Everything Hits at Once

I am a divided person, intensely ambivalent about many aspects of life. One of my contradictions is that I hate clutter while being an obsessive object fetishist—a collector. My desire to keep, sort, and organize piles of similar things began early in childhood with particularly idiotic ephemera like bottle caps, pennies, and stamps. Later I moved into objects that make a better case for possession because they hold more information like books, records, and movies.

These collections stay with me like Pig Pen’s dust cloud. Even my lame but bulky stamp collection is one room over from where I sit writing. (I have been “getting ready” to sell it for about five years.) Even the last of the bottle caps were thrown out only about two weeks ago. Seriously. As I was making room for the establishment of a nursery for my boys, I found a plastic bag containing the final sorted crème of the most interesting and absolutely worthless bottle caps, consisting of beaten and scratched Fanta caps from the Midwest circa 1975 and several Coca-Cola and 7-Up caps with Arabic writing on them from a high school term I spent in Egypt. I showed them to Myg. She tried to be amused but was visibly relieved when I tossed them into the trash. (The bottles that once sat under the caps are on display in our kitchen.)

This clutter-versus-collection struggle is part of a larger philosophical conflict between a desire for objective truth, as impossible as that may prove, and the comfort and apparent real meaning contained in myth. Looking back over my life so far, this feels like History contrasted with nostalgia. I loathe nostalgia, but it is the hatred of recognition: I am that thing.

Memory begins as a flawed process, and the influence of nostalgia on it is like an occurrence of polio in an already crippled child. As Esteban once pointed out to me, nostalgia is the cultivation of happy false memories, or the indulgence of a fantasy that things were somehow better—cooler—funner—back then. It’s a selective and prejudiced exercise intended to make us feel better now by imagining that we felt better then (regardless of our actual state of mind then) because of some extant condition, such as the newness and presence of certain bands.

Two days ago, I was sorting a box hopefully labeled “memorabilia” (one of about 20 such) and came across an old notebook. It still had some blank pages in it that could be useful for making lists, so I had been saving it, out of sight in a box where it would be sure to be safe from use, for the better part of two decades. I quickly recognized it as having once belonged to Esteban’s meat person. I flipped it open and saw at the top of an empty page he had written “truth in a ditch.” No doubt the beginning of some great exposé on the futility of meaning that derailed itself by design. On the next page was the heading “The Big Trip.” This alerted me to the origins of the notebook: Esteban and I spent a few months knocking around Europe after graduating from college and this was something that had come into my possession in the run-up to that oddysey. On it is a list of months—from the last week of October through the following September—representing the time we had to execute the journey before Esteban hoped to begin graduate school. There is an arrow pointing to the month of January, indicating we realized our meager savings was going to last us about three months. Below the months is a list of cities with connecting arrows. It was evidently a late revision of the itinerary, since it did not include any of our earlier, more ambitious, plans to visit Scandinavia and Spain.

The itinerary stood at:
Milano => Padova
Padova => Milano
Milano => Nice
Nice => Paris
Paris => Frankfurt/Munchen
Munchen/Franfurt => Prague
Praha => Wien
Wien => Budapest
Budapest => Zagreb
Zagreb => Trieste
Trieste => Padova
Padova => Roma

That’s not quite how it worked out in the end, of course, but we made it to more than half those places. The details of that may or may not be divulged in other posts. Other scratches on the page include numbers masquerading as math that look more like a Yahtzee score sheet, and lined out at the top right corner: “She’s a stupid ass, you’re right.” My guess is this is some note Esteban wrote in class and scratched out when the page was reclaimed for trip planning. I have no theory for the presence of quotation marks.

Then I turned the page and realized the itinerary was not as late in the planning stage as I had presumed. Here was a whole second page of possible cities to visit labeled “Part II.” This never-realized leg of the trip included:

Roma => Munchen
Munchen => Berlin
Berlin => Kobenhavn
Kobenhavn => Stockholm
Stockholm => Helsinki
Helsinki => Leningrad (?)
Helsinki => Stockholm
Stockholm => Kobenhavn
Kobenhavn => Bruxelles
Bruxelles => ?
? => Le Havre
Le Havre => Waterford
Waterford => Dublin
Dublin => Belfast
Larne => Stranraer
====> Southampton
=>London
and a doodle of an airplane indicating a return to the U.S.A. We made it to Rome (that was on the other list), to Southampton because a friend of mine was there, and London because that was the way cheapest way back and we could get a free meal out of another friend of ours.

