The Countdown From 20 Theme Mix Tape: Side A can be found on Spotify. Listen in-blog below for a more rich experience, or on Spotify for uninterrupted music. Please note below each song is a link to song lyrics for accessibility. Check out more details on how to best enjoy mix tapes. Listen to Side B here.
Welcome! I’m DJ Ponyboy and I am so glad you are joining me here on KMTJ-DB – Your Mix Tape Journey – Denver, CO for our Countdown From 20 Theme Mix Tape: Side A.
We are counting down songs with numbers in the title, from twenty right on down to number one; on this first side we will count from 20 to 11, continuing two weeks from now on Side B counting down 10-1.
We begin with a song by Lord Huron, who shares:
“…Sometimes I’ll write as a fictionalized version of myself, imagining all the potential futures I could find myself in, good and bad (mostly bad) and trying to guess how I’d act or feel in a certain situation. This song is written from the perspective of a potential future self I hope to never meet. Maybe some part of me thinks that by committing it to tape, it can’t come true, because then I’d be a fortune teller, and everyone knows the future is unknowable … Right?”
Here’s Lord Huron with Twenty Long Years on KMJT-DB, Denver.
Continuing to count our way down to number one, from the 1980 album Gaucho, we will hear the lead singer share about all the challenges he has dating younger women.
With lines like, “No, we can’t dance together, no we can’t talk at all”, and “That’s ‘Retha Franklin. She don’t remember the Queen of Soul”, it’s Steely Dan with “Hey Nineteen”.
No, we can’t talk at all. That song peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1981. With a chart run of 19 weeks, it is tied with “Peg” and “Rikki Don’t Lost That Number” as Steely Dan’s longest-running chart hit.
I grew up quite conservative and was not permitted to listen to any music that was not explicitly Christian. When at fifteen I began taking classes at the local community college, I had access to their computer labs and used my high-speed internet access to begin educating myself on all the music I had missed out on.
Two years later when I left home for college nearly 900 miles away, one of the artists I secretly enjoyed listening to was Alice Cooper. When I found out he was performing just a few miles from my college campus, although I was a poor college student, I knew I had to scrape up enough for a ticket.
That man is a consummate showman, and even without special effects or acrobatics, it was the single most captivating demonstration of stage presence I have experienced to date.
One of the highlights of the show was when he performed this next number.
Alice Cooper with “I’m Eighteen” on KMTJ-DB – Your Mix Tape Journey – Denver, CO.
It was a spiritual experience as an eighteen-year-old in the audience singing at the top of my lungs, “I’m a boy and I’m a man. I’m eighteen and I like it”.
Continuing to inch closer to number one, a song inspired by the deaths of both the writer’s uncle and John Lennon in the very same week of December 1980, and whose opening lyrics were taken from a menu at a Phoenix restaurant.
From her 1981 debut solo album Bella Donna, it’s Stevie Nicks with “Edge of Seventeen”.
Stevie Nicks with “Edge of Seventeen” on KMTJ-DB, Denver, CO.
The title of that song came from a conversation Nicks had with Tom Petty’s first wife Jane. When Jane said “age of seventeen”, in her strong Southern accent, it sounded to Stevie like she said “edge of seventeen”; Nicks liked the phrase so much, she said someday she would use it for a song title and credit Jane.
This next song was originally written by the artist to be performed by the actor Steve Rowland, and when Rowland rejected the song, the artist recorded it himself, reaching 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959.
Continuing our countdown, written and recorded by Sam Cooke, it’s “Only Sixteen”.
“Only Sixteen”. The band Dr. Hook covered that song in 1976, taking it to #6.
While the artist who performed our next song is best known for a cover, he wrote this one himself.
Considered a member of the country music “outlaw movement” of the 1970’s and 80’s, along with artists like Hank Williams Jr., Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard, Donald Eugene Lytle was best known for covering the David Allen Coe song “Take This Job and Shove It”.
Performing under the moniker Johnny PayCheck (taken from a top-ranked Chicago boxer who once fought Joe Lewis for the heavyweight title), he was popular in country music during the 1970’s and 80’s.
He even co-wrote another song with a number in the title, originally recorded by Bobby Austin and covered by Tammy Wynette in 1966. “Apartment #9” was the first song to win the “Song of the Year” accolade at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 1966.
