The End Of Side A = The End Of An Era
Next to "nineties" in the dictionary, there's a picture of that dude in the brown.
What ever happened to Toad The Wet Sprocket? You know, the “All I Want” band from the ’90s?
…No? “Walk On The Ocean”? Not ringing a bell?
I’d forgotten I even owned that album until iTunes DJ unearthed it earlier today, and then I realized that I knew every word, even of the songs I didn’t care for — because we listened to the whole album back then. Well, I did, anyway, because my dorm-room system didn’t have a remote. Just for the hell of it, I listened to the whole album again.
It really hasn’t aged well. Even the band’s name is symptomatic of that time, how it tries too hard for the accidental wisdom of a randomized stoner handful of unrelated words. (I seem to recall from 120 Minutes that there is a story behind that band name, but I don’t recall the story itself.) And the one thing it does really well is completely irrelevant now, to wit: the two-minutes-or-less song you use to plug the end of Side A of a mix tape.
“Nightingale Song” off the Fear album is great for that — it’s peppy, so it can transition between “up” songs, but it’s plaintive too, so it can transition into “down” songs. It made a great bridge between, say, Belly on Side A and a risky but crucial Cure track on Side B. I put it on just about every mix tape I made in college — when said mix tape’s theme didn’t call for “Please Please Please (Let Me Get What I Want),” that is, or for the all-time champion of Side-A short-ends songs, “Particle Man” by They Might Be Giants. (Or The Sundays’ “Noise” if I really wanted to show off, and I nearly always did.)
The Smiths and TMBG survived, of course; Toad The Wet, not so much. I wonder how many other bands, not destined for particular longevity, touring frantically behind another single entirely, live on that way in the memories of mix-tape alchemists, thanks to a 90-second track that thousands of us crammed onto Sides A to fill space.
Which songs did you wedge into that last awkward bit of Side A? Or do you not even know what the old lady is gassing on about right now?
Tags: Gay Nineties music The Smiths The Sundays They Might Be Giants Toad The Wet Sprocket
Wow, I’m on YouTube checking out TTWS videos, and I can absolutely sing along with every song. I’m 14 again, y’all. Thanks for the memory bump, Sars!
I dumped my mixed tapes years ago in a massive purge, and I will regret it to my dying day.
gah. I was just whinging on facebook how I found an old mix-tape my sister made me 10 years ago, and while singing along to it when I popped it in for a retro moment, I realised I still have all those songs on frequent-running in my ipod. No Toad though, so I guess I’m ok. For now.
Also, I never had patience to make mix tapes, I’d inevitably cut off a song midway, and couldn’t find anything the right length, so tapes were for my only torture, never for others’ misery.
Ahhhh, mix tapes. I had a bunch. I was one of the super anal people who added up the songs. I even converted the seconds to hundredths of a point for more accurate calculation. (My sister, on the other hand, just taped songs until the tape ran out. So all her mix tapes had songs that stopped halfway through at the end. GAAAHHH.)
A while back I recreated all my principal mix tapes (of which there are 9) as iPod playlists. Recently I was de-wallpapering, and then painting, my bedroom and I listened to them all. It was like time-traveling through the ’90s and the early ’00s. I kept being like, “Hey, remember Sophie B. Hawkins?” or “Wow, was I into the Cranberries.”
I didn’t really have a go-to song to end the side with, because my mix tapes were like albums — each one was different. My favorite thing to do was have a big angry song (Garbage?) and then something sort of sad and peaceful and redeeming (Jane Siberry?) after it. I would usually end Side A with something mellow, but not AS mellow as the end of Side B. I still have notebooks where I plotted out the order, and made heartbreaking choices for the sake of everything fitting.
I also had a run of *starting* every mix tape with an X-Files theme remix. I just kept finding different ones (the DJ Dado techno one is probably the most awesome), and it became a thing. Ah, the ’90s.
Most random one-hit wonder that I totally have memorized, and bought the album of because that’s what you did, from that era? Possibly Patti Rothberg, “Inside.” Or “The Way” by Fastball. Oooh, oooh! Or “Every Heartbeat” by Amy Frigging Grant. I LOVED that song for some reason. And I mention again the Sophie B. Hawkins. Whaler? I wore that album OUT. Why? Not sure now.