moody trip-hop beat was the perfect soundtrack for my moping.
“Mixed Bizness,” Beck
Beck—yes, that Beck!—made a banging R&B album in the late ’90s, and if I was going to make you a mix, I would definitely want you to know that I know that.
“Swan Dive,” Ani DiFranco
I got my first-ever tattoo as an homage to Ani DiFranco. She was on the cover of Spin magazine (remember that?!) in August 1997, in a black leather bustier with a shock of teal and seafoam-green hair sprouting from the top of her head and a thorny, vine-looking thing inked a couple inches below her clavicle. I, an already devoted fan who’d meticulously written out the lyrics to “Not a Pretty Girl” in my journal years before, painstakingly removed the cover with a razor and affixed it to the cork board over my bed in my college dorm room. While I was home for spring break, my friend Ylang and I, realizing that we were both certified eighteen-year-old ADULTS, decided to go get tattoos. Actually, she decided to get her belly button pierced at a tattoo parlor, and since that wasn’t exactly my thing, I decided that while I waited I was going to get something exciting and dangerous tattooed on my body. I’m pretty sure I had less than fifty bucks in my pocket because I rarely ever have more than that, even now, and I looked at all the flash on the walls and was really surprised at how expensive tattoos were? Like, even the small, boring ones were hundreds of dollars! I had a check in my pocket from the government that was probably allocated for textbooks, but instead of that, I deposited it into an ATM down the street from the tattoo shop and said a silent prayer to the money gods so that they would do that magic thing where some of your money is available right away. Voilà! I was able to withdraw two hundred dollars! I did it quickly, before the machine could change its mind, and picked a tribal design off the wall because there was no way in hell that wasn’t going to be in fashion twenty years later! When the artist asked where I wanted it, I panicked and said, “Where Ani has hers!” and he looked at me like I was nuts, because, seriously, who the fuck is Ani to this fifty-year-old biker tattoo artist with a beard to his navel. I pointed to my breastplate and he asked me to unbutton my shirt the same way you’d ask for a glass of water, which I was somehow too stupid to have anticipated. Then he shaved my sternum with a bar of soap and a cheap disposable razor, while I lay back in a chair completely horrified by my hairy chest. He had to basically lay on top of me to get the tattoo where I wanted it, and I clenched my teeth while taking shallow sips of air in an attempt not to rattle him. I went back to school proudly sporting a healing, oozing wound in the dead center of my chest. I received a care package my friend Anna sent with some SARK books and Ani’s new CD inside, and I listened to “Swan Dive” on a loop while tenderly applying A+D ointment to my peeling sub-neck area for a week.
“Makin’ Happy,” Crystal Waters
I love house music. I live for a house remix. I have dated *counts fingers* six-ish deep house DJs (some of them would argue about my generous use of the word “dated,” hence the -ish). There is no clear picture of my musical history that doesn’t include some kind of club bops. You can’t grow up Chicago-adjacent and not have a deep appreciation for house music. It’s against the rules. I wasn’t old enough to really party, but my sister would give me tapes of all the good shit (Dajae singing “Brighter Days,” and Cajmere’s “The Percolator,”) and then I would get whatever I could from Saturday late-night mixes on the radio. I was obsessed with Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless),” just like everybody else when it came out. I got the cassingle (A side: radio edit, club mix; B side: seven-plus-minute Basement Boys mix, instrumental), and wore that shit OUT. Then I saved up and bought her full album, which in the old days was a fucking commitment. Nine dollars for an entire album