The Most Important Songs: Various Artists, "Bluedot Records" mix tape

Various Artists, Bluedot Records mix tape (Johann Zweifel, 1992)

Some time in the early 1990s, my friend Johann made me a mix tape. Given that the resulting cassette includes releases put out in 1992, he might have given it to me during that summer three decades ago, when I was home from college interning at a local newspaper in southern Wisconsin—and hanging out again with my Janesville friends. It’s an excellent example of the kinds of mix tapes made by my friend Johann, as well as people involved in the tape trading network of the time, rather than a pure mix tape, per se. Tape traders’ mix tapes didn’t just compile songs of interest, they exchanged entire releases, as well.

Johann’s tape was recorded on a 90-minute Scotch XS II High Bias tape that had apparently been used at least once before. Despite the incomplete information about the contents on the insert Johann included—apparently made from a paper bag—the playlist is as follows, below. Most of the songs are included on this streaming playlist. It’s a good representation of the kind of music Johann enjoyed and listened to: a mix of local and national, mainstream and independent.

Side A

Alligator Gun, 3-Song EP (self-released, 1991)—not available on Spotify

• Scope This

• Fetish No. 5

• Theory of Independent Feet

Samiam, Don’t Break Me 10” (New Red Archives, 1992)

• Don’t Break Me

• You Looking at Me

• Sky Flying By

• Home Sweet Home

• Home Boy

Primus, Miscellaneous Debris EP (Interscope, 1992)

• Intruder

• Making Plans for Nigel

• Sinister Exaggerator

• Tippi Toes

• Have a Cigar

Side B

Screeching Weasel, Pervo-Devo 7” (Shred of Dignity, 1992)—included with the last issue of Teen Punks in Heat

• She's Giving Me the Creeps (this sequence indicates the B side was taped first; “I Wanna Be a Homosexual” is the A side)

• I Fall to Pieces—not available on Spotify

• I Wanna Be a Homosexual (the A side, don’t forget)

Nine Inch Nails

• Wish (from Broken EP, 1992)

• Last (from Broken EP, 1992)

• Gave Up (from Broken EP, 1992)

• Get Down, Make Love (from Sin single, 1990)

Adolescents (from Brats in Battalions, 1987)

• Welcome to Reality (partial, copied over by the preceding songs)

• Marching with the Reich

• I Got a Right

• She Wolf

Pitchfork, Saturn Outhouse EP (Nemesis, 1989)

• Thin Ice

• Goat

• Sinking

Having grown up in southern Wisconsin, I wish I’d paid more attention to Alligator Gun. I remember Johann talking about them often, but I tended to be more Madison- than Milwaukee-focused, in part because it was slightly closer and easier to get to. I have no idea why I didn’t take Alligator Gun more seriously as a teenager; the songs on this three-song tape are good! I can only imagine how much fun they’d have been live. Scott Schoenbeck went on to play with Dashboard Confessional.

I was also never really into Bay Area band Samiam, even though singer Jason Beebout had previously been in Isocracy—and Sergie Loobkoff had played with Sweet Baby and Soup. As a graphic designer, Loobkoff also designed a ton of record album covers. For the most part, I think I didn’t listen to them much because they went mersh, and at the time, that was important to me. But when this 10-inch came out, the band hadn’t yet moved to a major label. Listening to this 10-inch now, I should clearly listen to more Samiam. I should have listened to more even then based on their lineage alone.

The Primus songs at the end of Side A come from their covers EP, Miscellaneous Debris. The mix tape includes it in its entirety, featuring Primus’ take on songs by Peter Gabriel, XTC, the Residents, the Meters, and Pink Floyd. Johann, Noah, and I listened to a lot (a lot) of Primus the previous summer—Sailing the Seas of Cheese—working at a Scout camp together. When this EP came out, I think I was excited about the XTC cover. Now the whole thing is worth listening to, and hearing Primus perform the music of the Residents is particularly exciting—especially with the band currently touring covering Rush records. (Unfortunately, I missed their southern California dates.)

At the end of Side A, the Screeching Weasel 7-inch begins—but gets cut off. That’s not uncommon when making mix tapes: You record until you fill the side, and if it gets cut off, maybe it makes it onto the other side. On Side B, then, we get the full Screeching Weasel 7-inch, Pervo-Devo, which was included with the final issue of Ben Weasel’s zine Teen Punks in Heat. On the mix, the songs are taped out of order, with the B side preceding the A side. These songs were reportedly recorded during the sessions that resulted in My Brain Hurts, which was my introduction to the band. Johann, Noah, and I were all major Screeching Weasel fans, and I remember going to at least one Weasel show with the two of them. These songs were later collected on 1995’s collection Kill the Musicians, as well as as a two-song reissue 7-inch in 2021 (minus the Patsy Cline cover).

The Nine Inch Nails songs on Side B are labeled “bootleg” on the insert. I don’t know if they’re different versions than those included on the Broken EP and Sin single, but after a few listenings this week, I don’t think that they’re live or particularly unique otherwise. Perhaps their demos. At the time, I might have had Broken but not the Sin single, which included three versions of the song “Sin” and a cover of Queen’s “Get Down, Make Love.” Covering Queen wouldn’t have struck me as important or interesting three decades ago, but Trent Reznor’s music is wonderful and I would have listened to it just like any other NIN music.

At the end of the NIN tracks, the tape drops the listener back into previously recorded music from an earlier iteration of the tape, near the end of the Adolescents’ album Brats in Battalions. This is the part of the tape that Johann didn’t record for me. Three of the final four Adolescents songs are included completely, with the tape dropping back into “Welcome to Reality” partway. Johann didn’t mention the Adolescents on the insert, and I’m pretty sure that the tape he made to share with me went up through the NIN songs; what remained was left over from a previous tape or tape exchange. The Adolescents are a wonderful southern California band—one we were aware of but that wasn’t particularly important to us in southern Wisconsin at the time—but listening now, “I Got a Right” and “She Wolf” are especially worth returning to. The folks in Night Birds might even be particular fans of “She Wolf.” It’s their kind of song.

That leaves the last three songs on the mix tape. Pay attention to these. They, oddly, are the most important songs on the tape. I don’t remember them from previous listenings to the tape, but at this stage of my life, they stand out. When the songs first struck me upon first listening to this tape after three decades of inattention, it wasn’t because of the band name or the titles of the songs—it was just because of the sound. “What are these songs?” Included on the previous version of whatever was taped on this cassette, the songs didn’t even rate a mention on Johann’s insert. They could have gone unknown. They could have been forgotten. So I am thankful for the Internet, which let me search for song lyrics and identify the songs as Pitchfork’s first 7-inch, 1989’s Saturn Outhouse.

Pitchfork was a post-hardcore band active in San Diego from 1986-1990. They recorded this single 7-inch and a single album, Eucalyptus, documenting only 11 songs across the two releases, both on Nemesis Records. The three songs on the 7-inch are amazing. I would love this record even if the band had never done anything else of note, but check this out: John Reis went on to front Rocket from the Crypt, and he and Rick Froberg would also later form Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes. Pitchfork was the first serious band for the two and arguably set the stage for some of the best rock ‘n’ roll to come out of San Diego in the last few decades. It all started here, with these three, hidden, secret songs at the end of someone else’s tape—just waiting to be found.

Thanks for the mix tape, Johann. It was better—and listened to for longer—than either of us could have ever expected.