Wax Nostalgic
If it isn’t already, wouldn’t that title be just a dynamite name for a record store? Yet more wasted genius.
By the way, did you know that you can just like… buy a “dictaphone?” Then you could record whatever you want to wax blanks. I’m sincerely surprised that hasn’t taken off among the hipster crowd.
I’m not so young that I missed vinyl completely, but it was on its way out by the time I hit my teens. The first music I ever bought for myself was a 45rpm of Run-D.M.C. doing “Walk This Way.” They were my first favorite band. True story. I may have had a few other records near that same time, but most of my vinyl memories are tied up with periodically examining the cover art in my parents’ collection. Specifically, I remember the ridiculous pictures in “The Who Sell Out,” the interactive folding art of The Mamas & The Papas reversed “The Papas & The Mamas,” and the mystery of the Thunderball soundtrack. And of course Tom T. Hall’s “Songs Of Fox Hollow.” Sneaky Snake, anyone?
That actually reminds me that I did have some records when I was real little, too. Mostly Disney books with accompanying records (including the very politically incorrect “Brer Rabbit And The Tar Baby“). I also have a vague memory of some record that came on the back of a cereal box. The record itself was blue and square! When you listened to it, it was just some spooky guy telling a story with some sound effects. “On an old dark road, there was a old dark house, and inside the old dark house was an old dark…” and so on, until eventually there’s a chest and inside the chest… “there was… a… THING!!!” And as he screamed that, my childhood buddy Jonah and I would run screaming out of the room! I’d die to track that down and hear it again, but even my considerable web-searching abilities have always come up short. And it’s highly unlikely that record is still among those that my parents kept with theirs. But a girl can dream.
Wow, this is not at all what I intended to write about tonight. My project of cleaning out my old storage unit, started way back in the summer of 2010, has been more or less done for some time now. I plan on writing some kind of wrap up to that in the future, telling what all I found as well as what I discovered about myself, etc. But for right now, I’m going through one of the last straggler boxes and feeling the need to share my findings. In the early 1990’s, as I was suffering through middle school, cassette singles were all the rage. I don’t have to tell you. You were there. But for me, that was a very discrete period of just a couple years before I had money of my own and started buying CDs. So to see my cassette single collection (which I found in storage and am about to lay bare for you) is to have a very candid view into my somewhat embarrassing music taste in those days. Here it is, complete (as far as I know)and unedited, the music I bought in the early 90’s:
- 2 Pac – I Get Around
- A Tribe Called Quest – Award Tour
- AC/DC – Money Talks
- Ace Of Base – All That She Wants
- Ace Of Base – The Sign
- All-4-One – So Much In Love
- Beck – Loser
- Black Sheep – The Choice Is Yours
- Body Count – The Winner Loses
- C&C Music Factory – Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
- Crash Test Dummies – Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
- Sheryl Crow – All I Wanna Do
- Cypress Hill – Insane In The Brain
- Das EFX – They Want EFX
- Digable Planets – Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)
- Dr. Dre – Let Me Ride
- Dr. Dre – Nuthin’ But A “G” Thang
- DRS – Gangsta Lean
- Duice – Dazzey Duks
- En Vogue – Free Your Mind
- Enya – Book Of Days
- Faith No More – Epic
- Funkdoobiest – Bow Wow Wow
- Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy
- Green Jellö – Three Little Pigs
- House Of Pain – Jump Around
- Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You
- Ice-T – Gotta Lotta Love
- Ice Cube – Check Yo Self
- Ice Cube – It Was A Good Day
- Ice Cube – You Know How We Do It
- Janet Jackson – Again
- Masta Ace Incorporated – Born To Roll
- MC Nas-D & DJ Freaky Fred – Gold Diggin’ Girls
- MC Serch – Here It Comes
- Meatloaf – I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)
- Megadeth – Symphony Of Destruction
- Morrissey – The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get*
- Naughty By Nature – Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
- Naughty By Nature – Hip Hop Hooray
- Naughty By Nature – O.P.P.
- Nirvana – Lithium
- Paperboy – Ditty
- Positive K – I Got A Man
- The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – Soul To Squeeze
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under The Bridge
- Shai – Together Forever
- Sir Mix-a-Lot – Baby Got Back
- Snow – Informer
- Spin Doctors – Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong
- Tag Team – Whoomp! There It Is
- Tony Toni Tone – If I Had No Loot
- Ugly Kid Joe – Everything About You
- Warren G. & Nate Dogg – Regulate
- Wreckx-N-Effect – Rump Shaker
* This was in fact my first exposure to anything Morrissey or Smiths, and it remains my favorite Moz solo song. I have a distinct memory of seeing this video and being conflicted about it. Being so afraid of how much it moved me that I almost needed to deny it even to myself. I had this single and listened to it a lot. But I never told my friends I had it or liked it. It wasn’t until after high school when I heard The Smiths and fell in love with them that I made the connection back to 1994.
And for completeness’ sake, here are the full albums I had (some of which I must have lifted from my parents and/or sister):
- AC/DC – Back In Black
- AC/DC – Let There Be Rock
- AC/DC – Who Made Who
- Beastie Boys – License To Ill
- Body Count – Cop Killer
- Eazy-E – Eazy-Duz-It
- Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation
- Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?
- LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out
- Mystic Music Presents: Instrumental Magic (See, I’ve always been way into instrumentals!)
- N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
- Public Enemy – Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black
- Public Enemy – Greatest Misses
- Run-D.M.C. – Run-D.M.C.
- Run-D.M.C. – King Of Rock
- Run-D.M.C. – Raising Hell
- Run-D.M.C. – Tougher Than Leather
- Tom Tom Club – Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom
- Urban Dance Squad – Mental Floss For The Globe
- The Who – Tommy
- Some 70’s funk compilation with Gap Band and the like.
- Various mixtapes, mostly from my sister, including Garth Brooks, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The Scorpions, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Too Short, and ZZ Top.
Funny to see all this stuff again. And now that it’s all documented and catalogued, I can get rid of it. (Well, except the Morrissey one.) Now the question is: what on earth to do with it? Does anyone even take donated cassette singles anymore? Or is this all destined for landfill?
Listening to: The Marketts – “Outer Space, Hot Rods, And Superheroes”
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We should have a party after a TCB show and at this party we have to play each one of yer cassette singles….then you can get rid of them…
I think you would leave this party as soon as Spin Doctors came on.
Let it be known that earlier tonight, I posted this stuff in the “free stuff” area of Craig’s List, and within just a couple hours (at 1am) somebody came by to pick it up. Done and done! Turns out he’s got a tape player in his car and at work. Feels good to know they’ll get some more use before going to waste. It took me eight months to get off my ass to do something about it, and less than two hours to solve it once I started.