Yesterdays – Guns N Roses

The Choice is Yours – Black Sheep

Much like freshman year at college, this latest Good Songs tape is a bit confusing. It has a few classic college-y artists (REM, U2, Soul Asylum), it has a few retreads from high school (Ratt, White Lion) and a few that make me scratch my head (Brian Adams, AB Logic – seriously 1993 Byron, what were you thinking?).

There’s a lot to say about this tape so I’m going to break it down, artist-by-artist. But the overarching feeling I have from listening to this playlist again (after 22 years – I’m pretty sure I made this on a snow day in February of 1993) is that I must’ve played this tape constantly. The reason is because as soon as one song was over, my brain had mentally queued up the next cut.

It was like listening to a really old bike. How’s that for a mixed, yet apt, metaphor?

Ratt – In either the first Good Songs entry, I wrote about how I really wanted to like Ratt when I was in high school but I never got around to getting their good album. I settled for the awful “Reach for the Sky” and never got into the group. The guy who lived next door to me had a ton of tapes and one of the them was Ratt’s “Out of the Cellar” where all three of these songs came from. I borrowed it and added it to the mix.

Even though Ratt wasn’t even ironically cool in 1993, I did not regret this decision. Especially “Round and Round”, that’s a really solid song.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – I didn’t discover them in college, I went to a party when I was in high school and the person who owned the house played “Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic” for three straight hours. And their single, “The Bridge” was literally everywhere that summer. Plus, when I was a freshman in high school, I almost bought “Mother’s Milk” but when I went downtown to the tape store, the store had gone out of business.* So I was aware of Flea and the gang.

* I lived in Amesbury, MA and in the late 80s/early 90s, the downtown area was extremely strange. Stores popped up and went out of business seemingly over night—within 15 months in the early 1990s, there were four different baseball card stores (not all the same time). There would be a big opening, everyone would hang out there for a few weeks and then they’d close. Other downtown shops sold one item one day, would sell completely different things the next. The only types of stores that held any staying power were places that had been in business since the turn of the century. One such store was this record shop that I would walk by. The prices were insanely high, and it took me a long time to save the cash for a tape. I finally scraped the money together to buy “Mother’s Milk” and I rode my bike to the store, only it was completely gone like a dream. It was the Brigadoon of record stores. The moral is: I never got “Mother’s Milk”.

Anyway RHCP pretty much blew up after this record, they were no longer the weird dudes from Southern California who wore socks on strange body parts. They became a well-oiled, music-making machine. And like “The Bridge”, they were everywhere. From 1992 until a few years ago, you couldn’t go two minutes without hearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. I really began to hate their music, a lot. That hatred is still there (even though I do sorta like this song).

Van Morrsion – He’s made a lot of songs better than this. But this is probably his most famous tune because it’s the quintessential high school/college song. I bet that Van Morrison hates this song, but it has probably made him more money than any other song he’s ever performed. Draw your own conclusions from that.

White Lion – Look, I know that this is a bad song. It’s cheesy, it’s vapid, it’s of it’s time (which wasn’t very good) but of all those really bad, hair metal songs this is one of my favorites. I can’t explain why only, the ear wants what it wants.

My top five really bad hair metal songs that I really like are as follows:

1.     Wait – White Lion

2.     I’ll Never Let You Go – Steelheart

3.     Burning Like a Flame – Dokken

4.     Fly to the Angels – Slaughter

5.     Girls School (video only) – Britny Fox

Don’t let me get drunk and near my iTunes, because you’re going to hear some combination of the above. Man, I have awful taste in music.

Snow –At the end of 1992, Snow burst on the music scene with this infectious reggae song. No one really knew what he was saying, but it seems as if he came from Toronto to sing about a guy who ratted on him, which landed him in the clink. The first three hundred times you heard this song, you couldn’t understand a damn thing this kooky Canadian was saying – MTV actually scrolled the words under the song when they aired this video – but the beat was pretty catchy and for weeks it was stuck in your head. It stuck in the head of so many people that it landed at number one on the Billboard pop charts.

Aside from the beat, I really enjoyed this song because it was a puzzle to figure out what he was saying. MC Shan gives you the most clues when he raps about his pal, but you really had to listen to it over and over and over again to get what Snow was singing about.

The other thing I'm not sure about was why the record company named the album "12 Inches of Snow". Snow is Canadian so he doesn't use inches as a form of measurement, he'd probably use centimeters. "30.48cm of Snow" doesn't sound very good, I guess. "304.8mm of Snow" doesn't sound very good either. And if he went with meters, "0.304m of Snow" sounds downright puny.

Take that metric freaks!

