Mixtape Reflections: Michael’s Music 1999 and Michael’s Music 2019

It was twenty years ago last February that I made my first mixtape: Michael’s Music 1999. In February of 2019, I commemorated this by creating what I consider to be an updated version; calling it Michael's Music 2019 despite that I stopped going by “Michael” once I turned 18. While my first mixtape was a mainly a collection of music I had been fond of for the first twelve years of my life, this one would cover my late 20’s to early 30’s. I tried to choose songs that had a similar energy to the songs on my first tape, even if they were a different genre (under the "goth" genre umbrella, mostly). Anyway, first I’ll go ahead and tell the story of my first mixtape, because 2019 is ending soon and I want to get this out there before it does.

Michael’s Music 1999

We begin our story in the year 1999, the definitive BC/AD moment in my life. Everything before February 1999 is prehistory; I hadn’t begun to record my life yet. In 1999 my name was still Michael. But Michael might as well have been some other kid. Up until 7^th grade I used to go by Mikey, however I had decided based on the amount of teasing I got over it at school that the name was too childish, and had come to loathe being called by that name. My real first name is Suren, but if I went by that name at school, I’d have been even more of a target for bullying than I already was, being shorter than everyone else in 7^th grade, having to wear glasses, and a bit shy and bookish. It was as if no one had seen a short person before. “Did you skip a grade?“ “Are you legally a midget?“ And so on. Middle School kids will look for anything abnormal about you to make fun of. So you see, if I’d have gone by some strange Armenian first name, it would’ve been just one more thing for people to go after. So I kept that name a secret and went by my middle, much more American-sounding name. Better to be one of as many as four Michaels in one class, than to be unique and become a target. Michael became a sort of shield. They couldn’t do much with Oganessian, though watching my teachers try to pronounce it on the first day of class was always amusing. But there was nothing they could say about Michael.

            One day in February I was watching TV with my sister and mother. I remember it well, it was a new made-for-TV adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. I‘d anticipated it for months. And I kid you not, it is the only time you will ever see Gene Wilder in a turtle suit playing a balalaika. Still no match for the 1985 made-for-TV Alice on Wonderland which I am going to cover another time, but still pretty good. As we were watching though, the speakers on the TV blew out. It made this really loud, horrible noise, and then silence. I didn’t get to see the end of the movie until YouTube was invented.

            Though I protested greatly against it, my parents resorted to taking my TV out of my bedroom and moving it to the living room, taking away my ability to play my beloved Sega Genesis games (Even back then, I relied on outdated technology. It was another thing for me to be ridiculed over. “You don‘t have an N64 or a Playstation?” I’d get asked in disbelief. These things mattered in Middle School.). I had my books, but they weren’t enough to keep me entertained for long. So, my mom relented, and instead gave me her boom box.

            The boom box had a CD and cassette player. I didn’t have very many CD’s. Most of the CD’s I had to listen to were my mom’s. I could listen to Smashing Pumpkin’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Weird Al’s Bad Hair Day (my only CD) or Journey’s Greatest Hits for a while, but eventually that got old, as much as I liked them. So I began surfing radio stations. Only ones that played alternative rock of course. Back then there were at least four to choose from in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I eventually came to 90.5 The Edge, a local student-run rock station. This would be my new home for the coming years.

            And then, I noticed that the boom box had a record button. My mother graciously let me go through and choose a tape from collection of blank cassette tapes from the 80’s, and I was ready to record all my favorite songs from the radio. “Michael’s Music 1999” was born. I developed a list of songs I wanted to record, based on what I’d grown up listening to during car rides or while watching MTV, and I sat and waited for the radio to play them. It became a constant waiting game. A game that would eventually become a testament to those endless days, sitting in front of the radio alone in my bedroom, on my favorite chair that while dumpy-looking I refused to let my dad throw out. My radio would become my best friend; at times, my only friend. And each melody on those cassette tapes contains a memory. Melodies which enable me to relive those dreary Middle School days every time I listen.

