Falling Back In Fields of Tape
 Britt Brown

Top 10 Mainstream Pop Cassingles We Happen To Own A Copy Of (in no particular order)

The Day of the Strong-Selling Cassingle is obviously long-since passed us by (as of course has The Day of the Cassette!), but there definitely was a time when major labels made a good chunk of extra bank by slanging little C8s of big albums’ most popular radio hits. For a while, cassingles totally reigned over the 7” vinyl single as format of choice for “isolated pop song product” (though, inevitably, they themselves were eventually replaced by the CD Single). The open-ended cardboard slip-covers are very distinctive and cassingles often feature an unusual B side track so we sometimes buy them at thrift stores. Here’s 10 that I grabbed off our shelf:

1) Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Under The Bridge" b/w "The Righteous & The Wicked"
Have you ever watched Funky Monks? I’ll assume so. Black-and-white documentary of the making of Blood Sugar Sex Magik shows Frusciante at his most doped-up/philosophical, Flea slap-bassing and shirtless, Anthony crooning into the Hollywood Hills, and Rick Rubin rocking a floor-length beard. RULES. Obviously this is their most famous song of all time and it’s definitely the kind of jam you can listen to a million times if you’re in middle school. The B side is more of a classic funk-wank in the unintentionally hilarious RHCP style. Nothing to write home about, but it’s got some funny lyrics about “rumblefish” and a killer fuzz solo that would fuck up any Guitar Center employee.

2) R.E.M. – "Stand" b/w "Memphis Train Blues"
Hahahahahahahahahahah. Athens, GA jangle-dorks bust out the most catchy/posi piece of pop-song-as-AIDS-activism they ever wrote in their whole ridiculous career (only to later top themselves with “Shiny Happy People”). Three potent minutes of melodic brainwash. Peter Buck drops a needless 16-second shit of gross wah-wah abuse after the 2nd chorus though, which sort of breaks the song’s grip on your brain momentarily. The B side is a total waste of time/space. Hokey instrumental mandolin blues that maybe seemed slightly less stupid at the time (though I doubt it).

3) Morrissey – "Tomorrow" b/w "Let The Right One Slip In"
Don’t know why Hispanic rockabilly youths’ favorite matinee idol chose this track off Your Arsenal for a single since “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful” and “You’re The One For Me, Fatty” are way more hilarious and fun to listen to when you’re wasted. But this song’s pretty good too…dryly hostile lyrics, post-new wave pop guitar, a big chorus. Don’t know if I’ve ever heard the B side track before, but it’s not bad either…more in the peppy rock Ramones-y vein that the Moz occasionally gives a nod to. Take it or leave it I guess. But don’t tell any Smiths freaks I said that (those people are crazy!).

4) The Proclaimers – "I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)" b/w "Better Days"
Am I really listening to this right now? More important: am I really WRITING about this shit?!? I’ve got problems, that’s for sure. Scottish 1-hit idiots. There was a period of about 8 months when most pop radio stations would play this song literally 5 times per hour. Why did people get so obsessed with this song? Their funny accents? All the math stuff in the chorus? Was it the Benny & Joon connection? Whatever. Regarding the B side track: no one on earth has ever heard a song by these dudes other than 500 Miles and I’m not gonna be the first to shatter that good streak we’ve got going, so…see ya!

5) The Cure – "Friday I’m In Love" b/w "Halo"
This was actually the first song I ever heard by these freaks. I saw the video of them wearing make-up and running around like a bunch of pudgy Goths and immediately got WAY more grunge. Later in my teens I softened my anti-new wave policy considerably and eventually even came to dig some of Bob Smith’s more drugged-up Pornography-era stuff, but for me this still sits uncomfortably on the fence dividing their bleak 80s suicide letter albums from their later incarnation as hollow preening romance-as-stupidity self-parodies. Wish has some cool droney depression tracks on it but “Friday” isn’t one of them. “Halo” is a total mixtape heartbreaker though…dreamy, escapist, pathetic.

6 ) Queen – "We Are The Champions" b/w "These Are The Days Of Our Lives"
Oh my GOD. How does someone write a song like this? It’s impossibly hard for me to imagine ANY band singing lyrics like this earnestly. “It’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise…” Manda’s step-dad listens EXCLUSIVELY to Queen (he has at least 12 DVDs of Freddie Mercury dueting with Pavarotti and shit like that), which confuses me to no end. I don’t know…maybe it’s so titanic it just sort of FORCES you to like it? I give up. The B track is WILDLY ridiculous, a slow, pompously overproduced ballad about what a “shame” it is that Freddie can’t turn back the hands of time. It also features the most sickly bloated egotistical guitar solo that I’ve heard in at least the last 6 weeks. Worth the price of admission.

7) Beck – "Loser" b/w "Alcohol"
YEAH. Violently dated (and retroactively tainted by how wretchedly tasteless he’s become in recent years) but “Loser” still stands as a pretty inventive single, especially by mainstream/gold-selling album standards. I remember thinking “get crazy with the Cheez Whiz!” was a fairly iconic alt-rock thing to yell at the time…and a I friend of mine had a piece of paper thumb-tacked to his wall that said “I’m a driver, I’m a winner, things are going to change, I can feel it” and we used to think that was funny. The beanie and smart-ass vibe made a lot of sense in the 90s, like Pavement did. “Alcohol” is a cool One Foot In The Grave-style acoustic guitar song that ends with a weird obnoxious noise outro. It’s hard to remember when Beck knew how to do folk songs without being a total Starbucks corporate whore. It was a long, long time ago.

8) Nirvana – "Smells Like Teen Spirit"b/w "Even In His Youth"
Well DUH. You think we don’t own this?! There’s probably no point to even write anything here but this is obviously a contender for “Greatest Song Ever Written By A Human Being,” up there with some Beatles song and a Bach piece. I’m sure Geffen moved about 6 million of this single, and why not? Grohl, Kris, and that other dude jamming a universe worth of youth rebel ambition into a 4-minute quiet/loud/quiet thing. The flip, “Even In His Youth,” rocks on a pretty repetitive riff/vocal dynamic but kicks into gear on the chorus, which could hold its own with even some of Incesticide’s better moments.

9) Smashing Pumpkins – "1979"/"Ugly" b/w "Believe"/"Cherry"
I’ve always thought this was a really weak Pumkins single, but Manda loves it and was actually in the “1979” video so it gets included. Apparently it was filmed in some house up in the Valley and they just posted saying “Cool kids please show up and pretend to party.” I really hate it in the chorus where Billy goes “We don’t know where our bones will rest/to dust I guess.” Another supreme nugget of inane Corgan wisdom, clearly. Interesting cassingle though due to the “long” running time (4 songs!) and the year of release (1996), which was pretty late for major labels to still be bothering with the cassette format. The B side ballads are strictly for wusses (or Billy Corgan’s mom).

10) Pet Shop Boys – "Always On My Mind" b/w "Do I Have To?"
Wait, what’s this doing here? I swear to god, half the objects in our home are completely foreign to me. Shit just crawls in the window when we’re sleeping. Still, this song is pretty familiar because a roommate in college used to always put on a Pet Shop greatest hits CD whenever tons of kids were over getting annihilated and dancing and this was definitely on it. Wow, the cover is a photo of 2 of the least heterosexual-looking dudes I’ve ever seen, scowling at the camera. You definitely don’t wanna be on these guys’ mind.