The Boys Were Temporary; The Mix Tapes Were Forever

I happened to find a bunch of these gems in a drawer recently, and I’m so mad the only tape player we have left in this house is a Hello Kitty boombox a great aunt bought our toddler 17 years ago. It is not doing them justice!

I’ve set about recreating them as Spotify playlists.

Sure, it’s gonna take a little effort, but it’s nothing like the true effort of making the original. We had to wait by a radio, hoping the song would come on and we’d be able to punch PLAY + RECORD quickly enough to catch all of it. Sometimes, the darn DJ would talk right up until the lyrics started, but every once in a while you got a clean recording. I can’t tell you how many songs have Casey Kasem on the intro or outro.

I grew up with a mom whose needle was stuck on Ella Fitzgerald, The Beach Boys, and Air Supply. She’d sometimes throw in the Bee Gees or Barry Manilow for sport. But let’s just say my exposure was limited to whatever Cousin Brucie was playing.

This is where friends come in handy.

Somewhere around the age of 14, I started to socialize with kids who loved all sorts of music. They introduced me to a much wider world, but it was sometimes embarrassing to not know if a great song was made that year or twenty years earlier.

Ironically, my dad was a musician, but since I didn’t live with him, mainly saw him on Sundays, and always monopolized the car radio with pop slop, I was rarely exposed to his favorites. Just thinking of how I tortured him with Debbie Gibson gives me a guilt migraine.

As I got older, I became a little more accommodating when he wanted me to hear a <gasp> country song or listen to his favorite Beatles album. Damn how I wish I had those days back now that he’s been gone for 18 years. He would’ve gotten a real kick out of Taylor Swift and Imagine Dragons and hooking his instruments up to Garage Band.

The summer I was 15, a boy named Andy came into our orbit. He was two years older, had a driver’s license, and didn’t go to our high school. In retrospect, I have absolutely no idea why he was hanging out with us at all. But, he became my summer chauffeur and personal DJ.

To this day, I still have my favorite mix tape he made me. Songs like, I Can’t Drive 55 by Sammy Hagar, and Cry Little Sister, by Gerard McMahon send me right back to his mom’s maroon Honda Accord, blowing stop signs and speeding like the law was on our tail. He drove so crazy that I often sat in the back seat with all three seatbelts and his motorcycle helmet on for protection. (Dear God: Don’t let my children be idiots like their mother.)

That summer was all salt air and starry nights, unbridled freedom and $.89 cent gallons of gas. We were invincible…until Andy went off to the Marines and the rest of us headed back to high school. But those months cracked something open in me and an adventurous spirit began seeping out of the goody-two-shoes. (He may also be the reason I speed and can do a reverse J-turn like a cop in hot pursuit.)

My junior year high school boyfriend, Jeff, introduced me to classic rock on WLIR. He was a drummer and a year older, two facts that had me at his feet. He turned out to be a colossal jerk, but before I realized all that, I never felt more cherished than when he handed me not just a plastic mix tape, but an envelope with all the handwritten lyrics!

Some songs included:

Take the Long Way Home, by Supertramp

Twice as Hard, by The Black Crows

Last Rose of Summer, by Judas Priest

Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen

Jeff taught me how to do a paradiddle, properly ride over speed bumps for minimum impact, and that you should never give a second chance to a charming, pretty-faced boy who waits to get his Christmas present before telling you he never “really” loved you. (He lied though: I have the mix tape to prove it—and also the satisfaction of telling him to pound sand when he tried to reconnect a decade later.)

We’ve all experienced this, haven’t we, from one side or the other? The boy you really enjoy being friends with, who swears you’re just friends and he’s fine with it, who comes prom dress shopping with you knowing you’re going with your long-time boyfriend, but then makes you a mix tape and unexpectedly shows up to the prom weekend camping trip so drunk he pukes in your tent. Just me?

