halcyon days: Alternative Music Night (a mix)

We're going to indulge your humble blogger's memories here and step back to his university days.

In the early 1990s, I DJ'ed at a weekly event on my college campus that we so uniquely called Alternative Music Night.



You see, this was back in the immediate post-Nirvana timeframe, before the alternative became the mainstream (and later became the alternative again).

Besides MTV's 120 Minutes, and the here-today-gone-tomorrow commercial alternative radio stations that sprouted like weeds in Nirvana's jetstream (and often disappeared just as quickly), the outlets for "alternative" music were slim. True alternative, that is.

So an enlightened group of people took over the lounge in my college's student center one night a week and played the cool music. I took over from the founder due to my stellar musical tastes, hehe. We usually drew a fairly decent crowd, no doubt helped by the free beer and great music.

So in memory of those days, and because while cleaning the house I ran across a flyer from one of those long-gone nights, I'm going to feature the idealized playlist from one of these evenings. Of course it's not exact - I didn't keep records of what I played, and I also know there are some tracks that I no longer own (or even remember for that matter) - but on any given Wednesday night during the 1992/1993 and 1993/1994 school years, you were bound to hear these tracks at least once. The only certainties were two tracks that I played every damn night - Fugazi's "Merchandise" and the closer, R.E.M.'s Lou Reed cover "After Hours" as it was a great closer to the evening's festivities.

As I put this together, I realized I have way too much music to fit in one of those timeslots (typically, each night was 2 hours or so). So pretend this is two nights worth. I did attempt to group songs together as I would have during the DJ set, but due to the mists of time obviously it's idealized. Finally, there's no true mixing - I don't have my DJ equipment anymore - so deal with it.

A few observations... You can see where my head was at this era, there are quite a few Wax Trax!-ish tracks (Ministry/1000 Homo DJ's/etc) as well as quite a few ravers. Some of these I no longer own - I've moved on - but thanks to the magic Internets we can enjoy them yet again.

My average set was good enough for me to be recruited to DJ - for pay - at a local club in the city I went to college in, but alas the guy I was to replace begged for his job back (he was fired, I was to replace him) so I didn't get beyond a one-night stand at the club. The club owners had heard thru the grapevine about my DJ sets, and they sent spies to observe.....

N.B. The guy in the flyer above was designed by a pre-fame Liz Phair, as cover art for a friend's band. This would have been 1992 or so...

Onward we go....

Split into six RAR files, you gotta pull all 6 down before you can extract... links at the end. This time I'm also using a different hosting service, I believe you can download simultaneously, and it's hyperspeed compared to rapidshare...

01 1000 HOMO DJ'S Supernaut
02 PUBLIC IMAGE LTD Public Image
03 SUGAR A Good Idea
04 JOY DIVISION Love Will Tear Us Apart
05 NEW ORDER Regret
06 MINISTRY Stigmata
07 PIXIES Bone Machine
08 LUSH Nothing Natural
09 THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN Reverence
10 PIGFACE Suck
11 NEW ORDER Blue Monday
12 R.E.M. Finest Worksong (Lengthy Club Mix)
13 PETER MURPHY Cuts You Up
14 HÜSKER DÜ Makes No Sense At All
15 JANE'S ADDICTION Mountain Song
16 SONIC YOUTH Kool Thing
17 BEASTIE BOYS So What'Cha Want
18 REVOLTING COCKS Beers, Steers & Queers
19 MINISTRY Jesus Built My Hotrod
20 808 STATE Cübik
21 HAPPY MONDAYS Step On
22 BILLY BRAGG Sexuality (London remix)
23 PARIS ANGELS Perfume
24 SAINT ETIENNE Only Love Can Break Your Heart
25 NEW ORDER Ceremony
26 CATHERINE WHEEL Black Metallic
27 CHAPTERHOUSE Pearl
28 RIDE Taste
29 THE BOO RADLEYS Does This Hurt?
30 TEENAGE FANCLUB Star Sign (edit)
31 MY BLOODY VALENTINE Soon
32 THE CHARLATANS The Only One I Know
33 INSPIRAL CARPETS Commercial Reign
34 THE STONE ROSES Fools Gold
35 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Big
36 JAMES Sit Down
37 SPIRITUALIZED Run
38 JOY DIVISION Transmission
39 MATTHEW SWEET Girlfriend
40 R.E.M. Superman (edit)
41 ELECTRONIC Get The Message
42 PIXIES Debaser
43 DEAD KENNEDYS Holiday In Cambodia
44 FUGAZI Merchandise
45 DESCENDENTS Silly Girl
46 BUZZCOCKS Ever Fallen In Love?
47 BAUHAUS She's In Parties
48 THE CHAMELEONS Swamp Thing
49 THE CURE A Forest (full version)
50 THE SMITHS How Soon Is Now
51 SECTION 25 Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
52 NEW ORDER Temptation
53 WARLOCK PINCHERS Morrissey Rides A Cockhorse
54 MORRISSEY Suedehead
55 JOY DIVISION She's Lost Control
56 FLOWERED UP It's On
57 QUADROPHONIA Quadrophonia
58 FRONT 242 Tragedy > For You <
59 HAPPY MONDAYS WFL (Think about the future)
60 PRIMAL SCREAM Loaded
61 R.E.M. After Hours

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6
(100mb per file or thereabouts)

enjoy!