I flipped over a couple of blank pages and came across a big list of song titles in two parts, separated with a “1” and a “2.” A simple outline for a mix tape. Was it a mix tape taken on the great European trip? Upon closer inspection, the latest tracks on it are from 1989, so it could have been. But judging from the repetition of artists, something in my memory and certain selections tells me this was a tape I made for an older coworker who was interested in “what the kids were into these (those) days.” It is hardly representative of then-current music. Most of the tracks are from the early 1980s, albeit largely not what I was listening to in the early 1980s (not enough hardcore or classic psychedelia).

The running time clocks in at 1.4 hours, just right for a C-90 tape. I’ve recreated it for your listening pleasure. You can download it below. And I found after listening that any nostalgic feelings I had upon discovering the notebook have been washed away. I much prefer the brain I have today than the one I carried with me then. I’m a more stable, less depressed person. I love the memories because of the experience they provide. The person I was when they were made did not have that. The songs on the tape are mostly good, and it’s not bad as mix tapes go, but I’d much rather have the music collection I do now than the one I was working with then—especially since I still have all the old stuff and most of it is on a hard drive.

The Last Mix Tape (Click arrow to play or right click/save as to download. This one takes a few seconds to start.)

Read on for the track listing and liner notes.

Side 1
Providence – Sonic Youth
Hyperstation – Sonic Youth
Schizophrenia – Sonic Youth
Blind Dumb Deaf – Cocteau Twins
The Figurehead – The Cure
In a Dream – Chrome
Change – Killing Joke
Welcome to Paradise – Front 242
Go – Replacements
Kids Don’t Follow – Replacements
Death of Mary Queen of Scots – Monty Python

Side 2
Ziggy Stardust – Bauhaus
Luka – Lemonheads
Into the Groovey – Ciccone Youth
White Rabbit – The Damned
Cinnamon Girl – Dream Syndicate
Alles Morgens Parties – Kendra Smith
You Got It – Mudhoney
Where Is My Mind – Pixies
Imitation of Christ – Psychedelic Furs
L.A. – The Fall
Los Angeles – X
I Found that Essence Rare – Gang of Four

Side One starts off with a hat trick of Sonic Youth. The “Hyperstation” section of “Trilogy” off Daydream Nation still stands as one of the finer moments in a career of excellence. Thurston’s lyrics are dream anchors in the glistening dissonance of the track, particularly the last couplet recognized as valuable by its selection for the album title:

It’s an anthem in a vacuum on a hyperstation
Day dreaming days in a daydream nation

The mix then plunges into darker material with early Cocteau Twins, Elizabeth Frazier and Robin Guthrie sending up a cracked mirror of chorused reverb and keening vocals on “Blind Dumb Deaf.”

Blind dumb deafen offends
I was never a part of it
My mouthing at you
My tongue the stake
I should welt should I hold you
I should gash should I kiss you

Followed up with “The Figurehead” from The Cure’s Pornography, which I still insist is their best album, though the second wave of Cure fans tend to stand on Disintegration as better. No band better embraces solipsism and melancholia. This was emo before those kids were born.

Chrome’s “In a Dream” is one of their most coherent songs, and it’s got a hook like a 3 a.m. meth jones.

Killing Joke’s “Change.” Their first album changed my life.

Front 242 “Welcome to Paradise.” A good track, but more for historical value than anything else. Ministry plumbed this sinkhole much better.

“Go” and “Kids Don’t Follow.” A couple of trash punk gems from The Replacements Stink. Still some of my favorite ’Mats and in rotation on the iPod.

Obligatory Monty Python bit. I caught the disease from my father and few days pass without me torturing at least one person with a quote.

Side Two begins with a series of covers. This, above all, tells me this was a tape I made for a coworker. As a rule I tend to loathe covers. But I can see including them here as a way to demonstrate newer takes on familiar tunes to someone who is unfamiliar. I still like all of these except for the Lemonheads cover of “Luka,” a song that was irritating and dated even in the original (nothing against Suzanne Vega, someone who has far better material with less commercial success).

It gets much better when Mudhoney’s “You Got It” kicks in. I’d forgotten how great this band was when Nirvana broke out and the inevitable grunge backlash swept me into other corners of indie rock. This re-ignition of my interest in Mudhoney gives value to the entire discovery.

Next is the obligatory Pixies track. There are many besides “Where is My Mind?” that I prefer today, but a mix tape without Pixies feels like a world without rock.

I still love the first Psychedelic Furs record more than their later work. I think it’s because I like dark and gloomy. The cynicism of this record tastes like gourmet olives.

The Furs are followed up by a couple of tracks about the city of angels. Odd, as I haven’t been there since I was a kid. Maybe that’s why it still seems magical.

Ending the mix is that Gang of Four tune I still spin regularly. Entertainment is one of the best rock albums of all time, genre be damned.