Tag: Buffalo Tom

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Playlists

Playlist: “1993 mix vol. I” (a mixed tape)

Much like the last time I posted one of these playlists based on an old mixed tape, I was downstairs in my basement recently, this time cleaning rather than looking for something, and I came across the same shoebox full of old cassette tapes. Of course, I stopped what I was doing for a good twenty minutes or so and went through said box to remind myself what was in there and to allow the memories of each to come flooding over me. I haven’t played any of these tapes in decades because I have long since dispensed with the last sound system that I had that could play cassette tapes and so I have no idea of any of them even play. I suppose I could get rid of some of the tapes I bought when I was a teenager because I likely now have it digitally or on vinyl format but I’m not certain I’d ever want to throw out any of the mixed tapes. They are as much a document of my own personal history as the photos, yearbooks, letters, and other random bric-a-brac I have stashed away.

Going through these cassettes, I decided it was time to do another of these playlists and opted to replicate one that I created myself, rather than one that was made for me, like the “Raging retro” playlist I previously shared. I chose “1993 mix vol. I” this time around because, as an artifact from 30 years ago, there’s a few fun things you can glean about it’s creator.

Who was 1993 JP Robichaud?

Well, he wasn’t yet inventing creative titles for his mixes, that’s for sure. For a tape called “1993 mix vol. I”, he wasn’t necessarily as concerned with putting together music from the year, indeed, given that it was the first volume, it was likely too early in the year for a mixed tape’s worth of music. Instead, the tape includes music to which I was listening at the time and going through the playlist, it’s obvious to me that I started with songs from the handful of CDs I had in my still new collection and then, moved into the purchased cassettes before finishing off the second side with songs from albums or mixes that had been recorded for me. I can also tell that it was still early on in my mixed tape making career because I hadn’t started strictly following my own self-imposed rule of one song per artist. Indeed, the two appearances by The Wonder Stuff on the tape’s first side betrays how big a fan I was of the band in the early days of 1993.

Some of the photos I’ve included here of the cassette and its J-card sleeve hint that I had a lot of spare time on my hands. I cut out letters from magazines to cobble together a cover and used stickers from old VHS cassette tapes to decorate the cassette. It reminds me that I would later get even more inventive in decorating these things, especially when I made them for others. And finally, the volume one in the title suggests that I fully intended to make more mixes before the year was up but memory does not serve at all as to whether there ever was a second volume created. There definitely isn’t one in the box.

Now before I get right into the playlist itself, here are some highlights that you definitely should check out:

      • The opening song, “Take 5” by Northside is the first song I’d ever heard by the lesser-known Factory Records product and the song that goaded me into purchasing my first CD, given that I was never able to find the band’s only album on cassette
      • I discovered the second edition of Mick Jones’ second band, Big Audio Dynamite II, before I ever really became familiar with his first band and the words to “Rush” were rarely far from my mind after I committed them to memory
      • As I mentioned above, The Wonder Stuff appears here twice, with two very different sounds: “No, for the 13th time” from their debut and “Welcome to the cheap seats” from their third album
      • The version of Spirit of the West’s “Political” here is the re-recorded rocked up version from “Go figure” because at the time, I was blissfully unaware of the far superior folkier original
      • The Barenaked Ladies were a few years from massive world status but they were already pretty big in Southern Ontario and “Hello city” was just one of the excellent tracks that graced their now classic debut album, “Gordon”
      • The Smiths’ “Please please please let me get what I want” closes things off as it did on many a mixed tape because its short length was often a perfect way to fill up the last bit of remaining tape

For those who don’t use Apple Music, here is the entire playlist as it appeared on the original mixed tape:

Side A:
1. Northside “Take 5”
2. Teenage Fanclub “Is this music?”
3. The Wonder Stuff “No, for the 13th time”
4. The Lemonheads “Alison’s starting to happen”
5. The Cure “High”
6. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “Suave & suffocation”
7. Depeche Mode “World in my eyes”
8. Big Audio Dynamite II “Rush”
9. The Charlatans “Weirdo”
10. The Wonder Stuff “Welcome to the cheap seats”
11. R.E.M. “Stand”
12. The Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack “Time warp”
13. Spirit of the West “Political”

Side B:
14. The Housemartins “I smell winter”
15. The Farm “Love see no colour” (unavailable on Apple Music)
16. Buffalo Tom “Velvet roof”
17. 808 State “Lift”
18. The Sisters of Mercy “More”
19. UB40 “Red red wine”
20. Barenaked Ladies “Hello city”
21. Primal Scream “Movin’ on up”
22. Suzanne Vega “Blood makes noise”
23. Morrissey “Tomorrow”
24. The Smiths “Please, please, please let me get what I want”

And here is the promised link to the Apple Music playlist.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1993: #28 Buffalo Tom “Soda jerk”

<< #29    |    #27 >>

“Velvet roof” (number fourteen on my Best tunes of 1992 list) was my introduction to Buffalo Tom. I had recorded the video off CityLimits and pretty much wore that section of the videocassette tape out with repeated rewinds and replays. In the summer of 1993, I found a used CD copy of “Let me come over” at Penguin music in Toronto but misplaced it at the Bathurst street subway station before it even made it home with me. A year or so later, I was scanning lists of available albums in order to come up with my 10 albums for a penny from either BMG or Columbia House*, when I saw “Big red letter day” available for selection. The CD was added without hesitation and so became the first and only Buffalo Tom album to which I would listen in full and actually own in physical format for a number of years.

