Alphabet Soup Week 16: The H Tracks

Reminiscing on the musical format wars, serving up another batch of tasty musical treats, and highlighting the importance of hope.

Happy Wednesday and welcome to week 16 of Alphabet Soup!

By the time Wednesday afternoon arrived I had no idea what I’d be writing about in this week’s intro, but thankfully a topic came to me as I was composing the blurbs that accompany each of the musical selections.

Towards the end of this week's playlist, three of the final four tracks (I’m sure you can figure out which ones) are from albums that I owned in multiple formats. Clearly, given the parameters for musical selection in this series - music from albums or compilations that used to be in my physical CD collection - everything you'll hear in Alphabet Soup has been owned by me in at least two formats (the physical CD and the digital mp3 file), so when I talk about multiple formats here, I mean physical formats.

Before CDs became mainstream in the mid- to late-80s, there were really only two formats available: vinyl and cassette. As the chart below shows, in the mid-80s when I was beginning to acquire the means (by working weekend/summer jobs) to purchase music, sales of vinyl were on the decline and cassettes were ascendant. While I began building my music collection in a vinyl world, it wasn't long before cassettes became my preferred format. Ultimately it was the portability, both in terms of the boombox and later the Walkman, that trumped the sound quality and the enjoyable ritual of the vinyl experience for me. Mixtapes rapidly became a shared musical currency and the coolness factor that came from a well-crafted party playlist that could keep my fellow teens rocking (until our 10pm curfew) can’t be overstated.

Musical progress arrived in 1982 from Japan (as many technological innovations did back then) in the form of a shiny 120 mm diameter polycarbonate plastic disc and the Compact Disc era was born! The first CD I remember owning was Men At Work’s Business As Usual, originally released on CD in 1983, although I likely didn’t purchase it until later, perhaps as late as 1985. While cassettes replaced vinyl, they didn’t actually displace the vinyl in the sense that I could still easily transfer my vinyl collection, in part or in full, onto cassettes. The same couldn’t be said for CDs, which wouldn’t be available in a writable format in any meaningful way until the 1990s.

When I think back to my physical collection, and those cases where I owned the same album in multiple physical formats, the primary combination was both a vinyl version and a CD version. Because I could, and often did, copy vinyl to a cassette, there never felt like much of a legitimate reason to own an album both of those formats. With the advent of portable stereos that combined a cassette player with a CD player, the choice to own just one or both of those two formats generally came down to audio quality or, as was the cas for me, a decision to a transition my entire music collection to the newer format.

At some point I abandoned cassettes entirely, leaving behind briefcases of mixtapes (god, I miss those!) as well as gems such as U.T.F.O.’s Skeezer Pleezer, Human League’s Fascination EP, and Indeep’s Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. Only those albums that I wanted to remain within my musical collection, in their CD format, such as the aforementioned Business As Usual, U2’s War, and the albums featuring tracks 7 and 8 of this week’s playlist, would see the earlier cassette version replaced by a CD. But as I stated above, more often than not, duplicate CDs coming into the collection were replacing a prior vinyl version.

All of this talk of formats would become moot (outside of the often-esoteric audiophile arguments around mp3, flac, ogg, etc.) within a decade and a half when digital music, both legal (eMusic in 1988, iTunes in 2003) and not (Naspter, Limewire, Direct Connect, Torrent), entered the fray. Now we find ourselves firmly entrenched in the age of digital streaming platforms; while in some ways we’re further away than ever from the format wars of the 70s, 80s and 90s, we’re also seeing a continued resurgence vinyl with cassette releases also starting to see growth.

It will be interesting to see what the next decade brings. My hope is that it brings a new paradigm that better rewards those that make music in a more equitable way than the current models do. Personally, I’d love to see a way to either completely opt out of AI-generated music on any of the platforms I use, or at least be presented with clear labeling of AI-generated music such that I can make an informed choice. I won’t hold my breath as the technocrats aren’t likely to provide this level of transparency voluntarily.

I’ll leave it there for now. Let’s jump into this week’s musical selections!

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 16: The H Tracks

This week’s selections:

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TRACK: “Halah” from She Hangs Brightly (1990)

ARTIST: Mazzy Star

With deep roots in California’s Paisley Underground scene of the early 1980s, Mazzy Star emerged from the remnants of predecessor band Opal after the departure of lead singer Kendra Smith. Hope Sandoval stepped in as lead singer and began working as a songwriter with band founder David Roback. The result of their creative partnership was the newly renamed band’s debut album She Hangs Brightly released in 1990 (on Rough Trade in May and Capitol in November). The band didn’t attain much in the way of commercial success until the release of their 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See, which broke the band on the back of lead single Fade Into You. The success of that track spurred interest in the earlier debut album, driving Halah to number 19 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart four years after its initial release.