            The first song I recorded was “Oh Yeah” by Local H. Essentially a random pick, there wasn’t any special reason I recorded it first. I even recorded over it later, but I eventually restored it for posterity once I got it on a CD. I also recorded over the rest of the tape throughout the year, particularly over the summer, only officially retiring it on December 31^st, 1999. Some songs survive that had been there from the beginning, but they are few. A lot of the songs are something I’d never really be into today (Alanis Morsette for example), but my excuse is that I was 12. In the process, Michael’s Music 1999 became a curious testament to both my past and future. Music from my childhood in the 1980’s and 1990’s evoke bygone days of accompanying my mother in the car on errands, or her job managing a paper route, while listening to the radio. Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”, which came out the same month I was born, was a favorite song of mine as a toddler and would have been the first song on the tape had I any control over the song placement. Songs such as “The Impression That I Get” by Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “Sell Out” by Reel Big Fish”, and The Prodigy’s “Firestarter” were songs that I loved in the mid-90’s and remind me of some of the best years of my childhood from ages 9 to 11. Except I didn't start fires as a child. At least not often.

Other songs capture what was then the present, who I was at the time, a shy awkward preteen who was dangerously close to being pushed too far. And still other tracks seem to speak to my later teenage years and beyond; two Rammstein songs appear on the tape, recorded the first times I ever heard them. They seem to foreshadow the influence German music would have on me in the future, as well as heavier music in general once I got further into my teens. And then at the end of side A is a song by Velvet Acid Christ, “Fun With Drugs”, recorded from 90.5’s Goth Industrial show. So ahead of it’s time was it that I never quite bothered looking the song up and finding out its name and who made it until I was into my late 20’s, by which time I was fond of the genre. After that, I began to listen to and like other songs by Velvet Acid Christ. It was almost as if I’d recorded it there fifteen years in the future, but it had been there all along. Before then the song was merely a dark curiosity that I never pursued.

            Two songs on the tape that really seem to capture who I was when I made it are “Anything, Anything” by Dramarama, and “Freak of the Week” by Marvelous 3. With “Anything, Anything”, it isn’t so much the lyrics themselves that bring me back to Middle School, no. It’s the constant guitar riff in the background; the energy it has. There’s a sort of innocence and light to it, mixed with melancholy. Perhaps it is the upbeat guitar riff coupled with sad lyrics that reminds me of being 12 years old, a mixture that evokes the happiness of childhood dissolving into a tormented adolescence. With “Freak of the Week”, the feeling is very similar, though the lyrics applied to me more. A song about being ridiculed, being the center of cruel, unwanted attention. Being a freak. Yet the music itself still contained a light, innocent energy. No other song really captures the end of my childhood quite like that.

Michael’s Music 2019

            For the twentieth anniversary of my first mixtape, I wanted to put together something special. Something that would mimic the same feel and energy of the first tape, using only songs I’ve liked in recent years, recorded on the same style of yellow Memorex tape (lucky finds at the thrift store has supplied me with a few extras of these). I wanted to find a suitable counterpart for each song on the original tape. Where there’s a slow, emotional song on Michael’s Music 1999, I chose a newer slow and emotional song in the same spot on Michael’s Music 2019. Where there’s a fast and energetic song on Michael’s Music 1999, there was a similar song on Michael’s Music 2019. At the end of Side A is another Velvet Acid Christ song. The 1999 tape ended with Orgy’s cover of the New Order song “Blue Monday”, so at the end of Side B on the 2019 tape is Noir’s cover of Ministry’s “Same Old Madness”. “Damned” by Brotherhood symbolizes trying to find happiness while undergoing stressful times and slowly losing hope, just like Marvelous 3’s “Freak of the Week” made me feel when I was 12.  Michael’s Music 1999 didn’t have a lot of rhyme or reason to it, because recording off the radio gave me very little control. So, the songs in the 2019 version don’t always quite flow well together either, on purpose.

