Hi, I'm JT IceFire, and welcome to my week of Dtunes.

Ever since I was little, music has meant a ridiculously great deal to me. There isn't a worthwhile memory in my head that isn't attached to one song or another, and the number of songs that can trigger some wonderful shred of nostalgia number in the thousands.

This is all due to that fact that, from the day I turned 13 through just last winter, I kept a bi-monthly journal of all the tunes I listened to in a long, long, series of mixtapes, the product of a deep, deep love of music and a mild, mild case of OCD. Said collection stretches across 90 volumes, extending all the way from middle school through graduation, through college and all the way to the end of 2008, each one with its own name, label, color scheme, and personality.

In the single-driven age in which I've grew up, I'd considered the album itself, and the arrangement of individual tracks into a complete whole, to be a lost art. (I've since discovered many bands, past and present, who've proven me wrong, but that's to discuss another time.) Every last one of these volumes is an attempt to prove that there isn't a single song on earth that stands alone better than it stands alongside others.

It's my belief that life and music are intimately intertwined, that there's simply no good way to separate who you are from what you listen to. So, for the approval of the Destructoid community, I'll be taking you inside a few personal favorites from my collection. First off, from way back in 1997, here's "Alive", my ninth volume. In an age before CD burners and file sharing, I had to use the long-forgotten art of taping songs off the radio, and using a dual deck to put together the tracklisting. Ah, for simpler days.



Tape 9: Alive
January-February 1997


Song 1: "What I Am" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
In a time before iTunes and sattelite radio, a person was capable of falling in love with a song, even hearing it dozens of times, without knowing its name or its artist. That was the case for me with this charming one-hitter- this song was stuck in my head for years and years before, one dark winter morning, hours before school, I woke up to hear it kick in just in time to hit "record" on my tape player. In the days before file sharing, getting free music was a lot like Pokemon hunting.



Song 2: "I Got A Girl" by Tripping Daisy
I managed to record this one on the same day as the above, during the morning show on Philadelphia's old modern rock home, WDRE. There are many reasons why I miss that old station, and as I made this CD around the time when it breathed its last, this won't be the last time I bring it up here. To this day, I still get Tripping Daisy and the Flaming Lips mixed up, even though only one of them went on to make the heavenly "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots".



Song 3: "Heaven Beside You" by Alice in Chains
Few songs remind me more of trotting to the bus stop before dawn in the blistering cold- actually, one of the most peaceful, enjoyable parts of the school day, thanks to Layne Staley's bluesy alt-rock.



Song 4: "Lakini's Juice" by Live
In spite of what the industry's become, I still carry an inordinate love for the medium of radio, and this song is one reason why: when WDRE got their hands on this leaked single from Secret Samadhi, they played it every hour- and when they got a C&D from the label, they played it back to back, repeatedly, over and over again for as long as they could get away with. It was on that day that I learned about radio as a medium for petty rebellion.



Song 5: "One Headlight" by the Wallflowers
Joined at the hip with the above track, I can't listen to one without the other. "One Headlight" is the better song, however, with a simple, infectious drumbeat that always made me look silly whenever I listened to it walking home from school.



Song 6: "Tattva" by Kula Shaker
After I first snagged this song off the radio, I would always replay the bridge from 2:20-3:00 over and over again. It was the first time since Bohemian Rhapsody that I'd ever been addicted to just one part of a song.



Song 7: "Novocaine for the Soul" eels
When you're a kid, getting the flu isn't so bad. I managed to fit in half a playthrough of Final Fantasy 6 in the days I didn't have to go to school, whenever I wasn't watching videos like this on late-night MTV.



Song 8: "Female of the Species" Space
Ever have a song you started out hating, then gradually grew to love as it got overplayed over and over again? The radio industry today practically counts on that as a business model- and for me and Space's xylophonic tribute to male powerlessness, it worked.



Song 9: "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by R.E.M.
When I initially recorded it from WDRE's final broadcast on 2/7/97, this was the first time I'd heard the extended version- for some reason, a lot of radio edits had the second half of the first verse chopped out.



Song 10: "Love Rollercoaster" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Yes, Virginia, Beavis and Butt-head did America. And it was good.



Song 11: "Particle Man" by They Might Be Giants
Like Ashley Davis and many others before me, I first heard of TMBG via this one Tiny Toons episode. Unlike her, however, I didn't even know they were a real band until WDRE (natch) played them in an all-night block. A lifelong fan was born that night.



Song 12: "High & Dry" by Radiohead
Before Coldplay sounded like Radiohead, Radiohead sounded like Coldplay. It's eerie, isn't it? Like hearing the Moody Blues go from a Beatles clone to Days of Future Passed.



Song 13: "Drain You (Live)" by Nirvana
This live performance is from 1996's From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah. For some reason, this one always reminds me of slogging through wintry bike rides in the mud.



Song 14: "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" by They Might Be Giants
It was nobody's business but the Turks long, long before TMBG made this song relevant: it's been performed by jazz ensembles and Duke U's glee club since it was written in 1953.



Song 15: "Tomorrow" by silverchair
It was only when I recently downloaded and played this song in Guitar Hero that I realized
just how hard silverchair was trying to be an Australian Pearl Jam. At any rate, they still did a much better job than Creed.



Song 16: "Pink Trangle" by Weezer
Weezer has not, nor will they ever again come anywhere near making anything as good as 1996's Pinkerton. That album was emo back when emo was Phillips. That album was romance long before it was chemical. That album was all about sitting alone in one's room and pondering life and love from one's own room, but without all the drama or wrist-slitting. It was so gently depressing, Rivers Cuomo quit his own band for five years just to get over it. If you're a child of the same age I am, I behoove you to get this record- the entire thing- and listen to it now.



Song 17: "Burden in My Hand" by Soundgarden
Ah, my old mall-trotting arcade-rat song. To this day, I remain a man of simple pleasures, and in this time, Soundgarden plus X-Men vs. Street Fighter was more than enough to make life worth living.



Song 18: "I Will Survive" by Cake
I've got a lot of memories surrounding Cake's Fashion Nugget, but the most enduring one is Super Bowl Sunday in 1997, when I was too busy playing Secret of Mana and listening to this song to watch the Super Bowl. I don't think I'll ever care so little about sports again.



Song 19: "Alive" by Pearl Jam
2/7/1997. The day that radio broke my heart. 103.9 WDRE, I'll always remember you. This was the last song they played, bookending the station's opening in 1992. The station went dark at midnight, I didn't turn the radio off until 1 AM.


So that's Alive. It's got a lot of great 90's alternative, and a lot of great memories attached to it. I always like to give it a listen when it's cold and bitter outside, and the holidays are in the rearview mirror. Tomorrow, we'll dispense with the last decade and go into the strange brew that of a college freshman's music library. I'm JT IceFire, and thank you for listening.