Swimsuit Issue: The Summer of 1992

I’m not sure exactly how it happened but I definitely woke up to indie rock somewhere between the summer of 1991 and the beginning of 1992. I was a dedicated WFNX listener/Boston Phoenix reader in my late teens but I was still mostly eating what I was being fed and not looking too much further. I’m sure that the friends I met in my first year-and-a-half at Bard had a lot to do with realizing that there was more out there. In my own personal mythology, the event I always point to as a marker is a Jan 18, 1992 show at the Paradise with Superchunk, Sebadoh, and Polvo.

But the summer of 1992 is really the time that I started to earn my merit badges in Indie Rock Cred. Pretty sure that this is the summer I started DJ’ing an overnight show on WHRB (after mostly faking my way through the – not joking – rigorous oral quiz). Then there was the time I blew off seeing Guns’n’Roses & Metallica at Foxboro so that I could go to Pavement at Club Babyhead in Providence. The Pavement show was great and, surprisingly, the more professional. Though Gary Young (Pavement’s original weirdo drummer) did throw an entire watermelon on the ground in the middle of the set and proceeded to offer pieces to the audience off of the floor, at least he didn’t pitch a temper tantrum and refuse to perform for over an hour while fans waited impatiently like Axl did.

I was also buying a lot of 7"s that summer and I’m sure that I’m missing some songs that I would otherwise include simply because it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact release dates for a lot of indie releases. I tried to branch out a bit and include some songs that weren’t personal favorites at the time in this list but it was a challenge to fit a lot of extras in – so my apologies to the 90s country or extreme metal fans who might be wondering where their favorite songs are. Also, Th’Faith Healers’ Lido is not on Spotify so please see below for a youtube link to listen to this ferocious song that I love.

Anyway, enough of my insufferable ramblings! Here is the mixtape for the summer of 1992!