mixtape '92

back in 1992 i was dicking around college, taking classes, fucking off, living life.  this was the year i returned to school.  this was the year i met anna.  things just clicked with anna.  felt right & natural.  a week after we met, we arranged to meet at the pub on campus.  i met my dream girl & i knew i wanted to be with her from then on.  

i was also working as a custodian at night.  part time.  this was a great job.  a couple of hours of labor & the rest of the night was yours to do as you wished.  pay sucked.  but then again, i was an apprentice poet who spent most of his time in the library making one poetry discovery after another.  part of my nightly duties was cleaning the school radio station.  the university had a tiny transmitter that broadcast during the day.  i don't even know if the FM transmitter was powerful enough to broadcast to the whole campus.  i don't know who was listening either.  i sure as hell didn't.

but what the radio station had in abundance was promotional CDs, doodads, & other ephemera to promote this & that band or artist.  it was great.  i made a few discoveries.  i also made liberal use of their phone.  after i finished my duties i'd wander over to the station, paw thru piles of discs & call my great love, anna, on the phone.  i was in heaven.  & i made a mixtape that anna & i played so much, so often, as we were dating that the tape snapped & broke.  

music instantly returns us to our past.  but not just as nostalgia but music, like smells too, can immediately teleport our emotional being, our passions, our loves, our lost things as well.  music can make us live, at least for a little while, how we had lived.  today was a busy day at work.  anna & i were texting about our cat leo the pretty fierce.  he got into a fight with a neighbor cat & anna had to go outside to break it up.  as we were texting i thought of that mixtape that we played so much of that the cassette tape snapped apart.  i don't remember every song but i remember a few.   below are a few of those songs.

Sonic Youth - 100% (Official Music Video) - YouTube [huge admirer of sonic youth many years before this tune was released but this is one of their more succinct & structured pop melodies that has the right amount of clashing dissonance.  somehow i kinda think of this song as anthemic of that magical year '92]

Mary's Danish - Leave It Alone (official music video) - YouTube [this band fucking rocks.  their sound was so unique with two women singers with killer harmonies.  play this one real loud!]

The Beat - Tears Of A Clown (Top Of The Pops 1979) - YouTube [anna & i have seen the english beat, or just the beat, several times when dave wakeling started touring again about 25 or so years ago.  this song always makes me happy.  just an uplift in the beat & melody]

Happiness In Slavery - YouTube [this is an aural assault on the senses.  i love it.  this one demands it be played at 11]

now my memory has become fuzzy for these were not the only tunes that anna & listened to.  XTC is an important band to us.  so was the eponymous 1990 record Social Distortion.  so with that i shall leave these four songs as an emblem of that beloved mixtape & the start of our life together.  as an older band once said, what a long & strange trip it's been.  i had, & still have, a blast living it.  like i said, i married my dream girl.  i shit you not.  i'm a lucky motherfucker!