This jumps ahead a year from the last Throwback post (from spring 1994 to spring 1995). But read on, for 'tis an exciting tale of mix tapes, first gay dance parties, forging friendships and—oh, yes—cheesy, cheesy pop.****
In March of '95, I went to the "Chase Party," the tragic dance held by the IUP campus gay organization at the local church bingo hall (!). Christmas lights Scotch-taped to the ceiling tiles. Pretzels and potato chips in baskets. The DJ playing Madonna's "Bedtime Story" and Real McCoy's Run Away"...on cassette. It was the first time I'd attended this particular shindig, though sadly not the last.That night a group of students came from another Western Pennsylvania university about an hour away, and I bumped into a guy I'd met briefly a year prior through a mutual friend. He had on a what I recall being a vintage men's tweed coat and retro-looking thick black-framed glasses. Today we all know him as Chart Rigger's Banterview master, MoogaBoo.
We got to talking, and suddenly the DJ played Dead Or Alive. So then MoogaBoo and I got to talking about Stock Aitken Waterman, British producers I'd paid little more than passing interest in during their late '80s heyday, though I did notice their credits on the Bananarama greatest hits I bought in '89 and, four years later, Boy Krazy's "That's What Love Can Do" cassette single.
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MoogaBoo and I hung out the whole night, and then stayed in touch via e-mail and this ancient form of communication called handwritten letters, too. (It was still 1995, after all!) Within a week, we cemented our friendship with the most sacred rite of music-geek passage: Making mix tapes for each other.
On that very first one he mailed to me (pictured at the top of this post), I immediately latched onto Lonnie Gordon's "Happenin' All Over Again '93" and played it while walking to classes on a lame yellow walkman I'd borrowed from a girl on my floor (and didn't return for two years) to the point of causing audible crackling on the tape both before and after the song.
Moog also pointed out that Mike Stock and Matt Aitken were staging a bit of a comeback, and had produced a cover of "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" by someone named Nicki French. (This was still three months before it climbed to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.) I bought the single and, again, played it to the point of snapping.
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It seemed that at least once a week that semester I was having to tell one of my friends that I was gay, either in person or on the phone. The process of "coming out" is different for everyone. For me it was just tedious. I think, in retrospect, it was probably harder for some of the people I told.Everyone I mention this to always finds it somewhat unbelievable, but on my residence hall floor of 30 students, there were 10 of us who came out over the course of that '94-'95 school year. We all used to joke that it was something in the water fountain. But, being more practical, what did anyone expect—it was the English major floor!
Here's D'luv that year. The flannel was a super-dashing, no? (And to this day I still never know what to do with my hands in photos.)
Meeting MoogaBoo was so refreshing; here was a ready-made friend who was the same age, with the same interest in pop music, and, most importantly, with whom I didn't have to have some awkward conversation with about sexuality.****
The next tape I got in the mail from him was, at my request, one with songs all produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. Sinitta, Brother Beyond, Laura Branigan, Sonia...and one in particular that stood out—Jason Donovan's "You Can Depend On Me."
For some reason, I couldn't shake that track in particular. I recalled seeing in an old issue of Smash Hits from 1989, which I bought in 9th grade, that Jason Donovan's first album got released here in the States. But, having long been out of print, where to find it in '95?While most of the students went home that Easter weekend to be with their families, I stayed on campus and got online to search for more info on SAW and their artists. I came across an old-school "mailing list" for Kylie Minogue and Stock Aitken Waterman—the kind where updates were e-mailed en masse to everyone on the list, and if you wanted to contribute, you had to send your own e-mail to some general address.
The group was run by a Brit named Jeremy Kay (and, as someone pointed out in the comments, Aussie Paul Burnim), who would go on to be one of the overseers of this year's recent remastered Lonnie Gordon, Princess and Mandy Smith album releases from PWL and the Cherry Red label.
I printed out the massive list of SAW-productions that Jeremy forwarded to all new members that weekend and remember well how it took about two hours for the whole damn thing to come through my friend's poor old printer.
I was determined to track down as much of this obscure music as possible.
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Another friend and fellow student at IUP named Mike picked me up in the final weeks of the semester that May, and we drove into Pittsburgh. I made him stop at a record/comic book store called Eide's on Penn Avenue, and there it was—Jason Donovan's Ten Good Reasons. Annoyingly, they only had it on cassette, but I paid the $4 for it anyway.Yes, while everyone else was listening to TLC, Live, Pearl Jam and Coolio in summer '95, Jason Donovan's outdated 1989 album was my soundtrack.
One of my most vivid memories is driving to a club in downtown Pittsburgh on a Thursday night that June with a friend of mine. My car's tape player had been defective for about two years at that point, and music sounded really muffled when played through it.
She was so sick of the radio, though, that she grabbed the Ten Good Reasons tape without knowing what it was and said, "Just put this trash on!" After that, I think the only other person on the planet who played that album as much as I did that year—or at all—was her.
Here's the big single off it, "Too Many Broken Hearts":
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Anyway, Ten Good Reasons (as well as Jason's second album Between The Lines) was added to iTunes last week. It's classic pop, and was actually the best-selling record in the UK in 1989.If you're not willing to grab the whole thing but have got the 99 cents to spare, definitely give "You Can Depend On Me" (the album version, not the candyass "original mix" included on the "Hang On To Your Love" EP) a shot.
There was once a 21-year-old kid in the middle of nowhere who romantically dreamt away an angsty summer to that song.