Side 1
Smashing Pumpkins-Ava Adore
Harvey Danger-Flagpole Sitta
Blues Traveler-Hook
The Offspring-Gone Away
Savage Garden-I Want You
Dave Matthews Band-Ants Marching
Hootie & The Blowfish-Let Her Cry
Pearl Jam-Alive
Guns N' Roses-Live and Let Die
Metallica-Sad But True
The Verve-The Freshmen (softer AOR version)
Side 2
Garbage-Push It
Semisonic-Closing Time
Lisa Loeb-Let's Forget About It
U2-I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Gin Blossoms-Hey Jealousy
snippet of Blues Traveler-Most Precarious
Alice In Chains-I Stay Away
Red Hot Chili Peppers-Aeroplane
Spin Doctors-Little Miss Can't Be Wrong
Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories-Stay (I Missed You)
The Wallflowers-Heroes
Natalie Merchant-Kind & Generous
snippet of Brandy & Monica's "The Boy Is Mine"
During the school year, I received money from my mother for which I was to use for transportation and lunch, but now that it was summer the stipends slowed down. I still remember being able to buy comic books every week, so I don't think my financial situation was that dire, but I was definitely more careful with my money. One time, I decided to try out a new cassette for recording instead of the usual Sony Hi-Fi Type I that I had been using for The Collection. My new choice was a brand called ToneMaster and was about 30 cents cheaper. It had a running time of 90 minutes so I figured I'd give it a run. When I finished making the mixtape and played it back, I could immediately tell where Sony used that extra money.
The fidelity was much lower on my ToneMaster cassette and lacked the fullness in sound that I had become accustomed to. It felt weak by comparison. Nonetheless, I was still able to enjoy this mixtape, as always and I was totally fine with this not being a part of The Collection. The best volumes usually have the most diversity and from the looks of the tracklist, I spent most of the time recording only between Q101 and The Mix.
My absolute favorite song here: "Stay (I Missed You)"
This song was a few years old at the time, so it's a bit unfair to bestow favorite status upon it, but as I was looking at videos to embed for this post, I couldn't help but look and sing along all the way through to this one. Usually, I like to listen to the first couple of minutes to make sure the quality of the video is fine, but as I was looking on, I could have sworn that Lisa looked me dead in the eye and dared me to join her in singing, for old time's sake. What I used to love about this song aside from having the total hots for Lisa Loeb was how it gradually built and then came back down, all without a traditional chorus.
A close second for absolute favorite: "Flagpole Sitta"
"Flagpole Sitta" is not only my favorite current song on here, but I still think it's one of the best from the alternative period of the late '90s. I liked songs that made me bounce around or had imaginative lyrics with a sense of humor, so it was easy for me to fall in love with this track from the first time I heard it.
Song I'd be most ashamed of liking if I believed in guilty pleasures: "Let Her Cry"
I get it. Hootie & The Blowfish were not hip then and are even less so now. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of most jammy traditional rock music, but if something sounds appealing enough I'm willing to throw away my biases. When Cracked Rear View first came out, I wasn't even sure what "jammy traditional rock" was, but I could recognize its sound and I knew I'd rather listen to other stuff like Weezer and Green Day. After a while, I stopped letting my tastes get in the way and just accepted that their singles had memorable, solid choruses. I will defend "Let Her Cry" and the rest of the album as long as I'm breathing.
Song that turned me off even more than Hootie did initially but I ended up liking anyway: "I Want You"
I used to think that this was the most toothless song ever. I've always been a fan of pop music, but in my younger days I needed it to be either ridiculously catchy or filled with attitude. "I Want You" just came off as wimpy and sounded a few years behind the curve, so I resisted. Oddly enough, I turned around on the song due to Rosie O'Donnell, of all people. I'd catch her talk show sometimes in the afternoon and she would often play snippets of it. It was either her enthusiasm for it or that she played the best part of the song, but it opened my eyes up to the possibility that it may not be all that bad. Once I gave it a chance, I found out that it was indeed ridiculous catchy, despite how wimpy it came off.
Song I didn't really appreciate till I became an adult: "Hey Jealousy"
Even when I recorded this song back in 1998, it was mostly due to recognizing it from years before and liking it at that time. "Hey Jealousy" was never one of my top favorites back in 1993, but I rarely turned the channel whenever it came on. It wasn't until about five or six years ago when the song came up during a message board discussion and I went back to it. At that time, I couldn't believe that I gave such a gem a moderate reception. Somehow the chorus seemed bigger and it felt like I had heard the lyrics "Tell me do you think it'd be alright/If I could just crash here tonight?/You can see I'm in no shape for driving/And anyway I've got no place to go" for the first time, even though my little grade school ears could sing along to it with ease back in the day.
Song that reminds me the most of failed opportunities: "The Boy Is Mine"
I had recently been pretty good at making sure that songs did not cut off before the end of a side, but in this case I didn't even take the time to think about it. Once I heard that a new song by Brandy and Monica was about to be played, I instantly hit record because I figured that it would be a song that I would eventually covet. For the first few weeks, all I did was ask people if they had heard it because it was so new and the collaboration monumental. When I had to go to summer school, this girl named Ines took the same bus as I did on the way home. We would always catch each other's eyes for the first couple of weeks, but we really didn't talk until she offered me a seat that she had been saving. One of my main topics back then when talking to a girl was music and movies because I knew that I could find some common ground there since I knew a lot about them. The conversation I remember most is when I asked her if she had heard this song and I exaggerated my excitement about it in hopes that it would lead to a deeper connection. We continued to talk whenever we took the bus together, but that was far as it went. Sometimes I wonder if I had more to talk about besides music and movies how things would have gone. Or I could have just asked for her number.
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