My late-90s mix cd.

This reminds me of getting one of my first jobs working in a pub. I wasn't quite old enough to serve at the bar so I was just collecting glasses on a busy Saturday night. I was working one Christmas eve when I saw that the girl I'd been seeing was getting off with another guy in the pub garden. Being a 17 year old with very little tact (or physical strength for that matter), I dropped the pile of glasses I'd been carrying and lamped the guy quite feebly in the jaw.

This isn't one of Cypress's best tracks, those are reserved for the first two albums, but it's by no means bad. I don't know how much it excites me seven years later but it gives me memories so please let me wallow in my nostalgia.

Blur - Yuko & Hiro (1995)
I've written a lot about Blur in the past, and the recent reappraisal of the Great Escape led me to dig this little nugget out.
For me, Britpop was much much more than a sickly media-generated frenzy celebrating false nostalgia of a by-gone era. For me it was probably the most significant turning point in my life. At 14, saving all my money for my first CD player and being giving a gift voucher from David's Music in Letchworth. My Mum had suggested getting Now 30, but it was only until I got to the shop that I realised I wanted none of that. Blur had just released Girls & Boys and were probably enjoying massive success in the indie press, but for an impressionable lad whose previous favourite band was 2Unlimited, taking Parklife from off the rack was a real step into unchartered territory. I still maintain to this day that if I had chosen Terrorvision's "How To Make Friends And Influence People" over "Parklife", then not only my life BUT LIFE ITSELF would be completely different. In the months after listening to this album on repeat, I saw Blur go from a succesful indie-pop act to Brit Award winners, Oasis baiters, top ten fighters. They became huge, and I'm sure it was because I bought Parklife on 4th October 1994.

But this is about the Great Escape and particularly Yuko and Hiro. I remember me and my friends quickly becoming disgusted with Blur around the time they released The Universal. They'd become Take That with guitars. Alex James was in the centrefold of Smash Hits. SMelly girls with big teeth came into school wearing "D A M O N" necklaces and then trying to tell me that "Albarn" is pronounced "All-burn" WTF?!?! After Charmless Man came out I sold all my Blur stuff. Everything.

Then I bought it all again after "On Your Own" came out. What a wally!

Anyway, Yuko & Hiro - great song. Not exactly up there with This Is A Low but definitely a forgotten Blur classic and it summed up the Great Escape's hopeless and depressed vibe.

I still can't work out whether this album is actually genius or just trying too hard to be conceptual and clever. Either way, I see it as Blur building everything up to grotesque proportions, only to smash it down again with their next eponymous album.

AFX - Cuckoo (1994)
The first time I heard Aphex Twin was pivotal as well. I think it was the first time I ever got properly stoned round an older friend's house. As soon as "Bouncing Bucephalus Ball" came onto the speaker I suddenly understood why electronic music could be great. After that I spent most of my lunchtimes at college trawling through Cambridge town centre looking for rare Aphex stuff.

This track is from his AFX alias. It's minimal production facades the difficult melodies and there is an almost oriental vibe about it.

Graham Coxon - In A Salty Sea (1998)
Graham Coxon must have done loads of stuff by now, but this is from his first ever album back in 98. It's a very minimalist, acoustic album, Graham playing up to his idiot-savant image. This reminds me of possibly one of the best summers I ever had. It was the age where no-one had any money but were old enough not to have to be dragged along on holiday with Mum and Dad. Also - pre-university so lots and lots of friends still about. Hence - massive house parties, festivals, girls, drink, and endless hot summer days. The windchime sounds on this track make me think of ice cubes in a drink on a hot summers day.

Pearl Jam - Around the Bend (1996)
I don't think I ever got the hang of school trips. Hostels, bedtimes, miserable walks on the beach, eyebrow-shaving, lynx cans and lighters, 20p to call home. I don't know what school trip this reminds me of but I reckon it must have been to France as I remember listening to No Code on the ferry.
Pearl Jam have always been dismissed as hoary po-faced rockers, but everything after their first album Ten was in fact highly variable and sometimes throwaway tracks like "Bugs" on Vitalogy were what made the album. The optimistic "Around the Bend" is the last track on No Code, which as the title suggests is a difficult hotch-potch of an album to decipher. The tracklisting jumps from hardpunkrock numbers to ambient drifters and everything in between. Sometimes it is my favourite of all of them.

Depeche Mode - In Your Room (1994)
I always used to like the fact that Depeche Mode were the Goth band it was okay to like. I got into them about 1998, the time of my A-levels and when I was hanging out with a lot of die-hard metal fans so this was kind of my passport to their worlds in a strange way.

Mercury Rev - Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp (1998)
This was my least favourite track on Deserter's Songs. Now it's the only one I can stand. I don't know what immediately made me go from loving to hating this record - suddenly it just seemed so dishonest and gooey. I'd like to remix this track - it would be good fun.

