Winamp Wednesday: Six for Solstice
A longest-day countdown!
Something a little different for Winamp Wednesday. Today is the longest day of the year, and I can think of no better time to listen to a prime selection of pop jams. In my collection of tapes is a mixtape called Summer Mix, which I assembled for myself back in 1998. This was the height of my obsession with radio (previously covered in this post way back in March) which meant that I spent a bunch of post-school afternoons perched with a tape on record and pause in my boombox, waiting to capture that next great hit. The result was a disjointed ninety minutes of songs that I still love.
Well, mostly still love. I was surprised by the inclusion of the Will Smith version of “Just the Two of Us” but I guess I was still enamored of Men in Black at that point.
So for your longest day here are a half-dozen tracks from that mixtape to help you rock into summer. And why not start with…
The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star”
The Rosetta Stone of the way I grew up. This song was mostly famous for being the first-ever video played on MTV, the Overture of the new sound and picture. It’s also a banger, and it features Hans Zimmer of all people on keyboards. “Video Killed the Radio Star” has such track-one-side-one energy that it’s no wonder it went first in the music video era; those descending synth chords and plaintive guitar wails draw you into the story like a siren’s call.
When I was very little I found this song both annoying and a little sad in a way my tender heart wanted to avoid. It only found its way onto my mixtapes when I started to reevaluate 80s music as a whole. It’s probably not possible to grasp the themes of loss and resentment that Trevor Horn slammed into three minutes here when you’re all of fourteen years old, but at least you can appreciate that final wicked riff going into the chorus.
Fastball, “The Way”
Sometimes you hear a pop song so good it stops you cold. I was listening to Z100 when they spun this track for the first time, and it felt like we were all discovering something new at once. Is “The Way” considered cool 90s nostalgia? Is this hokey? I can’t tell what was once cool that has now become stupid, and I definitely couldn’t tell in the moment. The first time I heard this song I felt like I was on a damn rocket, like my weird and awkward self was on the kind of twangy trip that only those throwback rockers of the late 90s could provide. That Texas-fried solo into a full stop into that final Minuet-derived chorus? Who couldn’t be riveted by that?
“The Way” is the one that endures, but it’s not even close to my favorite Fastball song. “You’re an Ocean” is driven by a Billy Preston piano line, and that feels like cheating. But “Are You Ready for the Fallout” and “Fire Escape” and “Out of My Head” are each in their own way a get-up-and-go reach-out to the audience, the stamps in music history from a band that has always deserved better.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd, “Blue on Black”
I’d like to thank the Capital Region’s own WPYX (PYX-106) for providing the soundtrack for my camp-counselor summer. Waking up was easy when it was Waking Up with the Wolf, knowing that every morning would start with Van Halen or Bad Company before I ran out the door to marshall the kids. I was a ludicrous failure as a counselor, too young and scattered and not filled with the lessons one needs to be in charge. But no one could have asked for a better soundtrack for the job. PYX was mostly album-oriented classic rock, exactly who you think of when you think of 1970s rock-n-roll. In any given day you will hear all the important Clapton and Frampton and also every single track off the Pink Floyd albums everyone knows.
But there would occasionally be breakthroughs of newer artists who seemed to fit the profile. You’d get a Johnny Lang here or a new Bonnie Raitt there, and then something shows up that feels like it was here forever and yet still the great vanguard. Here comes this guy who’s twenty which was a handful of years older than I was, and here he is recording something that sounds like Nick Cave decided to become Stevie Ray Vaughan. That deceptively simple ring in the riff makes you want to nod your head or maybe shimmy your shoulders back and forth. I played this one over and over wondering if I could make something this big and rocking in six years’ time.
I live in the future and know how that went, so next song!
Sarah McLachlan, “Adia”
Hey, this isn’t “Building a Mystery”! But if you weren’t completely besotted by Sarah McLachlan in 1998 you’re a dang liar. “Adia” is a better song in hindsight, or at least its themes of personal heartbreak reflected on the exterior world work well in what remains in 2023. In its day it was inexplicably McLachlan’s most popular tune in America; it raced past even “Angel” to reach a Number Three spot on the Hot 100. But it does seem to have been forgotten for the most part. “Angel” and “I Will Remember You” are still memetic in their ways, so they’ll have staying power. But listening to the tape I realized I liked “Adia” so much more than I used to. Maybe I just needed to grow up and live through the same circumstances the lyrics detail. It only took twenty-five years.
Apollo 440, “Lost in Space”
A sci-fi movie with Gary Oldman and William Hurt! How could we possibly lose? I don’t hate Lost in Space nearly as much as most people seemed to in its moment, but I’m also going off of memories from opening weekend in April 1998, because why am I going to go back and watch Lost in Space of all things? Certain really insane moments continue to stick out to me, from an early attempt at Bullet Time to a sort-of-smart physics problem ending to the film to Matt LeBlanc’s CGI armor face. It was a distinctly five-out-of-ten time at the movies, and we probably need more of those.
But the soundtrack? Fatboy Slim, Crystal Method, Space, Juno Reactor, Propellerheads? You might as well have smacked me across the face and told me I was obsessed with electronic music now. Almost all of this music is shoved into the end credits of the movie—I think Death in Vegas gets a quick diagetic reference—but if that’s how they had to cheat to make this CD happen then so be it.
Kudos to Apollo 440 for doing the movie tie-in thing of using actual dialogue from the movie. The second I got my driver’s license I took Maj. Don West’s advice. “Putting the pedal to the metal, here it goes…”
Squeeze, “Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)”
Squeeze is my favorite band and it isn’t even close. Argybargy is their best album and “Pulling Mussels” may well be the best track on it, although I’d absolutely give credence to “Farfisa Beat” or “Separate Beds”. I’m sure I loved “Tempted” and a few other random tracks before, but right here is where I think the true obsession started. Is there a better song for summer than cheeky lyrics about what you’re gonna do on summer break, a building verse that explodes into harmony, and both a guitar and piano solo? Twenty-five summers since say no, that behind the chalet my holiday’s complete.
I hope you’re out there dancing and I hope your summer is truly fantastic. Say cool, stay rad, and keep playing those tapes!