Playlist link: College Town Nostalgia
Here we are back with the second we-can-bump-uglies-if-you-ain’t-got-your-monthly installment of The Jams of Terry. I’ve got my butt a little tighter than I did on the last playlist, bringing you some college town nostalgia for back to school. This is mainly what I consider to be the original college rock, the melodic stuff from the mid-‘80s that came out after punk but before alternative. There are a few digressions, because nostalgia is a funny thing. You never know what will have you looking into the past, but I know that it happens more when the weather gets chilly. Who knows what’s next. J-Pop? Reggaeton? Tuareg Guitars? All I know is that this playlist is best enjoyed while wearing corduroys and flannel.
1. Dirty Boots – Sonic Youth
This song sounds like a party in dark, chilly woods. I first heard it in junior high and decided that when I got to college, I’d finally be able to afford Doc Martens and I’d wear awesome flannel shirts and get stoned and make out with girls sitting on logs with crackly leaves under our feet. That’s exactly how college turned out. I swear.
2. Precision Auto – Superchunk
Perfect. The quintessential ‘90s college rock band makes a video of themselves driving around the quintessential college town, Chapel Hill, NC, in fall, the quintessential nostalgic season. I saw this band in ’03 and it was like a reunion of all of the people I used to see at pop-punk shows in the mid-‘90s, but now those motherfuckers were in law school instead of high school.
3. Can’t Hardly Wait (Tim Version) – Replacements
Music for bleary-eyed dudes who hang out on roofs. An old roommate of mine used to make fun of guys who rocked the “I’m Cute But I Just Woke Up” look and got more girls than us. Those guys had a band. This is it.
4. Just Like Heaven – Dinosaur Jr.
Two-for-one! Dinosaur Jr. are usually associated with grunge, but they started in that magical time in the ‘80s after punk, but before alternative rock, when this kind of stuff was called college rock. And here they are, covering The Cure, another college rock band.
5. Pretty Persuasion - R.E.M.
Perfect. The quintessential ‘80s college rock band from the quintessential ‘80s college town, Athens, GA, makes a wistful song about being a sucker for love. And Jawbreaker did a “meh” cover of it, making it OK for punks in the ‘90s to listen to REM, even after “Everybody Hurts.”
6. Into You Like A Train – Psychedelic Furs
People in college love ‘80s nights, where they go to bars, got hammered on well vodka and realize that “Don’t You Want Me” is too slow to actually dance to. Well, here’s some sneering, clove smoking ‘80s music 4 dat azz. This is from the same album as "Pretty in Pink,” which is a great movie to watch with a date who’s going, “This was my favorite movie in high school. I totally had a best friend who was just like the ‘Kinda Ethnic But Nonthreatening’ guy from this movie,” then you go, “Whatever,” and drink more beer and she gets mad because you have to get up to piss like four times. Hey, Jawbreaker also did a “meh” cover of this.
7. Hounds Of Love – Kate Bush
Kate Bush is the holy grail of art school girls. She looks all haunted and does modern dance and sings like someone dropped a piano on her foot and she has a leather jacket that she’s probably worn at the same time as a leotard before and I think one guy I know has a class with her and says she never talks to anyone when they’re outside smoking and she isn’t exactly pretty, but she’s so badass that she’s attractive, and we’re not shallow anymore now that we’re, like, college guys, riiight? PS - Dudes: If you crank this song, the drums are pretty epic.
8. I Would Die 4 U – Prince
This came out when I was five, but I bet in the mid ‘80s, Prince was the mainstream artist who was out there enough for avant garde art schoolers to like him, plus you could party to him but not feel like you were dumbing down your taste. OK. Now picture twenty year old me guzzling Colt 45 and shedding a tear to the “You’re just a sinner I am told/bring you fire when you’re cold…” part.
9. Like I Love You – Justin Timberlake
Wait, what? Let me explain. In my fifth or sixth year at VCU (no Animal House), this Timberlake album dropped, and if I had a dollar for every time I went to a “dance party” that turned out to be this CD on a boombox in the corner of a room with about a dozen pink toes standing around, not dancing, I wouldn’t have any student loans left. Me and my friend Jeff would always laugh at the monologue in the middle where he says, “Here, wear my jacket,” because we thought he was saying “Here, hold my jacket.” Kill The Man Who Questions would not approve because they had a song called “Coatrack” about guys at shows making their girlfriends hold their jackets while they moshed. And so political punks started dancing, and time marched on…
10. History Lesson Pt. II – Minutemen
The bromance national anthem. What’s more college rock then starting a band with your buddies and writing songs about how you’re buddies and you love being in a band together? Nothing. Made all the more poignant by the fact that D. Boon, the singer/guitarist, died in a car crash about a year later.