Tag: Dwight Yoakam

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Mixtape Time Capsules: Driving Mix, c. 1992

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A mix-tape, whatever its intended purpose, is also always a time capsule. A record of a person, a place, a set of feelings, a time that felt like forever, and then wasn’t.

Last week I opened a box and a little piece of the ’90s fell out: the first driving mix-tape I ever made. There’s no date on it, but I’m pretty sure it’s from the spring of 1992, since that is approximately when I would have gotten my license. Fun trivia fact: I learned to drive on the Beltway. In a Chevette.

Anyway it is a hilarious cultural trainwreck and I kind of love it, not least because a mix that starts with Dwight Yoakam, dips heavily into, among other things, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Elvis Costello in the middle, and ends with Ashokan Farewell probably does still sum me up as a person reasonably well.

Also, I have a terrible pop music problem and every time I listen to Five Seconds of Summer’s She Looks So Perfect I start laughing when they get to I got a mix tape straight out of ’94 because, dudes, I was there, I remember, and … Continue reading

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August Video Challenge: Dwight Yoakam, Fast As You / Turn Me On, Turn Me Up, Turn Me Loose

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This, again, was a very difficult decision, because of the strength of Dwight Yoakam‘s musical and video catalog. In fact it was so difficult I decided I couldn’t contain myself to just one.

So, first, because it’s Friday, and the heat of summer still lingers in New York, and there are very few things I like better than watching him sing and dance with his guitar, here he is cutting the rug while playing Fast As You, from This Time (1993):

 

 
Second, Turn Me On, Turn Me Up, Turn Me Loose from If There Was a Way (1990) which does include dancing but is beyond that is probably my all-time favorite Dwight Yoakam song. Also, there is some seriously freaky business going on in this video.

I mean, there’s the filmic set piece at the beginning, and then he (or the character he’s playing) falls face-first into a brothel, and then there are men line-dancing in lederhosen and scantily-clad ladies wearing enormous headphones riding partial mechanical bulls that are suspended from the ceiling.

Meanwhile, Dwight Yoakam is both on the stage singing his song in a fancy sparkly jacket and … Continue reading