For the 2010 Christmas Mix, I’ve decided to dip into my late middle school/early high school past and picked out 44 songs that I remember from before I could drive. All of the songs featured on the mix have been recorded from vinyl records in my own personal collection. I’ve had many of these records since the late 80s, early 90s. Over the advent season, I’ll be featuring one per day, counting down to Christmas party timewhen the mix itself will be released.
Sometimes when you have a little bit of lawn mowing money left over at the end of the week, you go to Boscov’s and spend it on a cassingle. I did that a lot. It wasn’t that I was against 7″ records, I had a ton. They just stopped making them so easy to come by in 1988.
Not much would go into my music-buying decisions at this point in my life. If the cover looked cool or the band had a fun name, I’d pick it up. You never know, right? That’s what happened here. I saw the cover (which is the same as the 7″ cover) and the name Big Audio Dynamite and decided that it must be mine. I had no idea that Mick Jones from The Clash was in it (I knew who The Clash were, this was the same year that I got Punk Rock Movie on VHS). I also had no idea that it was the second song to go to #1 on the new Billboard Modern Rock charts (the first was “Peek-a-Boo” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, which is also on the mix!).
“Just Play Music” had a fun reggae feel to it in parts. I was pretty okay with reggae. The local college station had a reggae show on Sundays that I would listen to after church. I liked the reverb-filled rub-a-dub stuff best. This song didn’t have that, but I liked it anyway.
I kind of forgot about it until last year when I saw the 7″ and picked it up. I’m really glad that I did. The single version is a bit different from the album version, by the way. It’s strange that something like that would matter.
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