Mailing Lists

While cleaning out the bedroom closet just prior to construction, I found an old tape. A cassette tape. You know, the kind we used to use during the dark ages as a method for sharing music with one another. Yeah, that kind.

Except this wasn't just any old tape. This was the unofficial soundtrack created back in 1995 for arguably the best television show ever: My So-Called Life. Here was a slice of life show produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, so painfully honest and so cleverly written by Winnie Holzman, that followed the awakening of Angela Chase, a 15 year old Pittsburgh girl dealing with new friends, old friends, boyfriends, parents and school.

There wasn't a show before or since that has spoken so directly to me. I was the mother of an infant (my first) when the show premiered, so I found myself somewhere in the middle: I could already relate to the harried and over-protective mother, Patty, yet it hadn't been so long since I had felt the things Angela felt (and it hadn't been that long since I'd danced in my bedroom to the Violent Femmes, either). It was beautiful, heartbreaking and real.



I joined a mailing list (oh dear lord, how high tech of us) dedicated to the show and read post after post written by eager fans similarly affected. It was on this list that a buzz began: What if we created our own soundtrack of songs from and inspired by the show? Then, when a lackluster official soundtrack was released, our desire grew exponentially. It was something that had to be done.

Somehow I convinced hundreds of people who I'd never met that I was their girl, that I was the one to hand pick songs and audio clips from the show, record them onto 90 minute cassette tapes, and distribute them at a cost of $5.00 each. So, along with Luke Arthur, who created the most incredibly wonderful cover sleeve, Virany Kreng (the would-be doctor), who was the owner of the mailing list and Kory Lasker, creator of the first MSCL homepage, I was given the go-ahead to create the Unofficial My So-Called Life Soundtrack, which was highly illegal, I'm sure. While it took FOREVER to create and then press record and play simultaneously over 225 times, I never cared that my monetary gain on the endeavor was about 83 cents total.

It was invigorating, exciting, fulfilling. It mattered to me.

Then I posted a track listing and waited for the comments --- you know, nobody is ever satisfied. But these people, my people, were. They were all happy, excited and eager to receive copies.

I began receiving requests for copies of the tape. Letters filled my mailbox day after day from France, Canada, North Dakota, and college campuses all over America. Many of them included personal notes, thanking me for my time, my efforts. Some people included illustrations with funny blurbs, some referenced my then one-year-old son (who is now 14, natch), some included foreign currency, but all wanted a copy of the tape. Or two. Or three.

I still have those letters --- marked by my complex accounting system on the envelopes: a red "X" meant I'd mailed the tape, a question mark meant there was a problem with the money, 2XTJ meant they wanted multiple copies of the sleeve, and 2Xtape meant they wanted multiple copies of the tape.

I also have a letter from Claire Danes, Angela herself, who was given a tape by someone on the mailing list with access to her. She wrote a short thank you note on a cream colored embossed card, pleased that her work had inspired such a movement.

I no longer possess the proper equipment to play the cassette that changed my life, but I wouldn't consider selling it. Someday JC will help me figure out how to transfer it to CD, but until then, I'll just keep it with the letters.

Here's the track listing.

• Opening Theme - W. G. Snuffy Walden
• Spin the Bottle - Juliana Hatfield Three
• I Wanna Be Sedated - Ramones
• Confetti - Lemonheads
• Perfect Girl - Cure
• Dreams - Cranberries
• Star - Blake Babies
• If I Can't Change Your Mind - Sugar
• Drop Out - Urge Overkill
• What Is Love - Haddaway
• Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
• Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
• Spray - Courtney Love
• Late At Night - Buffalo Tom
• Balentine - Bettie Servent
• I Don't Think So - Dinosaur, Jr.
• Divorce Song - Liz Phair
• Try - Billy Pilgrim
• Return to Innocence - Enigma
• Bizarre Love Triangle - Frente!
• Closing Theme - W. G. Snuffy Walden

But besides the music that (still) makes this collection a keeper, there is something else that makes it stand above the BMG release. Between each song is an audio clip garnered straight from my television that (in my brain) relates to the music about to be played. There's Graham and Brian talking about wallpaper (or girls, you decide), there's Rayanne singing the theme from Sesame Street as she, Rickie, and Angela wait in line outside the theater, or how about the letter written and read aloud by Brain/Brian to Angela but from Jordan, and, of course, one of my favorites, "He leans great."

It's of questionable quality, I know this. I didn't have a way to keep the volume levels the same, and some of the clips are clipped, as it were, because I didn't release the pause button quickly enough, but overall, I think it still stands as an excellent representation of the best show on television.