Mixtape Monday: CCC – Greatest Hits Vol. IX

Welcome back to Mixtape Monday! Before we get to today's tape, we have some good news. That lil' ol' blog from Texas, The CD Project, is celebrating its 15th Anniversary after posting more than 2,100 CDs. Mazeltov! Here's a link to the first CD they covered from way, way back in 2010.

For those playing along at home, this is number 49 in The Somewhat Alphabetical Mixtape Series that I made for the woman who was so impressed with the size of my record collection, she became my wife on one dark, rainy afternoon in the Spring of 1987.

Today's tape is CCC - Greatest Hits Vol. IX. It's a TDK SA90 like the previous 48 tapes and does not have the titles listed on the J-card. For today's tape, we were forced to dust off and bust out our older JVC TD-W222 deck after recent catastrophic failures in both wells of our Sony TC-WE805S. We have hooked the JVC up in place of the Sony, so let's push the button with the triangle pointing right and find out what's on tape CCC.

That drumbeat is followed by a soft voice singing:

Here we come/walking down the street/we get the funniest looks from/everyone we meet

• Hey! Hey! It's the "(Theme From) The Monkees"! There was a time, maybe a month or so before I made this tape, that the intended recipient hummed this song incessantly. It was the earworm of all earworms, and including this song on this tape might have been a bad idea in hindsight. A cruel prank? I bought Then & Now...The Best Of The Monkees in the Summer of 1986 because of her. Or perhaps I bought it for her? Yeah, that sounds more like it. And then I borrowed it from her to make this tape.
• The guitar and tambourine intro is a dead giveaway that the next song on the tape is "Last Train To Clarksville", giving us a pair of tracks by The Monkees. Another favorite song of hers, she and her roommates watched episodes of the band's Sixties television show on MTV in 1986, and that's where she fell for the music of The Monkees.
• "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" sounds like the Rolling Stones had a wild weekend in San Francisco. Micky Dolenz really knocks it out of the park. It is the third song in a row from The Monkees on this tape. I'm wondering if I'm gonna pull more Monkees tracks from the barrel or move along.
• The next song – "I'm A Believer" – begins with the sound of a Vox Continental Organ riff played by Stan Free. It sounds a little like a calliope. You may have heard a later hit by Mr. Free. In 1972, he recorded the song "Popcorn" with his band, Hot Butter. The song's writer, Neil Diamond, can also be heard playing acoustic guitar on the track.
• Song five on CCC is yet another fine tune from The Monkees. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" opens with Michael Nesmith playing a circular guitar riff before Micky Dolenz comes in, narrating a day in a suburban neighborhood.
• "Daydream Believer" is the sixth song on the tape and the last one that comes to mind when I think of her favorite Monkees tunes. I prefer the version of the song heard here, the one with Davy Jones asking what number they're recording. For the record, I also prefer the studio chatter and false starts version of Todd Rundgren's "Hello It's Me" on Something/Anything. I've enjoyed our Monkees mini-mix and cannot think of another Monkees tune I would have included as "Daydream Believer" fades out. I am on the edge of my comfy chair waiting to hear what's next.
• Don't have to wait long, as the title track from the album pictured above, the source of all seven of these Monkees tracks, begins playing. "That Was Then, This Is Now" only features Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork as The Monkees, and if memory serves, the single somehow scraped into the Top 20 with all the Monkeemania going on at the time, including the MTV revival of the group's TV series and a 20th Anniversary Tour. Probably haven't heard this song since 1986 or 1987. Please oh please let the next song be by anyone else but The Monkees...

It's the sound of a guitar genius noodling around on a synthesizer. It's not The Monkees. It's not Van Hagar, as the annoying guy at work called them after David Lee Roth left the band, though Sammy brought something extra to the band himself. The highly anticipated 5150 album was big in our little world, and she liked a handful of tracks from it, including "Why Can't This Be Love". I probably read more into the lyrics and our relationship at the time, but the song remains a mutual favorite.

