Supermix 10: Message in a Bottle
Created early 1992
Side 1:
American Pie – Don McLean*
Prelude/Angry Young Man – Billy Joel
Two Girls in One – The Pursuit of Happiness
Victoria – The Kinks
American Music – Violent Femmes
Take the Money and Run – The Steve Miller Band
The Living Years – Mike + the Mechanics
Message in a Bottle – The Police
Perspective – Peter Gabriel
Green Tambourine – The Lemon Pipers*
Could You Be the One? – Hüsker Dü*
King’s Highway – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Have You Ever Seen the Rain? – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Side 2:
Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal – They Might Be Giants
Mysterious Ways – U2
Paint It Black – The Rolling Stones
New York Telephone Conversation – Lou Reed
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Devo
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen*
Goodbye Girl – Squeeze
Who Can It Be Now? – Men at Work
Do You Believe in Magic? – The Lovin’ Spoonful
Jack of All Parades – Elvis Costello
Jools and Jim – Pete Townshend
Balloon Man – Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians*
Like a Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan*; Already Gone – The Eagles*
*Artist’s series debut
We’re now in early 1992. I don’t have many specific memories of creating Supermix 10, and I don’t think there was much different going on than when I made Vol. 9. Accordingly, I consider Vol. 10 another of the “bad” mixes, and I suppose it’s nice that two disappointing editions back-to-back didn’t turn me off the whole project. (Furthermore, while I never much like Peace of Mind or Message in a Bottle as mix titles, I’m glad I continued the titling tradition.)
To read what I wrote about Vol. 9, it might seem like I’d completely turned around my life in a mere year and a half of living in Canada. And while that’s ostensibly true—I had unquestionably made a place in Montreal, if not my ideal place—I was still far from an ebullient person. I remained bereft in terms of romance, but more so, something gnawed at my insides, a lack of self-esteem that I still haven’t fully processed or taken stock of all these years later. Midway through the year, my parents hooked me up with talk therapy (which I’d tried as an elementary schooler, to what effect I have no idea); I don’t have many memories of these sessions (I can’t recall the doctor’s name), but I do know that I told him I had a desperate need to feel like I “belonged.” The more things change…
I also just now recall something significant: Around the time of the Little Shop of Horrors performances, I started having stomach aches, which didn’t seem to respond to standard treatment. My doctor told me he thought there was nothing physically wrong with me—“you’re not imagining the pain,” he said—but the pain was real nonetheless. It’s telling that I can specifically remember feeling discomfort backstage at the show, with the pain subsiding literally as a I walked onto the stage, to face the audience, to do my job. This was most likely the very first instance of the intractable chronic pain that has plagued me for most of my life—never definitively diagnosed, only managed but never conquered despite extreme amounts of effort, time, money, and hope, and never standing in the way of me doing what I feel needs to be done, pain or no. My mind is a powerful thing, and not always to my benefit.
Looking at it now, Supermix 10 feels a little scattered; we’re all over the map here in terms of style and genre, and pound for pound this has fewer great songs than Vol. 9. While I was rabid for Elvis Costello in high school, I already considered much of his catalog to be boring as sin, and “Jack of All Parades” is a near-example, an effort toward Lesser Costello Album Affirmative Action, you might say. “Jools and Jim” is a weak song from an otherwise fine Pete Townshend solo album, and, no, I’ve never been much of an Eagles fan (but I can admit when I connect with a song of theirs, which I did with “Already Gone” at least at the time). One notable detail here is the final song—Robyn Hitchcock’s delightful “Balloon Man”—which is me trying something new with how I ended a mix. Rather than finishing with a song that’s “big and sad,” I went with something I thought of as bubbly and open-ended, fading out jauntily: I picture Supermix 10 ending with a “To Be Continued” sign, the series bouncing off into the distance with the smiling Balloon Man, eager to see whatever adventures await. And many did, I’m happy to say.