Dean was back home after flunking out of his first college semester. He had a lot of time to traipse after me like a lost puppy. Looking back, I realize I was a dumbass. I didn’t see the whole picture (who does at 17?). This boy had it bad, and he channelled all the things he couldn’t say to me onto a series of mix tapes. Just listening to them hurts my heart for him. But at the time, I just really liked the music.

Songs included:

Where The Story Ends, by the Sundays

Somebody, by Depeche Mode

Pictures of You, by The Cure

Fool in the Rain, by Led Zeppelin

My female friends made me tapes, too, especially my bestie who, back then, should’ve had turntables and subwoofers in her bedroom because she was so attuned to the latest and greatest music. I love how she labeled the tapes, always so fun. Like “The Boys vs. The Girls” with each side featuring lead singers who were one or the other. Then, in college, she made me “11th Grade Regression”, and the songs took us all the way back to the yellow hallway and locker combos that I still fear forgetting.

In my first serious, and unfortunately long distance relationship, back before cell phones, when calling cards were a racket, my long-time beau and I exchanged endless letters and many tapes. Somehow, I still have two of them. Did I make doubles? Did he give them to me when we broke up?I can’t remember. But, I’m so glad to have them, even if I need a magnifying glass and really good lighting to read the faded song list I wrote on the insert.

I do remember that I meant to put I’ll Be Missing You on the tape, but accidentally put I’ll Be Watching You on it. He never mentioned it until we were listening to the tape together and I noticed. Then, he said, “Yeah, I thought it was an odd choice.” So, he thought I was a stalker and he didn’t mention it. What a guy!

Post college in my first corporate job, I met a boy who spoke to me in song lyrics. You know when you meet someone and are just sure it’s not the first time, cosmically speaking. Of course the mix tape he made me became a staple in my car and life, especially when I moved far, far away and was lonely and lost. Every song was an earworm, and I don’t even want to list the tracks, lest uttering their titles get them stuck in my brain for the next week.

When CDs took hold, Columbia House was more than happy to send me 10 for a buck. I ran that scam over and over until I’d amassed 200+ albums (which were a treat to lug from apartment to apartment in my 20s). My new boombox had a CD player and a tape deck and I was pretty fast and loose with the mixes I made for the people I cared about.

We will not discuss my Gregorian chant era.

The hardest breakup I ever initiated resulted in a poem and CD left in my mailbox. Gutwrenching. I listened to it on repeat and cried and cried, not sure I’d made the right choice. In hindsight, I did. In real time, boy that sucked. Each and every one of those songs still gives me a pit in my stomach.

When Napster hit the scene, the music possibilities became endless with massive song sharing among strangers. IT. WAS. AWESOME…Until the artists got pissed, which is understandable. But for a brief minute there…wow, did I have a super collection. That’s the last time I burned a music cd and it was for my then boyfriend/now husband. I still love listening to it and remembering all the songs that were popular around the time we met, and yes, Shakira and Nelly Furtado are on the list.

I may have set out to recreate my old tape playlists, but what I really wound up doing was reminiscing about the people. I’ve been blessed with such a cast of characters in my life. For good and for bad.

I’ve won some and I’ve learned some. Replaying those ancient tapes reconnected me to the girl holding on for dear life in the maroon Honda, the girl hugging her pillow and nursing heartbreak, the girl released into the wild possibility of a humid summer night with her best friend and a full tank of gas. Those songs reminded me of the invincibility of youth. I was unsure, but hopeful. There wasn’t an ounce of cynicism in me. Every mix tape captured a version of me I’d nearly forgotten. Those girls and their songs are all still in me.

I wish I could reach back and assure her it’ll all work out fine. Better than fine. But, maybe some part of her already believed it.

Now, I share Spotify playlists with my kids. I love that they send us back songs, too, and that my husband and college-aged daughter have a whole shared, wordless playlist just for the gym. “Hype music” they call it.

The technology keeps changing…tapes to CDs to MP3s to online playlists…but the message of sharing music hasn’t.

We’re still saying to each other, I heard this and thought of you. You matter to me.

It’s still a wonderful way to love each other.

xo

P.S. Have a great playlist? Share it with me!

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