Editors note:  Designer Yves Spinelli has always been deeply influenced by music and gotten inspiration from his musical exploration. Follow our playlists on Spotify, and enjoy hand-picked selections from our favorite Vinyl-head to connect and vibe with the mind behind Spinelli Kilcollin. We hope you enjoy SK Radio. 

Two events started my summer in a nostalgic way. The first occurred in May when I went back to Honolulu to attend a high school friend’s wedding. It was a de facto high school reunion. I’ve known some of these friends since I was five years old, and it was incredible to get together and think about all the ways our lives change and all the ways they don’t.

I also just finished reading Peter Hook’s third book “Substance” which is a hilarious account of his life as a bass player in and out of New Order. Maybe the wedding primed me, but this brought me right back to age 13 and all the way through high school as I read the 780-page tome.

I was 13 when I started spending most of my free hours not in school or doing homework (or more likely skipping homework) digging through used records at Jelly’s, or hanging out at Tower Records trying to make friends with the staff. I spent hours studying album covers and credits, asking a lot of questions, and listening to records on the turntables. I got a $10 per week allowance, which could buy 2-4 records if I was savvy.

This wasn’t enough to keep up with my want list, so my hold piles grew bigger each week. The staff at Jelly’s felt bad putting my records back on the floor, so I was offered a part-time job to start paying for them. It was the start of a serious record collecting addiction.

I was also one of the guys in school that made mixed tapes for everyone. These would be curated for my friends and I wouldn’t even be able to count how many I gave out over those years.

The most amazing thing is that some of my classmates talked to at the wedding told me that they’ve held on to them all these years! Unbelievable… I didn’t even save one. I’ve since been sent a few photos of the playlists and had a few good laughs and cringed a little at times... did I really listen to that??

A lot of these song lists have been tattooed in my memory. And I still listen to a lot of this music regularly. I’m quite sentimental, I guess.  

For my first entry in a continuing series of Spinell Kilcollin musical offerings I’ve compiled two Spotify playlists replicating the music I would have been listening to during the summer of 1990. I was working full-time at Jelly’s, I had just gotten my license a few months earlier and was precocious enough to be cruising around Oahu in my mom’s 1987 Chevy Corsica. I would have had a couple dozen tapes in the car, and I would be playing them at maximum volume as I shuttled friends around the island.

These are laid out in two 90 minute sections to replicate the duration of tape stock that I always used. I’m already thinking of all the songs I need to include on the next ones…

-Yves Spinelli