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

Lovely post, Watto, as expected.

As a good Euro, I know all of these songs. It’s going to be hard to not be biased towards Soulwax, especially towards that particular album, but I’ll do my best.

 

i didn't particularly like the Deacon Blue song but i loved the story that went along with it. i have this image of a young Watto as a kind of Hemingway slash crazy romantic Kerouc figure, hitting the road seeking love and life. a sad end to the story but that's a part of life too.

only song i'd heard before so far is the Waterboys. i've just hit the Amsterdam songs now and loving the tonal shift

 

That's awesome. I saw this as a chance to introduce our American friends to some good music they missed out on. In the process was surprised to learn stuff like Nik Kershaw, Deacon Blue and the Waterboys never made it across the pond, to me they were part of the landscape. Cool to see it confirmed.

 

i went with 747. hell of an outtro

 

I’m particularly surprised about Deacon Blue. Real Gone Kid has been an “adult rock” radio staple for decades!

 

I used to get them mixed up with Johnny Hates Jazz. They must have been around the same time.

 

SIDE B: AMSTERDAM



1. Cancao Do Mar – Dulce Pontes

So now I worked at a bar in Amsterdam. Like the one in Haarlem, it was a theatre bar and it was regularly visited by the local theatre groups. Also, the Amsterdam stock exchange was across the street so the place was a weird mixture of arrogant actors and even more arrogant stockbrokers. My studies were going nowhere and I was made manager. I got to know lots of new people, which was good, because I’d just moved.

Meanwhile Star Wars was rearing its ugly head. I’d been reading the Thrawn books and the Dark Empire comics, and now we were getting Shadows Of The Empire. I distinctly remember reading the first issue in that bar, and thinking: “Oh so we’re overwriting canon now?”. 1996.

One of the girls from the bar got me a Xizor action figure for my birthday. I was like “What am I going to do with this now?”. The Watto you know was forming.

Anyway, one day, an actors group set up shop, and among them was this beautiful petite Portuguese girl. Her name was Cristina, and half a year later we moved in together.

She introduced me to music that wasn’t from the States or the UK. Britpop was big, and I wasn’t really into Britpop, so I guess I’d gotten kind of… Americentric. Cristina played Portuguese music, Spanish, Brazilian, even Dutch music I was unfamiliar with. This was the big track then for Portuguese people, it was featured in the Hollywood movie ‘Primal Fear’.


2. Le Grain De Sable – Michel Fugain et le Big Bizaar

She also had this album. I would laugh at her when she played it. It’s so sappy and over-the-top. Of course I learned to love it later. Mostly because of the lyrics.

I who am only a very small grain of sand
I sometimes imagine that I am tall
That I am capable of being formidable
Of taking a giant step forward
I who am only a small speck of dust
I often believe that I can turn the wind
And that I am free
That everything is possible for me
That I can stop time

But if I look up, I say to myself:

I am the infinitely small
I am only a passer-by
Clinging to my life as to a land
Lost in the infinitely large

I am the infinitely small
I am just a passer-by
And I make my way with great dreams
Lost in the infinitely large


3. The Frog Princess – Divine Comedy

It didn’t last. We were kind of a mismatch. We were both more interested in other people tha each other. I got my first job as a designer in early 1998, and one day I was walking to work with a mixtape of a friend on my Walkman. This song was on it, and as adolescents are wont to do, I applied it to myself. I was the stony narrator, the frog princess had been Marielle. I’d never gotten over her. It kind of doomed my relationship with Cristina. It felt like betrayal to still have these feelings. Cristina and I split up, and of course a month later I saw Marielle on the street.

4. 747 – Kent

Fourth of July, 1998. I was on my way to the train station to go see a football match at a friend’s house. I spotted her and typically I was too shy to walk over to her, so she walked over to me. She was even more jaw-dropping. We talked and exchanged phone numbers. Then I went to watch the match, and Holland beat Argentina 3-1. It was one of the most beautiful days of my life.