Beatles - Fixing a Hole
This of course is not a mix of music from the late 90s, more music I was listening to in the late 90s. I was doing my A-levels in Cambridge. Endless train rides from Letchworth every morning and evening - endless lunchbreaks and free periods where I had nothing better to do than read New Scientist in the college library. 6th-form was a very lonely time in the week and I guess that's how I got so involved in music. As soon as class finished, on came my walkman. Luckily Cambridge town library was very well stocked with CDs and I soon acquainted myself with the Beatles back catalogue. I can't listen to them much anymore - too many memories of being lonely, plus the fact I listened to these records constantly.

Pulp - Disco 2000
The only Pulp item I ever actually bought. Must have come out about Christmas time because I remember it being very dark when I bought it. Indie nights at Plinston Hall - great times. I think the kids used to sing "Your tits were very small/like bubbles on a wall/when I came round to call/I didn't notice them at all", oh how we laughed. I guess this must chronical my first kiss. Everyone dancing in the darkened room in a circle. The circle broke and I held onto the girl next to me. We kissed. My friend shouted "CLOSE YOUR EYES YOU TWAT!" so I did. Then I walked off embarassed and elated without saying a word. I never even knew her name.

Squarepusher - My Sound (1998)
By the time I'd finished with Aphex I was starting to explore the other artists on Warp. I think "Music Is Rotted One Note" was one of the first of these albums and it freaked me the fuck out but I loved it. It should've been a one-off really and then he should have gone back to doing drum'n'bass but I'd say it's the essential Squarepusher jazz album. I remember buying Budakhan Mindphone at the FNAC whilst visiting my grandparents in Paris. Knowing my granddad was a jazz fan I let him hear it. Oh dearie me!

Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug
Oooh... When I was a kid, it seemed all the older taller nutters with black hair and pins through their eyeballs were wearing the NIN t-shirts and I could only imagine what kind of music they listened to. I bought the Perfect Drug EP and was pleasantly surprised, thinking what I would hear was some kind of Atari Teenage Riot inspired destructo noise metal. But this was JUNGLE! What the FUCK!?!

Faith No More - Cuckoo For Caca (1995)
I maintain today that King For A Day is one of the greatest American rock albums of all time. It's totally made by Mike Patton's mentalist lycanthropic vocals but all in all it's pure genius.

Beastie Boys - I Don't Know
The Beastie Boys were my favourite band in 1998. For a seventeen year old guy who had managed to come out of an awkward gothy phase, the feeling of wearing baggy trousers and being geeky and white and cool was pretty, well, tubular. Hello Nasty came out around my birthday and I fell in love with it. It gets dissed a lot by purists but I love the fact there are so many different styles going on in this record and this reflective bossa-nova number shows the Boys were more than a shit rap band.

Manic Street Preachers - Born A Girl
Oh god. This Is My Truth - such a dark and terrible album. This chronicles the break-up after the fight in the pub on Christmas Eve (see the Cypress Hill entry). The whole album is anguish for me from beginning to end.

Eggman - I'll Watch Your Back (1996)
Did I mention I like the Boo Radleys? This is from Sice's Bontempi-folk solo album "First Fruits", a largely overlooked gem lost in the pits of 96. So relaxing, so nice. Reminds me of sitting on a sofa after a party and getting together with the first girl I ever went out with and being very excited and even more scared!

Smashing Pumpkins - Ava Adore
I remember really not knowing what to make of Adore when it came out. It felt like the Pumpkins had changed into an entirely different band. I soon came round to the fact that I like it when bands try different things and soon fell in love with it.
Memories? Going to some gothic party in an outback little village between Letchworth and Cambridge in an attempt to make friends during my lonely college years. I had a crap time.

Radiohead - Bullet Proof... I Wish I Was
I was very seriously bullied for a whole year in the fifth form at school and The Bends became such a soundtrack for sobbing in my room that I eventually taped over my copy in a fit of karma-busting. I refused to listen to it again until much later in the upper sixth. This is a beautiful song to play on guitar.

dEUS - Nine Threads
Mmmm... sitting in a warm pub with my parents next to a roaring log fire after a French mock GCSE. The exam halls were freezing and the food in the pub was very welcome. dEUS were my little secret. When I first started buying music I could only afford the reject tapes and CDs that cost 25p each. I picked up Hotellounge (an amazing song) in the shop and then the "Bar Under The Sea" album. dEUS really sum up everything I like about music but for some reason I've never really acquired anything other than that album and a handful of singles. There is a wonderful demo version of this song with a different vocal and lyric on a b-side somewhere.

Hey, now you tell us about a compilation you made :-)