Supermix 5

Created early 1991

Side 1:
Anarchy in the UK – The Sex Pistols*
Don’t Look Back – Boston
Wrapped Around Your Finger – The Police
And She Was – Talking Heads*
Modern Love – David Bowie
You Might Think – The Cars
Veronica – Elvis Costello
She’s an Angel – They Might Be Giants
This Time – Bryan Adams*
Changes – Yes
Christmas – The Who
Don’t Come Around Here No More – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Side 2:
Where the Streets Have No Name – U2*
Food – The Pursuit of Happiness*
Nobody’s Perfect – Mike + the Mechanics*
Slowburn – Peter Gabriel
The World’s on Fire – The Housemartins*
Feels Like the First Time – Foreigner
Come Dancing – The Kinks
Somebody Put Something in My Drink – The RamonesShe Doesn’t Have to Shave – Squeeze
Be Good to Yourself – Journey
Fall on Me – R.E.M.
Heat of the Moment – Asia
Captain Jack – Billy Joel.

*Artist’s series debut

We’re in early 1991 at this point, and life in Montreal was still not great. But music was still there for me, so Supermix 5 was an inevitability. Over the years, I’ve regarded this one as having an unusually high number of major mainstream hits (rather than deep album cuts)—Elvis Costello is represented by “Veronica,” the Cars have “You Might Think,” the Police appear via “Wrapped Around Your Finger.”  Of course, there are big hit songs on every volume, and I’ve never exactly been one to plumb the depths of underground rock & roll (at least not compared to your stereotypical Rock Geek); in fact, as much as I still love my teen musical tastes, part of me regrets that my ears weren’t open to more obscure sounds. There was a lot happening beneath the rock & roll surface in the very early ‘90s, just before the alt-rock explosion, and while I’d embrace much of it in the coming years, I wish I’d been more on the frontlines (for example, I never saw live music when I was in high school, unless it was a massive act at the Montreal Forum). I think I would’ve really enjoyed being that kid who volunteered at the merch table at the all-ages punk show.

Speaking of which, “Anarchy in the U.K.” by the Sex Pistols is not our first official Supermix punk song (the Ramones debuted in Vol. 4), but as perhaps the prototypical punk band, they’re pointing the way toward much of my future musical tastes. I’d become a pretty big fan of classic punk as the ‘90s wore on (it was a centerpiece of my beloved college radio show), and while I never embraced the lifestyle/scene/all the other typical signifiers (I never got a tattoo, though I’ve strongly considered it), the sound of punk remains at the root of what I consider the essence of rock & roll: Energy, rage, abandon, emotion, conviction, usually in a very male package. I’ve always turned to music as a way to feel something, and punk rock certainly does that for me. (If I’d been born ten years later, I guarantee you I’d have been an emo kid.)

Another song worth calling out here is “Food,” a series of broad sex metaphors by a Canadian band called the Pursuit of Happiness. They were all over Canadian rock radio at the time, as were many homegrown bands with no American profile (for good reason—google “CanCon”), and the band appears regularly across the next dozen or so volumes. This was the start of my wholesale embrace of “Canadian music,” beyond the Bryan Adams/BTO/Rush canon that had infiltrated American radio, and more of these U.S.-obscure bands will appear on these mixes for years to come. If nothing else, being Canadian (more or less) was making me different, less conventional than if I’d been just another kid from suburban New Jersey. If nothing else, I could count this as an upside of my new life.