Monday, March 14, 2016

Mixed Tape Memories

It's March Break! and it feels like spring! It's raining and miserable out :)

Lately, I have been puttering around my basement (cleaning, tidying, sorting, jettisoning, sewing). I listen to music on my basement stereo. When my cd player broke a few years ago (Denon! But it changes 3 discs, and that mechanism quit), I pulled a handful of tapes out of a carton and I have been playing the same few tapes since. Yes, my tape player (Nakamichi) still works. Beautifully. Does anyone else still have a tape player? Anyone? Bueller?

This week I have decided to sort my tapes. I have an unopened carton. I'll open pandora's box, and hopeuflly there will be some happy surprises. Get rid of the ones that I will never play again. While doing so, I have been reminiscing about the music, the mixed tapes, my youth.... I also have some blank tapes..... so maybe someday soon I will make a mixed tape. That only I can play :) I'm going to work from the top of the carton down in no particular order.

So, I guess that I've decided on a new blog feature. Weeklyish.

Mixed Tape Memories. 

I will sort the good, the bad and the truly awful. I might not show the truly awful.

First out the door are the 3 on the right. Fine Young Cannibals, The Pop /will Eat Itself and Andy Prieboy. I think that I got them all from "The Columbia House Record Club" You know, when they send you a whole whackload of tapes for free, and then they send you one every month that you have to pay for? Don't judge. That was the teenage me. 
Anyway, those 3 just had one song that I kind of liked back in the 80s... early 90s?
I thought that the Matthew Sweet tape would go with them, but after a play (because I am playing all of these tapes first- it seems wrong to just toss them) I thought that I might listen to it again :)

 The mixed tape is a bit of a mystery. It looks like my brother's writing -- but it is not his style of music at all.

 On one side is David Bowie's Let's Dance (I have the CD :)  The hilarious thing is that it seems to have been recorded over some classical music, because in between songs, you hear some faint music underneath the slight hiss of the recording.

The flip side is a true mix. The Smiths (I wasn't a big Smith's fan, and still am not). But I like most of the rest of the songs, however unrelated they are --Joy to the World by Three Dog Night; Should I stay or Should I Go by The Clash; There is some Ramones, Public Image Limited, then Wild Thing by Tone Loc (yikes!) (not by The Troggs which would have been much, much , much preferred),  REM, and then, oddly, Helter Skelter. Which gets cut off abruptly when the tape ends mid-song. 
So, despite The whiny Smiths, this mixed tape is a keeper -- because I will listen to it again.

3 comments:

Joanne Huffman said...

An interesting project while you dance down Memory Lane.

Sara said...

We still have 2 tape players, but no tapes....I gave them away when we moved. I had the same Fine Young Cannibals tape :) (courtesy of Columbia House) I still like their version of Suspicious Minds.

Stef said...

Oh the memories of mixed tapes.