This one is dedicated to Sammy, Rupert, Ethel and all the other
pizza hippies at AotM.
It was a cold March evening in Columbia, 1993. Steve and I were making our normal rounds up and down 9th street, from quarter beers at 9th street deli to burgers at Booche’s and finally down at Shakespeare’s Pizza, looking for a vagabond guitarist to accompany our crooning. At a certain point in our evenings and at a certain state of mind, Steve would get the urge for us to duet on his favorite American Country & Western Songs, you know, tunes like Dead Flowers, Runaway Eyes, Sweet Virginia, etc.
Well, we didn’t find the guitarist, but we started off with some hackneyed version of Sympathy for the Devil, which was country enough for us at the time. The “kids” (2 years younger than me at the time) on the sidewalk looked at us as if we had just gotten off our spaceship. For me, the look they gave us was a sign that my time in Columbia and the States was coming to an end. But Steve summed it up perfectly back up in his apartment, as I pulled his muffler off from around his neck, “Those God-Damn PIZZA hippies!”
And thus was born a new catch phrase, to describe the
Lollapaloser generation, of which we were more than glad to be “above” with our Billie Holiday, Stooges, Burning Spear and Mose Allison, among others. It seemed that most of those “kids” thought that Pearl Jam had invented rock n’ roll and had no grasp of their roots. And of course, in Kaufmannesque fashion, the funniest joke is only understood by one person (or in this case three people).
Shakespeare’s at that time still served the best pizza you ever had, now they have over-expanded and the quality has gone down. My artwork here is a tribute to the restaurant and cult-like status that Shakespeare’s has attained among my fellow Missouri alumni. Tim (Steve’s roommate) and I would typically order our favorite Italian sausage, black olives and pepper cheese at 1 in the morning after Steve had gone to bed. The Wad reminded me later that “not once did you bastards ever offer me a piece”. As an added tradition, Tim would forget that we were one block from the restaurant so the pie would arrive literally out of the oven and he would always burn the roof of his mouth, the degree of which rose proportionally in relation to his state of inebriation at the time.
Anyway, back to the music, I realize now that ignoring Indie Rock was to my own detriment. We were just too caught up in our own coolness to enjoy it or even take it seriously. I did enjoy Nevermind and Pearl Jam and some of the other easily-heard “indie” (for lack of a better term) artists, but I preferred to dig back, into the gutbucket roots of all things pre- and post-Dylan, for lack of a better phrase…
Steve and I soon graduated, I moved to Mexico, got married and settled down in Guadalajara all in the same summer. I got a job teaching high school English and my teenage students and I connected on a certain number of artists, but still mainly the Seattle scene and others. As a Neil Young freak, it was easy to latch on to J. Mascis.
However, it was my wife’s cousin Gabriel, in about 1995, who was a year or two older than me, who finally turned a switch on to me with a mix tape containing many of these artists. Still tied up with the old fart influence of The Wad, I mockingly titled his mix “Pizza Hippie Sampler”. But then I really started listening to it and realized how great that music could be. He even mixed in familiar artists (Mellencamp, the Doors) for flavor and to appeal to my wood hippie nature. The one that really turned me on was the Jesus & Mary Chain track here, then Pixies, and then Spiritualized, and then the Stone Roses. Soon, I borrowed several of his CDs to make my own samplers of my favorites. I held on to those cassettes in the intervening 13 years and handed them off to my buddy Strange Loop earlier this year to rip to MP3s. This mix collects my favorites of the favorites. The sound quality of all of them may not be the sharpest, but they did travel 3000 km in a hot moving van 8 years ago.
I have used a few of these tunes here and there on alt-djs, etc., but this particular mix idea has been simmering in the back of my head since I digitized those cassettes. And I have explored the
Pizza Hippie concept before as well. Now this week, between her country and gutbucket mixes, e.buster has inspired me to work outside my comfort zone. As they say at Shakespeare’s, “It's the pizza, stupid. And maybe the beer. Everything else can go fly."
1. Frente! –
Ordinary Angels2. The Sundays –
Joy3. Pale Saints –
Half-Life, Remembered4. Saint Etienne –
Nothing Can Stop Us5. The Darkside –
Waiting for the Angels6. The Field Mice –
If You Need Someone7. The Jesus & Mary Chain –
Girlfriend8. Verve –
Slide Away9. The Dylans –
Lemon Afternoon10. The Boo Radleys –
Lazarus11. Spiritualized –
Run12. Charlatans UK –
Indian Rope13. The Stone Roses –
Made Of Stone14. Pixies –
Monkey Gone to Heaven15. Blur –
Chemical World16. Veruca Salt –
Seether17. Dinosaur, Jr. –
Blah18. The Smashing Pumpkins –
Siva19. Moose –
Jack20. Teenage Fanclub –
Everything Flows21. Sugar –
Tilted