            This mixtape was made shortly after the birth of my son, so there are some songs that remind me of those times. I remember that it really made me come to terms with the idea that I'm not as young as I used to be, and that’s what “When the Night Meets the Day” by Stratovarius is about. Kill Shelter’s “Get Down” is actually the song I had stuck in my head in the delivery room. The lyrics didn’t fit the situation, it was mostly just the tune. Just as Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”, the second song on the 1999 tape, is a song I associate with my birth as it was released the same month I was born, this is a song I can associate with the birth of my son. [:SITD:], a German EBM and Industrial band, is my modern Rammstein, carrying the torch of German music. The Hot Dad synthwave cover of “I’m a Believer” is my modern answer to “Anything, Anything”; as the latter is about a troubled love life, “I’m a Believer” is about finally finding love after years of wondering if it was ever going to happen to you, which is actually quite relevant in my case. For the record, I’m not really a fan of the original by The Monkees nor the cover by Smash Mouth, this is the first version of the song I’ve actually liked. Because synthwave makes everything better.

Anyhow, if you listen to both tapes one after the other, you might draw parallels between the songs yourself. Below is the playlist for both tapes. The tapes are 90 minutes long, for reference. Keep in mind the 1999 tape is padded out a little with radio commercials, and not all of the songs are complete because I had to press record on the radio to get them. I wasn’t going to go that far to make the 2019 tape like its predecessor, although I threw a Communion After Dark intro on there at one point as a callback. And because I just love my audience so much (especially those of you who want to read about my old mixtapes), I started a Spotify account just so I could reproduce my mixes on my blog for your listening pleasure without having to embed 40 YouTube videos. Spotify didn’t have everything though. I’ll just link those to YouTube if you click on the song and band title. The songs not on Spotify includes “Goth Kids Song (Dear Rosie)” by Daniel Guerra Caballero, which is a cover of the song that the goth kids from South Park listen to, with lyrics added. It sounds quite good, kind of like The Birthday Massacre if you know that band. And then  "Ecoutez et Repetez" by Spiritual Sky is a strange Acid House song from 1989 I encountered on YouTube.

Michael's Music 1999 Spotify Playlist

Michael's Music 2019 Spotify Playlist

Michael’s Music 1999 - Playlist

Side A

Local H - Oh Yeah

Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer

Nirvana – Lithium

Third Eye Blind - Graduate

Rammstein – Du Hast

Crystal Method – Busy Child

Dramarama – Anything Anything

Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression that I Get

The Wallflowers – One Headlight

Weird Al Yankovic – Christmas at Ground Zero

Reel Big Fish - Sell Out

Velvet Acid Christ – Fun With Drugs

Side B

The Prodigy – Breathe

Gin Blossoms – Follow You Down

Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Scooby Snacks

Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun

Marvelous 3 – Freak of the Week

Goo Goo Dolls – Iris

The Prodigy – Firestarter

INXS – Need You Tonight

Alanis Morsette – Ironic

Rammstein – Sehnsucht

Bad Religion – 21^st Century Digital Boy

Suicidal tendencies – Institutionalized

Michael Jackson – Thriller

Orgy – Blue Monday

Michael’s Music 2019 – Playlist

Side A

Stratovarius – When the Night Meets the Day

Kill Shelter - Get Down

Daniel Guerra Caballero – Goth Kids Song (aka Dear Rosie)

 [:SITD:] – Dunkelziffer

Spiritual Sky - Ecoutez et Repetez

Twin Tribes – Still in Still

Masquerade – Too Depressed to Dance

Holygram – Still There

Hot Dad – I’m a Believer

The Cure- Cold

Velvet Acid Christ – Futile

Side B

District 13 – Touch Me (One More Time)

Voltaire – Underground (demo)

Brotherhood – Damned

William Control – Cemetery (acoustic)

Statiqbloom – Thin Hidden Hand

Michael Sembello – Automatic Man

SYZYGYX – Violet Violence

Omnia – Alive Until you Die

We Are Temporary - Medication
Boy Harsher - Fate

Noir - Same Old Madness