various artists - CMJ New Music Monthly Volume 25: September 1995

I have been debating when to write about this, what it means to me. Posting a few days before my 47th birthday seems as apropos as any.

As for what to say...well, I've written and deleted about 2,000 words so far. Awfully verbose for an otherwise terse typist, but there's a lot of feeling wrapped up in this freebie from the third year of CMJ New Music Monthly giveaways. It was, indeed, my introduction to Letters to Cleo and Ben Folds Five. That pair of 90s alternative mainstays were key bonding points between the missus and I during our early courting. Urge Overkill and Cracker were getting regular airplay on WHFS, along with Big Audio Dynamite. I'll admit: even at this late date, I still have fond memories of Hagfish's "Stamp", one of the best songs from 1995 about cunnilingus. Even cuts from Folk Implosion and S.C.O.T.S. are stuck in my head 29 years later.

This one's important for track 9. My upbringing exposed me to showtunes, soul music, and country, with a smattering of contemporary pop/rock. But jazz was something I just never encountered until that day in late summer 1995 that I picked up this issue of CMJ. Hearing the second part of "A Love Supreme" was like a lightning bolt from heaven. From those first notes plucked by Jimmy Garrison, I was hooked. I've written a few times about John Coltrane and what his music means to me, Well, this is the Rosetta Stone. This is the thing that unlocked so much; my obsession with Coltrane, my love of free jazz and the avant-garde, my introduction to the vast catalog of Impulse! Records.

Discogs tells me I currently own five copies of "A Love Supreme": cassette and vinyl copies from the mid-80s on MCA Impulse!, a vinyl pressing from 1995, the 2002 Deluxe Edition on 2xCD, and my most recent purchase: the 3xCD "Complete Masters" from 2015. Honestly, that number feels a bit low; I feel like I have to have at least another two CD versions kicking around, and there's a reel to reel that I've been sniffing around about for the past six months. I have a problem; whatever...it's my version of a mid-life crisis.

Anyway, there's Malfunkshun on this, too.

Discogs

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various artists - CMJ Presents Certain Damage! - Volume 38

I posted another "Certain Damage!" sampler a couple months ago, and while that one was good, anytime you can lead off a mix with My Bloody Valentine/Hole/Pixies/Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet...well, that's a good-ass moment in music. Add in killer tracks from Black Sheep, Matthew Sweet, Manic Street Preachers, Dead Can Dance, Sinead O'Connor, and Enya, and you got a real stew going, doncha?

Discogs

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various artists - CMJ Presents Certain Damage! - Volume 30

When i think of CMJ, the College Music Journal, I think of going to the cool bookstore as a teenager, copping "New Music Monthly", and learning about what the kids a few years older than me were into. I didn't know about publicists or the politics of major labels or the world of college rock; I just knew I was getting drawn into something that didn't play on the radio in southwestern Virginia. It wasn't covered in "Rolling Stone" or "Spin", aside from the occasional 50-word review. And when it did show up on MTV, it was in the "120 Minutes" ghetto, banished to late, late night.

Not that I got cable that far out in the boondocks.

"Certain Damage!" was the precursor to the NMM samplers that I'd swipe out of Borders. I've turned up a few of these recently, all dating from the days before Lollapalooza. Volume 30 here has the last great Replacements song, a Redd Kross cut, the Jane's Addiction song you'd actually hear on the radio in the daytime. There's also a Hank Rollins side project, an appearance by both Fred Firth and Henry Kaiser on the same track, and the first house track I remember hearing (Soho, "Hippychick").

This was what the College Music Journal thought was worth hearing, the month of my 13th birthday.

Discogs

Click here to download.