Sunday, September 08, 2013

Mixtape Chronicles: Pu Pu Platter (1991/1992)

When I was in my room growing up, MTV was on about 90% of the time. In my elementary school years, I had an RCA tape recorder that I kept nearby to record from the mono speaker on my Panasonic TV. I still remember the satisfaction of finally capturing After the Fire's version of "Der Kommisar" after hours of waiting with my fingers poised on the record and play buttons. Sometime in high school, I bought a converter box from some long-forgotten, poor man's Sharper Image that allowed me to finally get MTV in stereo by connecting the coaxial cable to my Sony CD/Tape player. This also ushered in a new era of recording off MTV. (Kids, this is what one did when one couldn't instantly download albums, and instead waited three weeks between shipments from the Columbia House record club.)

As an example of the fruit of that labor, I offer for your pleasure and consternation the Pu Pu Platter mixtape, which consists of about 80% late 1991, early 1992 MTV's 120 Minutes, with a little local FM rock and oldies thrown in.



Some interesting tidbits here include excerpts from a Pauly Shore show on MTV, which was a kind of forerunner to mundane reality TV shows. Pauly would just hang out with a celebrity or someone he knew in Hollywood, make some inane conversation, then introduce a video. Also included, a shout-out from Hairclub for Men president (and client) Sy Sperling. The bad thing about these kinds of mixtapes, though, is you might record something you decided you didn't like, but unless you immediately rewound, you were stuck with it. Like the Rush excerpt here, a band I will forever associate with Dungeons and Dragons, a game I have never played.

This tape must have been started in late 1991, since one side begins with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" which I would definitely have owned by 1992 when I decided to record "Dance the Night Away" over it, as well as "Bohemian Rhapsody" which swept the country in the wake of Wayne's World mania in the spring of that year. For the record, I think the combination here of Nirvana, Queen, and Sy Sperling captures the spirit of the pre-Clinton 1990s perfectly.

SIDE A: Moo Goo Gai Pan
1. Mudhoney: Good Enough
2. Ned's Atomic Dustbin: Grey Cell Green
3. (Partial) Rush: Some song about traveling in the time of the prophets on a road to redemption.
4. Canned Heat: On the Road Again
5. Erasure: Love to Hate You
6. Billy Bragg: You Woke Up My Neighbourhood
7. (Partial) Red Hot Chili Peppers: Give it Away
8. Neil Young: Hey Hey My My (Live)
9. Red Hot Chili Peppers: Under the Bridge
10. (Partial) Joe Walsh: Walk Away
11. (Partial) Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody

SIDE A(?): Yu Shung Chicken
12. Van Halen: Dance the Night Away
13. (Partial) Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit
14. (Very Brief) REM: Losing My Religion (from Unplugged)
15. Pauly Shore Interlude with Skatemaster Tate
16. U2: The Fly
17. Some Ozzy song intro, and greetings from Sy Sperling!
18. The Farm: Groovy Train
19. Pauly Shore Again
20. The Dylans: Planet Love
21. Smashing Pumpkins: Siva (followed by the voice of Dave Kendall)
22. (Partial) Swervedriver: Rave Down
23. Lush: De-Luxe


No comments: