JCC The JCC mixtape, Part I (archived - playlist on page 1)

You mean you voted correctly

 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7afrKGPUSmEMOiuB9aLfeF?si=MNVpDb01QreGR-PmANSxrw

It looked like Star Wars was over, in 1984. I was 12. I was ready to move on. I sold my action figures and bought a Walkman. The mixtape era started, and it lasted until a new Star Wars film was released in 1999 and Walkmans were replaced by Discmans.

The mixtape era neatly coincided with my adolescence, and this is the soundtrack. These are the recurring songs from the dozens of mixtapes I made, or from mixtapes I got from friends.

It’s an old style 90 minute mixtape, divided up into side A and side B. I left out all American music that made an impression on me, as well as obvious hits, because I hope to provide you with music that sounds familiar but isn’t, and as such, gives you new mixtape gold.


SIDE A: HAARLEM



1. Richard III - Supergrass

So, 1999. TPM wouldn’t be released here until October. I spent my last adolescent summer with this song on my Walkman, biking into town four nights a week, looking for fun. Why such reckless abandon, you ask?

I wasn’t sure, man. I had met this girl online. She was from Canada. She wanted to come over and live with me. But I wasn’t sure. I was going to go over there in September, pick her up, and she would move in with me to try it out for a few months. So I figured I had to quickly live the single life to the max. That’s what this song sounds like, to me.

Hardly romantic, right? Well, little Watto wasn’t always like that.


2. Human Racing – Nik Kershaw

I grew up with my mother and my two older brothers. Got a record player for my 12th birthday, in 1984. I’d just entered high school. My dad bought me this album. It was my favorite album and this song was my favorite song off it. I had to get the Walkman because my mother would literally have to drag me away from the record player in order to get me to school on time.

I was a stranger in high school, a dreamer. Elementary school had been cozy, but when I entered high school I didn’t know anybody, I was the shortest guy in the class, I wore glasses, and I was bad at sports. I was a bull’s eye. When I hear this, I still feel that way, forlorn.


3. The Whole Of The Moon – The Waterboys

This came on the radio in the Dutch top 100 of 1985, and both my brothers were like ‘What kind of awful folky **** is this?’, but I loved it. I learned much later that the orchestration of this song was actually heavily inspired by Prince. In fact, the original members of the Waterboys argue over its Prince-ness to this day.

The comet is cool, but the lyrics are sheer poetry. So self-deprecating, so loving, so full of awe. It’s said to be about Prince, but the author leaves that in the middle.

Prince did a cover version. Not great.


4. Fergus Sings The Blues – Deacon Blue

Loved Deacon Blue from the start. This is off their second album. I finished high school the year after this song was released, got a summer job, and there I fell terribly in love with Andrea.

And she was a Deacon Blue fan! So we went to the Deacon Blue concert together. Watto's first date.

But if you recall the guy from the Nik Kershaw song, I wasn’t really suited for dates yet. A growth spurt had suddenly rendered me the tallest guy in class. Contact lenses suddenly made everyone view me differently. It was like I was a new guy on the outside, but not quite yet on the inside. I’d just turned 18.

That concert was the moment I should have made my move. Or maybe it was when she came over to my house. But I never made a move. I had no clue how to do that. I was so timid.

Then she got an internship in Valencia, Spain. We sent each other postcards. Her apartment didn’t have a phone, and cell phones didn’t exist. Her postcards were my lifeblood.

My friend Alex had his own place. His place was the ultimate bachelor’s pad. Nothing was too crazy. We jammed until the neighbors complained. We grew weed and bonsai trees. We were jailed together once. Good times. Then Alex suggested: “Why don’t we visit her?”

Alex and I hitch-hiked to Spain. It was a harrowing journey, in which we’d trailed a Spanish truck on the Parisian Péripherique like ****ing James Bond, got a lift from an American soldier who was on his way to the Gulf War, and had to convince Spanish customs that Alex was really the guy on his brother’s passport. We were broke by the time we got to Valencia. Andrea opened the door, and I saw it in her eyes: she had a boyfriend.

Andrea went on to have a beautiful career, guiding university interns. Alex killed himself in December 1998.

