Best track on this mixtape I made around 1988/1989 when I was around 8 or 9 years old

chaka khan

'Smooth Criminal'

'Strawberry Fields Forever' is an astonishing production achievement, and if we were ranking Beatles tracks based solely on the production then it's easily one of their very best. As a song, though? Lennon wrote far better.

“Smooth Criminal” (and 9-year-old me would have agreed)

Not bad, this mixtape.

man i didn't start making tolerable mixtapes until i was in my late 20s

chaka khan

I didn't hear any of these when I was 9 except Strawberry Fields, which seemed so radical and trippy

I wasn't thinking in those terms, but that was the effect

it was one of the handful of songs that really sparked my interest in popular music as a kid

I'm going to vote for "Strawberry Fields Forever" in any poll where it is a contender, and as a write-in in at least some polls where it is not, but also <3 for "Kayleigh" and "School".

Can I ask how you had access to all of these songs in the late 80s at age 8/9? I was a little older than you and all I had was the library & radio & magazines. I had no money or access to cool things. How did you get your 8 year old hands on these songs?

cool things i had access to when i was 8

the uncle floyd show
cooky puss

errr, i think that about covers it

by the way that's cooky puss the ice cream cake and most definitely NOT cooky puss the beastie boys song

lol I didn't know about that product but I remember the song

Can I ask how you had access to all of these songs in the late 80s at age 8/9? I was a little older than you and all I had was the library & radio & magazines. I had no money or access to cool things. How did you get your 8 year old hands on these songs?

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 May 2019 01:12 (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We always had a record player in the house and it was the first thing I was really interested in, there was no library nearby and we never got any magazines.

Strawberry Fields Forever - This must have been taped at my grandma's house in Liverpool as we didn't have it
Smooth Criminal - This was the first single I bought by myself
Cliff Richard And The Young Ones - Think this was a present?
Morris Minor and The Majors / Bootsy Collins / Chaka Khan / David Grant / Art of Noise / Dead Or Alive - Singles I had, most (all?) of these from brown paper parcels of 'lucky dip' remainders from the record shop my dad went to sometimes
Pink Floyd - From the only Pink Floyd LP my dad had, A Collection of Great Dance Songs
Marillion - My dad apparently mentioned marillion once and someone (my grandparents?) bought their discography for him, but he didn't really like Marillion, so they were then mine
Supertramp / Bonzo Dog Band / The Police - from my dad's LPs

aha so the answer is "cool dad"
i knew there had to be someone!

i wasn't trying to give you a hard time -- was genuinely curious how you got so fortunate!

Can I ask how you had access to all of these songs in the late 80s at age 8/9? I was a little older than you and all I had was the library & radio & magazines. I had no money or access to cool things. How did you get your 8 year old hands on these songs?

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, May 14, 2019 2:12 AM (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

About the same age, me and a buddy taped everything from radio. I had a double cassette player where one could record what the other was playing, and after a couple of weeks of taping top 40 and stuff, you had songs enough to make five C90's.

Yeah, my mix tapes at 9 were based entirely on the playlists of local rock stations: one began "Bad Medicine"/"Desire"/"Welcome to the Jungle" iirc. Something interesting like "Cult of Personality" did make it in sometimes.

I will tell my dad someone on the internet thinks he's cool, he will be very surprised!
What is missing here is all his folk music as I did not yet have a twin cassette deck despite years of pestering and these were all on tape for some reason. If they had been on LP I would maybe have the first three tracks from The Albion Band's Rise Up Like The Sun on here.

i used to wonder how different my life would have been if i had had a cool relative
some people had the older sibling/uncle/whomever. how much cooler could i have been!? off the charts cool!

lol

you are fortunate to have had a dad cool enough to like the albion band!! geez louise

i think the closest i got was my childhood BFF's mom who was into Eno & VU
otherwise it wasn't until i got to middle school and met my friend's older brother who had every bowle, stooges, alice cooper record etc and he was very tall and intimidating (nice, but i was scared of him)

anyway what good fortune you had!

I sometimes wonder if I might have gone into medicine or accounting or something if I'd had a record-collecting, guitar-playing Dad.

I don't think he went out of his way to introduce me to music, it was just always on. He didn't (still doesn't) like any of the stuff from the lucky dip singles. But won't deny my dad is great if you insist 😂

I do wonder about getting my kids into music as my older son has no inclination that way at all, but the younger one has clear tastes already. Just don't want to be this guy (who is 100% some dads I know) - https://www.theonion.com/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-media-that-will-put-her-en-1819572981

oh yeah some people are definitely actively trying to groom their children to like what they like/d -- i think this usually backfires but not my problem, don't really care whether other people's kids like music or not

my parents never forced it on me either, i just needed a buddy and music was 100% there for me

taped everything from radio

there are still songs that i expect to segue into certain other songs just because i taped them off the radio that way 35 years ago

off the charts cool!

lol

Hardly my favourite PF but it's still 'Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2)' for me.

The into to the Art of Noise's Close to the Edit with the engine starting is maybe my favourite 'found sound' in all of pop music.

Another Brick In The Wall pt II is (I now know) a weird version with the single intro (i.e. no scream) and the LP outro ("If you don't eat your meat you can't have any pudding")

taped everything from radio

there are still songs that i expect to segue into certain other songs just because i taped them off the radio that way 35 years ago

― mookieproof, Tuesday, May 14, 2019 3:11 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, same here mookie! :)

i wanted to throw a lol vote to Morris Minor but then i remembered Tony Hawks had never done anything worthwhile in his life

Amazing enough that there's a Bonzo Dog track on your mixtape, but it's a song I don't even know! A+ for crate digging!

xxp or segue into steve wright segments :/

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

chaka >>>>>>>>>

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

chaka >>>>>>>>> the beatles

Come on, this was obviously The Strain, what is wrong with you

Yes CP, still think it's a great tune at the age of nearly 40 - even if it is admittedly a comedy song about having a shit, it is one of the best examples of that dirty early 70s funky blues I can think of.