This time it was mutual. Finally, after ten years of dilly-dallying, all-consuming passion. We were hooked on each other. Sometimes we were both on our separate ways to work, but would both just turn around. I remember I had to go out to an appointment one time and she clung to my leg. It was ridiculous. This was the music we played, we went to see the band twice. But as time went on and Marielle kept swatting away lurking men, I grew more paranoid. I started to think she was just a passionate girl and she could just as easily transfer her passion to the next guy (I was wrong). I realized I could never really get over the way she dumped me the first time. I started to look for an out… and I went online.

I traded the love of my life for a relationship with a crazy person I didn’t really know, and who would torment me for years and years after, but in the process I became the father of a wonderful daughter.

You’ll understand I didn't listen to this song anymore for a long time - until my daughter, Lindsey, picked up the CD and played it in the car 16 years later. It was really hard to hide my tears. To me, the synth melody embodied that romantic past, and the distorted guitar was me tearing right through it. But I had a beautiful daughter next to me, as the result of that wild behaviour. Emotions are complicated.


5. Much Against Everyone’s Advice – Soulwax

My brother strongly urged me not to do it. Not to get into intercontinental relationships. Nobody thought it was a good idea. Her family from Quebec didn’t. It wasn’t a good idea. But I went to Canada to pick up my bride, and the rest is history. The story ends here, because my TPM premiere was in Montreal, Canada. I’d gotten there with headphones on, I left without.


6. Awaken - Yes

A song that was on my Walkman throughout most of these perils. It’s my favorite song by my favorite band. I even went on a pilgrimage to the studio where they recorded this in Montreux, Switzerland. It was Queen’s studio, there’s a Freddy statue nearby. Lindsey was with me, and she is now a fan too.

The organ you hear is the Vevey church organ. Vevey is a city close to Montreux. They recorded it through a phone line – Switzerland had the best phone lines.

Montreux is the most beautiful place on earth I’ve seen, save for maybe the California coastline (I haven’t seen a lot). When you go there, you drive through a valley, with huge mountains on either side. Then you round a corner along one of those mountains, and suddenly your valley turns out not to have been a valley but a plateau, and you’re looking down on a huge lake between the mountains, Lake Geneva. There’s a town down there, with a wicked bridge over it. The bridge has given me nightmares. But it’s worth it. That town is Montreux.

The middle part of this song is the best music for meditation, bar none. I once played it to a friend, back when I still lived with my mom, and he said ‘I felt all my muscles relax one by one’. This was before either of us had any notion of meditation, we were 17.

What comes after that section is straight heavenly bliss. This is angels coming out of the sky to bring you music. Total ecstasy. The best music mankind has to offer, right here on my mixtape.

I will never miss a chance to ship this song. I sneaked it into our radio play. I always thought this recording would never be bested, but it actually has been. The singer, Jon Anderson, played it live with an Icelandic outfit, and it’s sublime. If you like the song, you’ll love this version.

 

I am now self-conscious about my anecdotes. They're more like blurbs, in comparison.

 

I voted for Yes

I’m not familiar with many of the other songs though, I will listen to more later so maybe I will change vote

 

I also ended up going with 747. It had... been a while.

 

Just discovered this thread, really neat idea. I'm going to go through each page and listen to everyone's playlists over the weekend.

Also... is it too late to add my name to the list?

 

No, by all means. @Darth Punk?
32. PymParticles

 

Wow, that comment alone is worth any effort I put into this. The power of music. A band that was left-field for me but must have been so omnipresent for you that you got sick of them, and yet when you hear them twenty years later all that's left is nostalgia and we're on the same page.

 

You're lucky I didn't start earlier. Got some good ABBA tales to share.

 

I'm excited to settle into this tonight with a beer while I play my Switch

And I had a total blast listening to @Ramza's playlist. It's all so out of my musical comfort zone but I loved it

 

These playlists are starting to have more stories than online recipe blogs

 

Some of us are still out of the house, experiencing.

 

See the difference is that we're actually partially here for the anecdotes whereas the only thing I want from a recipe post is food

 

A C-90?
For my entire coming of age?

C-90s were the cheap ass tapes. If you dropped one, it would go 'clangle dangle dangle'.
What you want is a Maxell XL II-S90. If you dropped that, it would go 'clunk!'.