Hence, “Soda jerk” became the second ever Buffalo Tom song that I would ever hear. And yeah, I loved it. The song leads off the American alt-rock trio’s fourth long player with a bang. It’s perhaps the most upbeat song and obvious single off an album that led the band further from its Dinosaur Jr influenced roots and into crisper sound and a melodic vocal focused direction, a rarity in the grunge heavy music world at the time. The song garnered the band some good coin too when it was used in Nike and Pontiac commercials and received further exposure when it was featured on the cult teen television show, “My so called life”.

A number of people have called “Soda jerk” Buffalo Tom’s masturbation song, referring as proof to the lyric “jerked my fountain”. However, I’ve always looked pointedly at the song title for meaning and figured they were using the term given to old school, soda shoppe employees as a symbol and example of the type of soul sucking job that many members of generation X were forced to take back in those days**. My theory certainly falls more in line with words that frontman Bill Janovitz has used to describe the tune: “a big bouncy song that is borderline despondent and about alienation.”

“Form a line here
I think I’ll die here
These people nauseate me”

And Bill is absolutely right. “Soda jerk” does rock out out in a major key kind of way, showcasing jangly, happily strummed guitars, marching and pounding drums, and call and response vocals that rev you up and knock you down.

*I hit up both of these music subscription services at one point or another in my formative years. Say what you will, it was a great way to bolster your CD collection.

**For more on this subject, go watch the Kevin Smith film “Clerks”.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1993 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1992: #14 Buffalo Tom “Velvet roof”

<< #15    |    #13 >>

“Scraggly hair and messed up shoes
I’m looking all around for you
Find you in the corner bar
But you can’t find the keys to your car”

This one here’s a real rocker! Driving rhythm and flailing guitars and frontman Bill Janovitz singing about blowing chances with love and life. I first came across this track and thus discovered Buffalo Tom when I recorded the music video off City Limits, a story you might recognize by now if you’ve perused other posts in my Best tunes of 1990, 1991, and 1992 lists. I definitely remember rewinding and replaying this video many times over in my basement bedroom, while frantically slapping the tops of my thighs, flat-handed, as if I were drumming right alongside Tom Maginnis. It’s absolutely one of those songs that gets me riled up every time, even now, especially at around the halfway mark of the song where the mouth organ gets whipped out and then, the real craze begins.

Buffalo Tom was formed in Boston in 1986 and apparently, their name was an amalgam of 60s rock band Buffalo Springfield and the first name of their drummer. Their friendship with J. Mascis and the fact that he produced their first two records was likely the main reason they obtained the questionable tag of Dinosaur Jr. junior. I never saw this comparison myself but I always enjoyed Buffalo Tom’s music more than that of Mascis’s group, perhaps not a popular opinion. Nonetheless, it’s true, and of course, it was on their third album, “Let me come over”, on which this song appears, where they sought different collaborators and started to blaze their own trail, that things really started happening for them.

I loved the drive and energy of “Velvet roof” so much that the first time I saw “Let me come over” on a CD rack, I didn’t hesitate to buy it. Unfortunately, as you might know if you’ve read a certain post on New Model Army’s “Purity”, this particular story doesn’t have such a happy ending. I had travelled to Toronto in the summer of 1993 with my friend Tim to see New Model Army live, my first ever concert. We had driven to the Scarborough Town Centre in the afternoon, parked, and took the TTC LRT and subway downtown from there. Before the show, we hit a few of Tim’s favourite used record and CD shops, including the now defunct Penguin Music, which for quite a while afterwards became my own favourite. I picked up copies of Primus’s “Sailing the seas of cheese” and this Buffalo Tom album.

The New Model Army show was so incredible that we stayed almost right to the end, despite Tim’s wary eye on his watch, knowing full well that we had to catch the last subway eastward, which on a week night in those days wasn’t very late. It was a race from Lee’s Palace to Bathurst station and I remember struggling mightily at the entry gate with hands full of CDs and a concert tee and trying to find the token I had purchased earlier. Then, mere moments later, while waiting downstairs for the subway train to arrive, I realized I no longer had the CDs in my hands. I ran back upstairs but they were nowhere to be found and the ticket taker only shrugged.

At some point, I purchased another copy of “Sailing the seas of cheese” but never did replace “Let me come over”. It was reissued on vinyl a few years ago for its 25th anniversary. If I ever see a copy of that out in the wild, I’m thinking the album will finally see my shelves. One can hope.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1992 list, click here.