My name is Justin and I am stuck in the 90s. Pay no mind to my obligations to this sub-section of Tiny Mix Tapes, where I toil neck deep in all sorts of belches, screams, and telepathic microwaves. It’s all a front. Sure, my flannels are a bit more tailored, my jeans nowhere as baggy, and my hair much more tame but I still spend waking hours in front of a computer living out a 9-to-5 fantasy propped up by a lengthy (and ever-growing) playlist of 90s alterna-hits and has-beens. And it’s a fight that I hope someday warrants Gumball or Drop Nineteens a 10 cent royalty after 1,000 plays. It’s not a pay-it-forward I can pass onto defunct Philadelphia outfit The Skywriters, who find themselves out of place and time with the retrospective cassette, Skywriter Blue. But so what? I still have a stash of mid-90s CMJ mix CDs and I can’t help but think fondly of how well The Skywriters would have snuggled up next to Sun 60 or Jen Trynin. But the look back of this cassette is between 1998 and 2000, a two year stretch that signaled the decline of the always cloudy grunge forecast for bubblegum droplets and blooming foliage. And though the attitude of the late 90s pop scene is reflected throughout, The Skywriters were a few years too late to be anything more than a footnote. But considering we stand 15 years removed from that rose-colored decade, it was for the best. Hearing Skywriter Blue now is a much needed reminder that there was something left unsaid at the end of the 90s. The asteroid crash that killed off grunge all-too-soon meant a different species emerged, even if it’s taken too long for us to notice.
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