Supermix 8: Learning to Fly

Created late 1991

Side 1:
2112: a) Overture b) the Temples of Syrinx – Rush
Something So Strong – Crowded House
For Your Love – The Yardbirds*
Romeo Had Juliette – Lou Reed
All I Want – The Pursuit of Happiness
Sheila Take a Bow – The Smiths*
Rebel Rebel – David Bowie
Boys of Summer – Don Henley*
Family Snapshot – Peter Gabriel
Lido Shuffle – Boz Scaggs*
Is That Love – Squeeze
The Smile Has Left Your Eyes –Asia
Expresso Love – Dire Straits

Side 2:
I Believe – R.E.M.
Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA – Devo*
Blue Sky Mine – Midnight Oil
I Don’t Want to Be Alone – Billy Joel
Learning to Fly – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Trash – The New York Dolls*
Happy Jack – The Who
The Imposter – Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Man in a Suitcase – The Police
You Can’t Talk – Tin Machine†
Anderson, Walkman, Buttholes, and How! – The Dead Milkmen
I’ve Got a Match – They Might Be Giants
Roll on Down the Highway – Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Isn’t Life Strange – The Moody Blues

*Artist’s series debut †Unavailable on Spotify

Perhaps due to that previous summer’s immersion in music fandom, I recall that Supermix 8 was created unusually soon after Vol. 7. (Only a couple weeks, if I had to guess.) And it’s nearly as good, both according to my memories of the time and my opinion upon listening again now. I view it as Vol. 7’s twin, not only for its close proximity, but also because both versions finish out Side 1 with a song from an album I’d recently declared my favorite of all time (and still place high on the list), Dire Straits’ third album, 1980’s Making Movies. They were a band that excelled at “big and sad.”

Like a fair amount of the music I was discovering in those days, I’d borrowed that album from a tiny CD rental shop I’d discovered in downtown Montreal. (I’m shocked that business concept wasn’t more widespread in the ‘90s; I rented countless albums from that place, copying anything that held my attention onto blank tape, massively expanding my collection at minimal cost.) Making Movies stands as a strong argument for Mark Knopfler’s status as a first-tier rock & roll genius—razor-sharp guitar skill at the service of absolutely heartrending songwriting mastery (I challenge you to feel nothing from “Romeo and Juliet,” although I’m more touched by “Tunnel of Love”). The album hit me right in the feels when I was most vulnerable, not just that first year in Montreal, but one particular night that past summer, when I listened to it alone after I humiliated myself romantically. (The details are not interesting, but let’s just say it solidified a pattern that persists to this day—I blew it more by being a fool than being a jerk.) Immediately after I’d returned from camp, my family and I took a ten-day trip to Italy, and while I enjoyed the country quite a bit (it’s unreal how beautiful Venice is), this album served as a melancholy soundtrack to a place that only turbocharged my desire for romantic attachment.

Looking back on this mix, I’m struck by how eclectic my tastes were. You have the standard classic rock, yes (e.g., the Who), older 1960s pop (the series debut of the Yardbirds), the remnants of my fascination with less fashionable rock acts (Asia, Boz Scaggs), the continuing punk inroads (I’d discovered the New York Dolls that summer), and of course, the old standbys (I could always rely on Peter Gabriel, Squeeze, and the Police).

Shortly after this mix was complete, my entire 11th grade class went on a multiday field trip to Stratford, Ontario, where we were forced to sit for a series of theatrical experiences, Shakesperean and otherwise (yes, because of its name, Stratford is a major Canadian theater center). I’m only now realizing how odd it was that a school with such minimal extracurricular theater embarked on such a project, but I rather enjoyed it, not only because I remember it was a pretty damn good production of Hamlet (the first I ever saw), but also because I actually recall feeling like I belonged with this crew of teenage guys—I had become one of them, and while carousing the streets of a boring Canadian town with these obnoxious, overgrown little boys wasn’t the perfect environment for me, it didn’t feel wrong exactly. (This seems as good a place as any to mention that while I’ve always had issues with masculinity and felt uncomfortable in my own skin, there is less than zero chance I will someday realize I’m a transgender woman. Yes, I relate to trans women and generally get along well with them, but as much as I find it challenging to be a man, the idea of me being a woman is beyond absurd.)

Finally, Supermix 8 is the first entry to be given a title. Inspired by one of the many girls I’d had a crush on the previous summer, who’d named a mixtape “Stairway to Heaven” after the first track on its first side, I decided that every Supermix should be titled after one of its songs. “Learning to Fly” (a fantastic Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song from Into the Great Wide Open, my favorite album of 1991) was apropos here, since it seemed to sum up how I was feeling (or starting to feel) at the time. It would set a pattern: Every Supermix since then has had a title track, often something describing my mood at the time of the volume’s creation, and often more than a little cheesy. But these are mixtapes, after all, and what would they be without heart-on-my-sleeve cheesiness?