She was never much of a Billy Squier fan, yet she liked the first two singles and videos off Signs of Life. The ninth song on the tape is "All Night Long" with its throbbing, echoing Pink Floyd-like intro, a guitar riff race, and just now, as I turned the volume up quite a bit, she yelled from the other room, "I like that song!" And after the song ends, the other mentioned song "Rock Me Tonite" comes in, snap-step-snap-step-snap. It's a great blend of Squier's style of boom-bap rock and the trendy synth sound seeping into rock at the time. But after two Squier songs in a row, I'm a little concerned that "Eye On You", the third, little-heard single from Signs of Life, might be the tenth song on CCC.

She loves "St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)". I do not. All of these songs are supposed to be her favorites, so here it is. Ever notice how songs you don't really like seem to last longer? This one feels like hours. Bring on the next song, please.

A complete change in the vibe of the tape as the rip-roarin' intro to "Born To Be Wild" comes on. The twelfth song on the tape is usually a great way to open a mixtape or disc, yet here it is near the end of side A. I wracked my brain trying to recall what album I might have pulled the track from, finally settling on At The Hop, a Columbia House purchase. Dad had picked it up in the late Seventies to feed his ongoing American Graffiti nostalgia obsession. I saw At The Hop listed as a clearance-priced double album at the back of a Columbia House catalog and pulled the trigger. This is more my favorite than hers. We have room for one or two more songs.

The drums and claps of "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" mean it is the lucky thirteenth track on the A side of tape CCC, and there will probably be a fourteenth song to close out the side. She really doesn't care for novelty songs. Except one: "Pac-Man Fever". A favorite song of mine from the greatest novelty song collection of all time, K-Tel's Looney Tunes. If I were a betting man, I'd bet both dollars that the next song will also be a Looney Tunes track.

And sure enough, it is another Looney Tunes track as the recognizable classical music of Allan Sherman's letter from camp begins. "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh!" is probably one of the first songs I memorized the lyrics to, and I still apparently know most of them as I'm singing along. Used to know where the music came from, too, but I got nothing.

	year		SIDE A		46:39
	1967		Theme from The Monkees	The Monkees	02:21
	1966		Last Train To Clarksville	The Monkees	02:46
	1966		(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone	The Monkees	02:23
	1966		I'm A Believer	The Monkees	02:47
	1967		Pleasant Valley Sunday	The Monkees	03:10
	1967		Daydream Believer	The Monkees	03:00
	1986		That Was Then, This Is Now	The Monkees	04:02
	1986		Why Can't This Be Love	Van Halen	03:47
	1984		All Night Long	Billy Squier	04:51
	1984		Rock Me Tonite	Billy Squier	04:57
	1985		St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)	John Parr	04:08
	1968		Born To Be Wild	Steppenwolf	03:30
	1966		They're Coming To Take Me Away	Napoleon XIV	02:10
	1963		Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh!	Allan Sherman	02:47

Side A of CCC is a prime example of the "anything goes" ethos that drove many of the mixtapes I made. Still can't believe I led off with seven straight songs from The Monkees. Hopefully, Side B has a top-notch selection and is a good listen. Let's flip the tape over and press play.

The first sounds we hear are the spacey sounds of the album version of "Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)", which runs a couple of minutes longer than the single version of the song. I know the tape recipient and I had a couple of late-night deep conversations about the lyrics to this song - we felt the song was about time-travel and the singer is trying to get back to his family to warn them from the future about how to survive what is coming. We're still both time-travel fans and have enjoyed movies, TV shows, and books about the possibilities and ramifications of moving back and forward through time.