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TRACK: “Happy Homemaker” from Adam’s Rib (1998)

ARTIST: Melanie Doane

Melanie Doane was one of those local artists I discovered when studying at university in Nova Scotia in the 90s. The Halifax native followed up her independently released 1993 EP Harvest Train with her debut full-length Adam’s Rib, released in 1998. The album spawned four singles, including Happy Homemaker, and earned Doane the 1999 Juno Award for New Artist of the Year. She would go on to release an additional four albums and later appeared in the Toronto production of acclaimed play War Horse, earning rave reviews over its two-year run.

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TRACK: “Hand to Mouthville” from Anchorless (1997)

ARTIST: Kacy Crowley

Yet another artist whose introduction came by way of my 1990s music discovery bible CMJ New Music Monthly. Kacy Crowley’s Hand To Mouthville, from her major label debut Anchorless, appeared on the CD included with the November 1997 issue. The album itself received a lukewarm critical response and listening to it over the last week, for the first time in 25+ years, I’m inclined to agree. Having said that, this particular track does still grab me. Very much a Tuesday Night Music Club era Sheryl Crow vibe going on here, and I say that as a compliment as I loved that album when it was released.

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As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

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TRACK: “Here & Now” from Aurora Gory Alice (1994)

ARTIST: Letters To Cleo

It’s really hard to overstate how influential CMJ New Music Monthly was to my life in the 90s. I ended up with dozens of albums in my collection as a direct result of the music to which I was introduced through its articles, reviews, and the included CD. In this case, the September 1994 edition included Letter to Cleo’s first single, See Me, from their major label debut Aurora Gory Alice. That track led me to purchasing the album and falling in love with their sound, albeit for just the one album. Here and Now, the second single from the album received a great deal of exposure after appearing on an episode of Melrose Place, propelling it to #56 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #10 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.

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TRACK: “Hey Hey” from So Wound (1996)

ARTIST: Jale

Another 1990s Halifax-based band, Jale, making their second appearance in Alphabet Soup after their track Ali appeared in the week 2 installment. Hey Hey is taken from the same album, 1996’s So Wound, the last album they released before disbanding later that year.

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TRACK: “How It's Going To Be” from Third Eye Blind (1997)

ARTIST: Third Eye Blind

How’s it Going To Be was the third single released from Third Eye Blind’s self-titled 1997 debut. The album would turn out to be their most successful release by far, spending a total of 106 weeks on the charts, peaking at number 25 on the Billboard 200, and going on to be certified six times platinum by 2001. Although Semi-Charmed Life was the smash single from the album, I’m more partial to some of the later singles, including this track.

How’s it Going To Be has frontman Stephen Jenkins ostensibly singing to a romantic partner asking them how things will be (presumably for them?) when the relationship is over. Repeated listening over the years has led me to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the song has the same type of ironic vibe evident in John Waite’s Missing You. It feels more like Jenkins is asking the question of himself and we seem to hear him growing increasingly desperate as the song progresses. By the time we hit the bridge near end of the song, “Wanna get myself back in again / The soft dive of oblivion / I wanna taste the salt of your skin / The soft dive of oblivion”, the angst and fear of loss is palpable. Perhaps I’m way off base on this one - what do you think?

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TRACK: “How Beautiful You Are” from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987)

ARTIST: The Cure

While The Police were the first artist to wear the mantle of favorite band for a few years in the early 80s, their title was short-lived as The Cure would supplant them by the middle of the decade and maintain their dominance through today. I’ve been lucky enough to see them perform live half a dozen times over the last fifteen years and, despite the decades that have passed since their earliest releases, they remain absolutely flawless in concert.

While the psychedelic stylings of 1984’s The Top ushered The Cure away from their darker goth origins, 1985’s Head on the Door and 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me provided a transition to a more accessible sound, one with a widespread appeal that would lay the groundwork for the worldwide stardom that would arrive with 1993’s Disintegration.

Upon release Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was by far the longest album the band had released, almost as long as the prior two albums combined. I began writing a list of the standout tracks and quickly found myself into double digits at which point I stopped to marvel at the accomplishment: an 18-track album that literally has zero bad songs. It’s no wonder that this remains one of my favorite Cure albums, one that I revisit regularly and am happy to listen to for days at a time.