Too Much Joy – In the late summer of 1990 I’d return home after soccer practice and watch “Dial MTV”, which was a show that counted down the top 10 song requests that MTV got that particular day. For what seemed to be about three weeks straight, the same three songs were stuck together: “Falling to Pieces” by Faith No More, “Fly to the Angels” by Slaughter and “That’s a Lie” by Too Much Joy. They always showed the same three songs back-to-back-to-back, always. So much so, I couldn’t hear one without thinking of the other two.

I owned the first two songs, but I had no idea where to even find TMJ’s tape. It wasn’t at Tape World or Sam Goody or Strawberries or maybe it was and I was too dumb to find it. I went a long time with that song in my head, but no conduit to remove it. Enter my freshman roommate Scott Mooney. Scott worked at tape store in the mall called The Wall and because of this he had hundreds and hundreds of tapes and CDs. All of which he brought to college.

When I found Too Much Joy’s “Son of Sam I Am”, I almost kissed him. Finally, I found this song. I am shocked as hell that I didn’t put FNM or Slaughter around it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: we’re running a bit long, so I’m going to speed this up a bit.

U2, REM, Soul Asylum and Soundgarden – these were my “college” songs. I had heard of U2 and REM prior to going to Merrimack College, but I didn’t pay attention to them. I had no idea who Soul Asylum or Soundgarden were at all.  When I got to college, I realized pretty quickly that I needed to pay attention because “Achtung Baby”,  “Automatic for the People”, “Badmotorfinger” and “Grave Dancer’s Union” were four CDs that pretty much everyone owned. The others were Pearl Jam’s “Ten”, Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and the Beastie Boy’s “Check Your Head”.

U2 has pretty much become the Irish version of RHCP, in that I want them to go far away and never return. REM burned really brightly for awhile (they were always considered “the thinking person’s band”) but they faded away.  Soul Asylum’s lead singer David Pirner went out with Winona Ryder for a bit, which seemed to surprise everyone – including him, but they never really did anything after GDU. And Soundgarden just kept making the right choices album after album after album. They broke up, got back together and seem to be in a decent spot right now.

Whenever I hear a song from one of these albums, no matter what I think of the particular band presently, it always rockets me back to 1992/93; sitting in a tiny room with a bunch of people, drinking and listening to these CDs. It’s a nice memory.

The Police and Steppenwolf – Other than this song is really awesome, I’m not sure why I have “Synchronicity II” on this tape. I’ve always admired the Police, but I’ve never been a huge fan. Sting really outdoes himself with the writing and imagery on this track. It may have been one of the reasons why I became an English major – no, that’s not really true.

The reason why I have “Born to Be Wild” on this tape is because that’s what the Merrimack hockey team used to come out to before every game. When you were a freshman at Merrimack back in the early 90s, there wasn’t much to do. Even though the hockey team was terrible, it was fun to go to the games because they played in the best college conference in the nation: Hockey East. Schools like Boston University, University of Maine (who had the best college club I’ve ever seen with Paul Kariya, Garth Snow [no relation to the Informer], Mike Dunham and the rest) would roll through North Andover, slap the Warriors around for 60 minutes then move on.

Every once in awhile, MC would pull an upset and we’d all leave the building happy. But more often than not, they’d get waxed, we’d get drunk and if it was a Friday we’d all do the same thing the following night.

AB Logic and Brian Adams – I have no idea what I was thinking about with these two songs. AB Logic’s “The Hitman” might be the worst song I’ve ever included on a Good Songs tape. Ever. And Brian Adams? I don’t know why I chose this one either. It’s an alright song, but it’s nothing that I ever really listened to.  Strange choices.

Led Zeppelin – Bold choice by me to pick this song as the first Zep song to be on a Good Songs tape. Of all the Zeppelin hits, this might be one of my least favorites. The wheels are completely coming off the tape at this point.

Guns N’ Roses – I think that this is a very underrated Guns N’ Roses song mainly because it was part of the mess that was “Use Your Illusions I and II”. Plus the video was incredibly stripped down, especially compared to the multi-million dollar intertwined videos/Axel Rose madness for “Don’t Cry”, “November Rain” and “Estranged”.  At some point, people got sick of GNR and this song slid under the radar. Which is too bad because, it’s a good song.

At this point in their career, Guns N' Roses was completely falling apart. If they had any sort of self-awareness (and I know this is 20/20 hindsight) but they should have put up a "Guns N' Roses 1987 - 1993" at the end of the video. That would have been a nice touch. 

Black Sheep – This is the only real rap song that I included on this tape. I guess I had outgrown my hip hop phase. But this song is terrific. The hook, the lyrics, the flow; it really is a classic. After the AB Logic/Brian Adams/ Led Zeppelin car crash, I guess I righted the ship a bit. Good for you, 1993 Byron. Good for you.