Whoa! Just got the news that Rick Davies had passed a few hours before I sat down to listen to this tape. Now I find one of his greatest songs as the second song on the second side of tape CCC. I bought Brother Where You Bound the first day I saw it. Hadn't heard any songs from it yet. Later that night, my girl was over at my apartment, and I asked if she wanted to hear the new Supertramp album. She said she had just heard the first single on her drive home from school earlier that day, and it was really good. I dropped the needle on the record and she said, "That's it!" followed by a less confident "I think." Turns out the opening track was indeed the first single. The song's title is "Cannonball", and it rocks very well, coming in at just over seven minutes. Sounds amazing tonight. Thanks, Rick.

It takes me until they start singing the title of the song to recognize the second song on Side B of tape CCC. She loved the music of the Alan Parsons Project. There is no doubt I borrowed her first-pressing copy of the Stereotomy album, which had a two-tone plastic cover (one side was blue and the other side was red) that filtered the lettering and artwork on the cardboard sleeve, creating four unique covers depending on which side of the plastic sleeve you slid on and how you oriented the cardboard sleeve. It was a thing, and she loved it. The album's longer-than-seven-minute title track continues the prog rock vibe we established with the first two tracks on this side of the tape, so I'm wondering what's next up or even if I continue the theme. Genesis? Asia? Pink Floyd? Yes?

My question is answered with an echoing guitar riff and horn section as David Gilmour's "Blue Light" begins to play. I regret that we were unable to review this tape together because I'd love to see if she recalls this song. She used to like it, but she may have forgotten it, or maybe she'd surprise me. I like the song and listen to it regularly. It's unlike anything else in Gilmour's catalog.

"Dance Hall Days" by Wang Chung is song five on Side B of tape CCC. It seems I have loosely maintained that prog sound while also setting the stage for something else. It feels like every time Wang Chung comes up, I mention we saw them open for The Cars on their Heartbeat City Tour in September 1984. So cross that space off your Hideaway Bingo card.

It's not prog, but Joe Jackson's "You Can't What You Want (Till You Know What You Want)" is a damn fine song, and anyone who disagrees should leave now. I don't think I owned the twelve-inch single for this song in late 1986; otherwise, I would have most certainly included the Jellybean Benitez remix as song six. She loves this song, I love this song, so it's a unanimous greatest hit.

While I have come around to "Blue Jean" in the last ten years, I didn't get it in 1984. I was hugely disappointed with Tonight after loving Let's Dance. My girl snapped the album up at Al Bum's one day on her way home after class. For a couple of years, it was the only gold-stamped promo album she owned until her brother gave her a copy of Santana's Zebop! that had the gold promo stamp on the back of the album. That's a weird memory to have, but I'll take it.

The church choral intro to "Road To Nowhere" lets me know that the Talking Heads are up next. After that succession of longer songs, we are already near the end of Side B of tape CCC. We had fourteen songs on Side A, but we'll be lucky to squeeze nine here on the flipside. "Road To Nowhere" is one of those songs she deemed "peppy", her highest seal of approval.

The chiming sounds that open "Heaven (Must Be There)" now remind me of a device that has been connected or paired, but back in 1984, it meant this Eurogliders song was about to begin. As I listen, I hear the kazoo-sounding synth very prominently within the song. It's no match for the vocals of Grace Knight, however. A friend once described Knight's voice as "pretty but not precious", and that seems about right. And that's the end of Side B.

	year		SIDE B		45:47
	1985		Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)	Mike + The Mechanics	06:14
	1985		Cannonball	Supertramp	07:38
	1986		Stereotomy	The Alan Parsons Project	07:18
	1984		Blue Light	David Gilmour	04:35
	1983		Dance Hall Days	Wang Chung	03:58
	1984		You Can't Get What You Want	Joe Jackson	04:54
	1984		Blue Jean	David Bowie	03:08
	1985		Road To Nowhere	Talking Heads	04:19
	1984		Heaven (Must Be There)	Eurogliders	03:43

I preferred the second side of the tape to the first. There were some good songs on Side A. Too many songs by one artist, though. The balance, the flow was off. Managed to do a better job on Side B, I think.