5. Words And Music From Da Lowlands – Gotcha

So I lived in Haarlem, Amsterdam's small neighbor city. The guys in Gotcha were also from Haarlem, I knew them from high school. They were a couple of years older. They got a record deal. I was impressed. Their concerts were among the best concerts I’ve been to. They were just raves. I once spent half a show with a buddy of mine on my shoulders, and I was still bopping. I don’t know how I did that.

Gotcha went on to make a record with George Clinton, and then quickly burned out on coke. Way to become legendary. Locally.

In the meantime, I went to college, started actually dating, got a job as a barman, grew a bit more self-assured, but was still totally unprepared for…


6. Budapest By Blimp – Thomas Dolby

Marielle. She lived in Amsterdam, the big city. I was just a smalltown guy. She was a vamp. I was just proto Watto. I had no idea what she saw in me, but I happily went along. She told me: ‘fasten your seatbelts’.

One cold Saturday night in December, I’d closed up the bar with my colleagues, and Marielle called. She wanted me to come over. It was 2AM, the last train had gone.

One of my colleagues offered me his racing bike. I thought: it’s madness – biking for over an hour in the freezing cold – but if I wrap myself up warm, and get a good mixtape, I should be able to do it. This song was on that mixtape. Whenever I hear it, I’m still floating there between Haarlem and Amsterdam at sub-sonic speed.

I got there. I couldn’t very well ring the bell, other people lived there and it was past 3AM. I couldn’t call her because mobile phones still didn’t exist. Now guess what young Watto did.

I climbed up the rain pipe, onto the balcony. Knocked on the window, fell into her arms. She said, ‘Wow, you did all that for me?’, and I said ‘Well, I just like biking’.

Fool!

What the hell do you think you’re doing!

Marielle quickly got disinterested. We went to a New Year’s Eve party and at midnight she made out with her ex-boyfriend right in front of me. So that was the end of that.


7. Be Not Too Hard – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

I put this on a mixtape for a friend and his comment was ‘Churchbells? Ridiculous!’.

When I got this album, this song instantly reminded me of my dad, who made quirky moves and was in bad health. He died later that year, in the south of France. My brothers and I had to go over there and pick up his stuff, get him cremated and bring the ashes back for the ceremony in Holland. I was 22.


8. Sleepless – King Crimson

Don’t let anyone tell you that King Crimson stopped being relevant after Mark I. That version disbanded because prog was starting to get a bad rep, but they returned after the punk dust had settled, as a tight unit with a punch. There are still some people roaming this earth who were blessed to have been present at those legendary concerts – one was my colleague at the bar, Hans. He borrowed me this album, and this song was on my mixtape as I biked around Haarlem in early 1995.


9. Lonely Planet – The The

Gruffy old Matt keeps singing ‘If you can’t change the world, change yourself’, but the key lyrics are the ones he sings at the end: ‘And if you can’t change yourself… change your world’.

So I moved. Haarlem was getting **** boring. I’d seen everything. Knew everyone. It was getting incestuous, my oldest brother was dating ex-girlfriends of mine. I had to get out, so I moved to Amsterdam.

Tomorrow: side B: Amsterdam!

 

sorry Watto: posted my debate commentary in the wrong thread. Your list is my post debate palate cleanser. Starting in on it now.

 

I don't know any of these songs. Love that, this will be fun.

Also may I submit that I totally should have included this song with one of the last three spots on my list and so please listen to it..it's my psyche. And like the reason I am single.

 

Hey @DarthTunick what other three songs would you have included had you known you could have three more songs?

 

Lots of neat stuff, and definitely mission accomplished on a lot of it being new to me. I'm leaning towards "The Whole of the Moon" for some mysterious reason (), although between Yes being... well, Yes, and 15 minutes long, there's a certain appeal there as well.

 

Runaway Train- Soul Asylum... always have enjoyed it, but it's become a little more relatable over this past year; Welcome To Jungle... that opening + a screaming Axl= greatness; Get You By- La Coka Nostra... great energy & lyrics.

 

Hard to choose Watts.

 

The The

 

There we go - 1673 words for my explanation of my songs.

Assuming I don't change my list for the 19th or 20th time of course.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure they're on US Spotify (the album version specifically in the case of the first one). I had to YouTube them.

 

Oh no, not me!

 

Well, what can I say? They were stupid.

I replaced Human Racing. Is it working now?

 

I always sing Human Racing to myself when I'm jogging and feel my spirit flagging. Have done for years.

 

It does, but after him there's someone better, and after him there's me.