One of my favorite things about old Wired magazines is the details in the Colophon section in the back that listed everything used to put the magazine out. Details included hardware, software, typography, networking, paper type, and my favorite, “the music that helped to get this magazine out”. I randomly pulled the January 1994 issue from a collection of old Wired magazines, which interestingly has the following tagline on its cover, “Forget Hillary. The real revolution in health care is on p. 108“, and found the following list.
- Redd Kross – Phaseshifter
- Artificial Intelligence Wax Trax compiliation
- Earth, Wind, and Fire – I Am
- Frank Sinatra – Duets
- John Lee Hooker – The Real Folk Blues
- Rise Robots Rise – Spawn
- Sarah McLaughlin – Posession
- Bill Laswell – Divianation ambient dub volume 1
- Duke Ellington and His Orchestra – Early Ellington 1927 – 1934
- Heavenly – P.U.N.K. Girl
- Dead Can Dance – Into the Labyrinth
- Swervedriver – Mezcal Head
- No Alternative – Red Hot compilation
- Kate Bush – The Whole Story
- Saint Paul Chamber orchestra, Pinchas Zukerman – Mozart Piano Concertos Nos 17 & 18
- Anton Fier – Dreamspeed
- Tougher Than Tough, The History of Jamaican Music
- The Breeders – Pod
- George Clinton – Hey Man, Smell My Finger
- The Golden Palominos – This Is How It Feels
- Grotus – Slow Motino Apocalypse
This is such fun and provides a small window into what it might’ve been like in the Wired offices. I loved that, plus they had good taste so I’d make mental notes of things I wasn’t familiar with to check out later. The most recent issue I own, December 2010, still has a Colophon, but it’s less interesting, reflecting how the magazine itself went downhill into short attention span articles and endless top [insert number here] gadget and other lists, perhaps due to its July 2006 acquisition by Condé Naste (watch out Pitchfork).
I’d like to pay homage to the music portion of Wired’s Colophon section of yore by appending a short section listing music played while writing each post, such as the very short section below.
This post is brought to you by: * Swervedriver - Mezcal Head