Side 1
Eels-Novocaine For The Soul
Celine Dion-All By Myself
snippet of Donna Lewis' "I Love You Always Forever"
snippet of Candlebox's "Far Behind"
Smashing Pumpkins-1979
snippet of Spin Doctors' "Two Princes"
Jewel-Who Will Save Your Soul?
Nirvana-Lithium
snippet of Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing"
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-Shoot 'Em Up
snippet of Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories' "Do You Sleep?"
Side 2
Presidents of the United States of America-Peaches
snippet of Pharcyde's "Drop"
Seal-Kiss From A Rose
Live-Freaks
snippet of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
A Chorus Line-Dance: Ten; Looks: Three
Tom Petty-You Don't Know How It Feels
AC/DC-Big Balls
No Doubt-Spiderwebs
snippet of Jay-Z's "Ain't No"
snippet of Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen's "Mission: Impossible Theme"
The Sox Park Mob 3 mixtape was another hand-me-down that didn't get played until I recorded over it. Part of me wishes I had kept some of it intact since it was originally a juke mix and growing up on the West Side of Chicago naturally made me a fan of the genre. I also don't have any juke cassettes of my own so it would have been cool in retrospect to still have something by a master of the genre like DJ Deeon. I can't remember if my neighbor gave this to me or if I simply took it as my own after my cousin moved out of the house, but both have an equal chance of probability. I'm also not sure why I scribbled over the title in marker. It might have been because I didn't want my parents to think that there was anything dirty on it or something ridiculous like that.
After Sox Park Mob 3, I was hooked on making mixtapes that were at least 60 minutes in length. My first two projects of It's Okay To Say No and Snow White were fun and still got a lot of play from me at the time, but this new lengthier world was more thrilling and I would never make a mixtape that came in under a half-hour ever again.
This was another effort that was chopped into pieces over the months due to lack of funds as evidenced by the song snippets that are all over the place. I'll be honest and state that I'm a bit saddened that I no longer have Donna Lewis' "I Love You Always Forever" in its entirety any more. Although it was a pretty huge hit at the time, it was very polarizing and I still have a hard time finding anyone who can admit to liking that song. It was also an important record as far as the development in my acceptance of pop music. We all know that we're at our most impressionable when we're younger and that can also affect our taste in music. "I Love You Always Forever" wasn't exactly targeted for African-American male teenagers, so I had a choice between dismissing it based on simple principle or embracing it regardless of what society said I should like. Once I opened up my heart to it, just about anything else was fair game for me to get in to.
Speaking of fair game, I'm not sure if I'll encounter a less hipper mixtape than this one. If I recorded a song, it was because I liked it and wanted it for my own personal use, so I will stand by the inclusions of Celine Dion, Spin Doctors, Jewel and Seal. I don't think any of these are bad songs, and in the case of "All By Myself" and "Kiss From A Rose," I still think they're great compositions. Fair warning: this will not be the last appearance from these artists. Yes, that means even Celine Dion.
As I've mentioned before, whenever a song didn't get airplay on the radio, I resorted to recording it off the television through the internal mic of a boombox. This wasn't limited to just music videos and I even put a number from the movie version of A Chorus Line on here. It came on cable very often around this time and the song that stuck out most to me was "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three" with its refrian of "tits and ass." I was 13 at the time. The video doesn't allow embedding, but you can watch the scene here.
Also going along with my juvenile taste in humor was AC/DC's "Big Balls." The double entendres in this easily amused me as well.
In another example of how the times have changed, "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America is no longer in my top 20 favorite songs of all time. That was the case when I made such a list two years later. Now, it would be lucky to crack the top 400, but it still makes me smile whenever I listen to it. The lyrics were extremely easy to memorize, which put it on the fast track to gaining favor with me, but it was the chorus that really drew me in with typical, crunchy alternative rock tactics. I recorded this one off the TV, so on the tape you hear all the sound effects from the ninja fight.
One of the things I noticed is that I started to get much better with cutting songs off before the DJ's voice came in. On previous tapes, you could usually hear the beginning of the next song for a majority of the time, but things sound much sharper here. The song snippets are still over the place, but apparently it didn't bother me at the time. In such cases like "Two Princes" and Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing," I started recording in the middle of the song, possibly excited at hearing the song on the radio and jumping quickly to catch it. At this point, just getting part of a song was still satisfactory since I was still new to making mixtapes. The wonder of it all was still fresh and I was amazed at the fact that I could go back and listen to something that I recorded, reliving the moment whenever it pleased me. Sure, there are only 15 seconds of Lisa Loeb's "Do You Sleep" on this tape, but I was happy to hear it each time since MTV didn't play it half as much as "Stay." To this day, I still only know the first few lines of the second verse. Useless fact: Lisa Loeb was one of my main crushes during this time, falling somewhere behind Chili of TLC and Toni Braxton.
No comments:
Post a Comment