Here is the track list for 26 Reformations of a Middle Class American Heart, Vol. 5: His Indie World, which I completed during a visit to Seattle in August 2022.
Side A:
Mary Lou Lord, His Indie World (2:09)
Guided By Voices, Big School (2:27)
Velocity Girl, My Forgotten Favorite (3:50)
Eric’s Trip, Happens All the Time (2:41)
Rocketship, Like a Dream (5:55)
Rancid, Roots Radicals (2:52)
Rocket From the Crypt, Pigeon Eater (2:35)
Bikini Kill, Rebel Girl (2:37)
Built to Spill, So and So So and So (4:33)
Grenadine, Gillan (4:02)
Tsunami, Sometimes a Notion (3:41)
Slant 6, Thirty Thirty Vision (3:25)
Smog, The Desert (3:00)
Side B:
Butterglory, She Can’t Hide From Radios (3:11)
Silver Jews, The Bar Scene From Star Wars (3:02)
Heavenly, Atta Girl (4:01)
Huggy Bear, February 14th (2:31)
Helium, Pat’s Trick (3:20)
Half Japanese, Everybody Knows (2:31)
Sebadoh, Gimme Indie Rock (3:24)
Sentridoh, Losercore (2:22)
Superchunk, The First Part (4:12)
The Halo Benders, Don’t Touch My Bikini (3:39)
Beat Happening, Sea Hunt (5:02)
The Breeders, Don’t Call Home (3:37)
Free Kitten, Oh Bondage Up Yours! (2:33)
The story of this mixtape is simple, and it is the story of my introduction to what is known as indie music.
On the same tapes that I wrote about for last week’s mixtape, recorded from 107.7 The End in Seattle and transported around the country in the family EuroVan throughout the summer of 1995, there was a recording of Mary Lou Lord’s lovely, spritely, whimsical song, His Indie World. That song, which begins Side A of this mix, contained a catalog of 25 indie artists in wonderfully rhymed fashion, the surround for a story of unrequited love between a singer-songwriter who loves the good old singer-songwriter stuff and an indie rock aficionado who cares only about the latest 7” single or cassette exclusive from bands nobody has heard of.
I was completely smitten by Mary Lou’s voice and persona, and at the same time wildly intrigued by all these bands I’d never heard about. Over the next four years, before Napster and AudioGalaxy made it possible to illegally download many songs if you were patient enough, I would occasionally stumble across a notice about one of these bands performing live, or encounter a song by one on a mixtape from a friend (thanks, Patrick Sheehan, for having cool older sisters!), or hear one of these bands on the radio, post-sellout, or discover an album by one band in the public library support sale bin, or etc. I always took the cue, remembering the song. By the time I was able to finally download at least one song by each artist Mary Lou listed, I had heard a great deal more indie rock than she listed here, and I was aware that many of these bands were truly underground — though some, of course, were not.
I took my first crack at making this mixtape in 2001. I tried another time in 2006, and again in 2014. I couldn’t make it work any of those times because the materials were still too scarce in their availability. It wasn’t until 2022, more than a quarter-century after it first occurred to me that this would make a killer tape, that enough of the initial 7” singles and cassette EPs had been digitized and had made their way onto streaming and illegal download networks that I could really, genuinely hear the music Mary Lou’s fictional would-be boyfriend would have been listening to and construct an appropriate fictional mixtape for him to give to her. And here it is. Without the idea of it, I’m not sure I would ever have developed a love for this kind of music which still gives me many kinds of joy. If I could thank Mary Lou Lord for what she’s provided me, I would.
Sunday Mixtape #14: His Indie World