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TRACK: “How Soon Is Now” from Hatful of Hollow (1984)

ARTIST: The Smiths

Going from The Cure to The Smiths almost feels like cheating given how closely the two bands are linked in many people’s minds. But as soon as I began thinking about what to include in the H tracks, How Soon is Now from the 1984 compilation album Hatful of Hollow felt like a no brainer. The song is, without a doubt, one of the highlights of the band’s entire catalog and arguably one of the greatest songs of the 1980’s, if not of all time. The track, which was originally released as the B-side to William, It Was Really Nothing (now that’s an all-timer of a single!), was critically acclaimed but only found modest success on the charts.

I’m inclined to agree with the opinion of Phillip Sherbrune, writing for the Pitchfork article The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s: “The tremolo pulse that opens "How Soon Is Now?" is the kind of sound musicians and listeners spend a lifetime chasing after: something never heard before and never successfully replicated since.” It’s a hell of an opening to a stunning track. I’ve always considered the opening lyric to be a clever piece of wordplay. “I am the sun and the air”? Possibly. Until the second line makes it clear we’re talking about the son and the heir . . . of nothing in particular (adapted from a line in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch: “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular”).

The Wikipedia page for the How Soon Is Now highlights the ranking of the song within the various “best of” lists from influential music media, including Pitchfork (10th best song of the 1980s), NME (number 4 on the 500 greatest songs of all time), and WFNX Boston (number 1 song of the decade). As of my last check it remained my wife’s favorite track of all time - a glowing endorsement indeed!

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TRACK: “Hollow Man” from Love (1985)

ARTIST: The Cult

Here’s one of the albums I owned first on vinyl and later on CD. I’d owned the band’s earlier releases - the 1983 compilation album from the earlier incarnation of the band, The Southern Death Cult, and the self-titled 1983 EP released as Death Cult. But it was 1985’s Love, the second album released as The Cult, that cemented my appreciation for the band. This was the band’s commercial breakthrough, generating three top 40 UK singles, and peaking at number four on the UK charts. The album has sold an estimated 2.5 million copies worldwide. I damn near wore out the grooves on this record as I listened to it incessantly for much of that year. As with The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, this is an album that I could listen to back-to-back-without-a-skipped-track for days on end.

When it came to an H track from The Cult, I was tempted to go with Horse Nation from their debut album Dreamtime (the track also appeared on the Death Cult EP), but I went with Hollow Man simply because of the power this album still holds over me. I loved the follow up album, 1987’s Electric but found myself increasingly disappointed with subsequent releases and ultimately stopped listening after 1991’s Ceremony.

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TRACK: “Head” from The Thrill Kisser (1999)

ARTIST: Tin Star

Tin Star, the short-live British electronic band, were active from 1996 through 2005 during which time they released two albums, including their 1999 debut The Thrill Kisser. The album spawned two singles, Disconnect and this track, Head, the most successful of the two, which peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts.

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Life in the key of H: Hope

Last week news reached me that an old schoolmate of mine had taken his own life, leaving behind his mother, his two older siblings, and an 18-year-old son. Our paths hadn’t crossed for many years, but I have fond recollections of shared times at high school and in college.

Yesterday was National Semicolon Day, a day created by the US nonprofit organization Project Semicolon dedicated to recognizing suicide survivors and aiming to raise awareness and offer support for all those who are experiencing mental health challenges. Project Semicolon was founded by Amy Bluel in 2013 as a way to spread hope to those facing mental health concerns and to honor her father, who died by suicide ten years prior to her starting the organization. Bluel once explained the movement’s symbolism: “Authors use semicolons when a sentence could end, but they choose to continue it. Through the Semicolon Project, we are saying you are the author, the sentence is your life, and you are choosing to continue.”

As someone who has struggled with depression, I’ve learned about the importance of just hanging in there until the clouds part, revealing the blue sky that had always been there but was obscured from view. Whatever challenges you may be facing in your life, please know that there is always hope for a brighter day.

If you find yourself struggling, please reach out for help.

If you see a friend or loved one struggling, or you haven’t seen or heard from them for a while, check in on them.

If everything seems fine with your loved ones, don’t assume everything’s okay. Try normalizing discussions around mental health and begin letting those closest to you know that you’re there for them in whatever ways they need you to be, in happy times and in sad times.

Thanks for sticking around for another installment, I appreciate you being here.

Until next time, hang on to hope . . .

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

• Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)

• Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)

• From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)

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Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.