1994
A mixtape for when you were 7 and the world opened up.
The World Is Big and Life Is Short
I got to travel to Florence, Italy, for work this past month. Can’t overstate how lucky I am to have the opportunity to step into another place and culture for a brief time. The people were warm and welcoming, even if the weather was cold and windy (and the bread doesn’t use salt so you have to drown it in oil for it to be even a little bit good). I also got to spend a single late night in Rome waltzing from bar to bar and seeing sculptures older than our entire nation.
I saw Michelangelo’s David. I saw the Pantheon. I saw the Colosseum. It is somewhat overwhelming to see these things in person after seeing them in textbooks. That’s the one. The one and only. The gravity of it all hits you in a way that is difficult to express.
The world is big and life is short. There’s no way I’ll see it all. At the same time, the world is small (I flew partway across the world in 8 hours) and life is long (I will see as much as I can). It really puts into perspective how you spend your time.
Good buddy Dan Fox came to me with an idea that similarly explores the idea of a long life of discovery. More on that below. Thanks as always for tuning in.
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1994
Created in collaboration with Dan Fox for when you were 7 and the world opened up.
A few words from Dan:
*****
...in the circle, the circle of life.xx
-unknown
While doing the dishes, I’ve switched from listening to podcasts to listening to audiobooks. They tend to be more focused and informative; less banal banter, more informational nutrition. That’s how I came across David Byrne’s book How Music Works, which in turn inspired this playlist. He writes that the way we’ve consumed music has changed dramatically. We used to only hear music as it was created, a passive listening of sorts unless you were involved in the process. Nowadays, because of recordings, we’ve divorced music from the action and can play it any time, anywhere. This got me thinking about how my music listening has evolved.
The way I consumed music back in 1994 used to almost exclusively be passive, and now it’s almost entirely active. I did get my first taste of music autonomy around then, receiving a Walkman and a couple of cassettes, but the scope was limited. Compared to today, with all the music we could ever listen to available at all times, I was generally still at the mercy of whatever was playing on the radio.
Lucky for me, there was SO much good music back in the 90’s playing on the radio my good LORD. What with the seminal rock, rap, & R&B riding the airwaves, it was indeed a good time for passive listening. The tracks permeated my mind with little objection and complete ease, providing a soundtrack for my young life (it’s wild how much I still love so many of these tracks).
I have a couple of distinct memories with the songs that make up side A, which are songs from 1994 that I loved during 1994.
My parents would drive my 2 brothers and me (what up, middle children) in our Ford Windstar to my Grandma’s condo in northern Westchester (we’d always get a slice at Gigi’s either before or after. I don’t know why, but Boyz II Men’s I’ll Make Love To You would play more often than not on the car ride. Therefore, to this day, like some Freudian Pavlovian nightmare, when I hear that song, I think of Grandma Dorothy. RIP.
I grew up in a small village – not a town – called Briarcliff Manor… yeah, it’s exactly how it sounds. Our public school was tiny. In 1994, when I was in the 1st grade, we had a blind woman come around all of the different classrooms to introduce students to someone who experiences life in a unique and different way. I guess it was a form of exposure therapy? Anyway, when she got to my class, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to share anything with her. After a couple of students went, I raised my hand. “What would you like to share with Ms. Klein, Daniel?” I responded, “I’d like to sing a song for her.” Which song, you ask? Why, I sang an acapella version of Seal’s Kiss From a Rose. And yeah, it went over pretttttty well.
What’s cool about having access to all music today is that there was obviously so much gold I missed in 1994 that I’ve found in later years and absolutely cherish. That’s what side B represents – music that I overlooked or had no idea about until I became an adult. I started with Aphex Twin’s #3 to act as a palate cleanser (it also echoes the closing notes of NiN’s Closer, a song whose meaning definitely went way over my 6 year old head) and as a nod to the wide world of ambient music I’ve fallen in love with over the last decade. From there, you’ll see a mix of genres and styles.
I hope you can bop to some oldies you know and love, and maybe find a new track or two that resonates with who you are today.
*****
Love you all. Hope you enjoy!
Join Me: Hovvdy @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg, 3/12/25, 8PM
Hovvdy has been one of my favorite discoveries of the past few years. Their blend of dreamy indie pop and intensely personal lyricism always puts me in a better place. I find this music very sweet, for lack of a better term. It’s just really nice.
Hoping they can lighten up my unavoidable late winter blues come March 12th. Join me and Kristin!
RIYL: some Texas boys making feel-good indie pop about friends and family
Check out the video for “Forever.”
Some Other Things Dan Loves
(that you might love too!)
Take a Class - I’ve been taking Clown classes at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective for a couple of years after seeing a clown show I absolutely loved. I actually plan on taking a mime class this spring and I’m so stoked about it. But hey, listen, you don’t need to take a clown class. Any class will do. I find that there’s little in this world better than digging into something you’ve wanted to learn, then subsequently loving it and then forming a community around that thing. As George Harrison said (probably quoting someone else), “The more you learn, the less you know…”
Volunteer - It’s one of the few win-wins in this life. You’ll be doing something good for someone and you’ll feel awesome about it, guilt free. If you’re feeling some angst right now in the world, this will brighten your light maybe just a little bit. Can be something as little as collecting compost on the weekend to spending a day helping distribute goods to people in need.
Light Phone - Okay, full disclosure, I do work for this company. But hear me out – it’s a cell phone that does not have any social media, email, internet. It also serves exactly ZERO ads and collects exactly ZERO data from you. A phone that respects you and aims to give you your time and attention back, not extract it from you for the highest bidder to enrich some fucking asshole. By the way, can you believe these fucking assholes right now??? I’m actually not surprised. If you’re interested, I can give you a code for $100 off.
Me looking like the Pepe Silvia meme trying to get my friends to believe that “Kiss from a Rose” was on the Batman Forever soundtrack