Here’s Johnny PayCheck with “Fifteen Beers” on KMTJ-DB, Denver.
Fifteen beers is a whole lotta brew in one night. If you are struggling with over-consumption or addiction, please seek help.
I truly believe addiction is nothing more than a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma and pain and should not be stigmatized. I also believe if you can work on healing the trauma and pain, and building healthier coping skills, you can remove the need for the addiction.
I’m DJ Ponyboy asking you to love yourself enough to seek help. You deserve to be happy.
Five songs down in our countdown to number one.
This next song is by the first openly gay artist I ever listened to. I read a blurb about the release of his second album Poses in the queer magazine XY and had to rush to Barnes and Noble to purchase a copy on CD.
Rufus Wainwright has a way with words, and I admire his talent for turning a phrase. This next song is no exception, painting a vivid image of a breakup with lines like, “Why’d you have to break all my heart? Couldn’t you have saved a minor part? I could have clipped and saved and planted in the garden. Damn you – guess I’ll have to get a new one”.
From his 1998 self-titled debut album, here’s Rufus Wainwright with “14th Street”.
What a terribly beautiful and very sad song. If, like Rufus, you have had “thoughts of the grave”, specifically unaliving yourself – please seek help.
There are so many people who want you around. I, for one, would miss you terribly if you weren’t here. Don’t go now. You’ve got so much to give.
Glenn Danzig became popular underground as frontman for the horror-punk bank the Misfits and deathrock band Samhain before gaining mainstream popularity with his heavy metal band Danzig.
Johnny Cash made a name for himself in the country music scene of the 1950’s and 60’s, but by the early nineties he was a washed-up old country star waiting to die.
In stepped influential hip hop producer Rick Rubin, who believed Johnny still had something to give to the world and convinced him to begin creating music again, resulting in the American Recordings albums, the last four Cash released between 1994 and his death of complications from diabetes in 2003.
On the fourth and final album of the series, Cash covers many different songs by many different artists, including this one from heavy metal band Danzig – “Thirteen” on KMTJ-DB – Your Mix Tape Journey – Denver, CO.
Johnny Cash – “Thirteen”. A small piece of his lifetime musical career, spanning decades.
While the group who performed this next song was only active for a few years, they have managed to have a lifetime of impact as well.
Their name was inspired by the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, who would call their female compatriots “mamas”.
Yes, the Mamas and the Papas, who were only active from 1965-1968, bring us our next song, often cited as their last great single.
Released in 1967, it was written by band member John Phillips shortly after the band relocated in 1965 from New York City to Laurel Canyon in Southern California.
According to Wikipedia, “A popular interpretation is that girl ‘groupies’ would party into the night at the homes of show business types in the canyon and wander home the next morning, passing the house and engaging the songwriter in conversation as they went.”
Continuing our countdown, here are the amazing harmonies of The Mamas and the Papas with “Twelve Thirty”.
Roger Waters developed the concepts for both the album this next song is from and The Wall concurrently. In 1978, he presented both concepts to his band Pink Floyd and asked them to choose one for a group project and he would record the other as a solo project. Pink Floyd of course chose The Wall, released in 1979, with a movie to follow in 1980.
Released in 1984, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking centers around a man’s scattered thoughts during a midlife crisis, explored through a dream journey.
The entire story is framed in real time as a fitful dream taking place in the early morning hours of 4:30:18 am to 5:12:32 am, with each track’s title beginning with a time. At the end of the dream, the man awakes and reaches out to his wife for comfort, presumably having processed his crisis.
When the album was released on two-sided vinyl LP and cassette formats, it was produced with five seconds missing between sides one and two to allow the listener to flip the record (or turn the cassette) and keep the second half starting at exactly 4:50 AM. Interestingly, there was not this much consideration put into the later compact disc release, meaning the timing on the CD does not line up exactly as it should.
With the final track of the immersive experience that is The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, here is Roger Waters with 5:11 (The Moment of Clarity) on KMTJ-DB – your Mix Tape Journey – Denver, CO.
We’ve made it to the halfway mark of our Countdown From 20 Theme Mix Tape. Make sure to come back in two weeks for the next ten ten songs or if you are living far enough in the future, just flip the tape over to Side B.
Thank you for spending your time with me today on KMTJ-DB, Denver, CO.
I’m DJ Ponyboy. Stay gold.