TapeDeckTuesday

Try

The Connells – Try

Oh, you are glad you were not with me in the car today for Tape Deck Tuesday. As is probably obvious, most of my tapes are from the 80s and early 90s. These are my high school, college, and early adult years. Highly angst-ridden times.

Today I pulled out a Maxell XLII 90-minute tape, created on 1/18/89 (after several days of deciding, rearranging, and adding up minutes, no doubt), which puts it at the very beginning of my final semester of college. The title is “Anguish, Fear, Lamenting”* so you already know you’re in trouble. I spent a great deal of time drifting from one of those emotions to the next. I had one semester left and I was hoping to get somewhere by the end of it. The guy I’d had my sights set on was the main source of frustration but life in general left a lot to be desired and none of it was matching up with my vision of where I was supposed to be, at 21 and nearly done with school.

Choosing this tape this morning, I knew it was full of songs about anguish, fear, and lamenting, but actually listening to the songs, in order, put me right back in that dorm room. As each song came on, I could immediately remember what it was about that song that earned it a place, and its particular place, in the mix. I was always very particular about the flow from one song to the next. From my much more objective position, 25 years later, there are a couple songs I would probably encourage my younger self to replace but that’s mostly because Sting doesn’t age well and In Your Eyes took on mythical proportions later that year when Say Anything hit movie theaters. I was first! I want credit for having it on my tape months before the movie came out and Lloyd Dobler set all of our hopes too high. But back then, the spot each song had was purposeful and as I listened in the car, I remembered exactly why for each one.

Side A – Anguish, Fear
Troy – Sinéad O’Connor
Scorpio Rising – 10,000 Maniacs
The One I Love – R.E.M
9–9 – R.E.M.
Altitude – Pylon
Be Still My Beating Heart – Sting
Red Rain – Peter Gabriel
Temptation – New Order
O My God – The Police
Crazy – Pylon

When you start a tape with Sinéad O’Connor’s Troy, that’s some seriously pissed off shit right there. It should be mentioned that this was a tape I meant to torture myself with and never give to someone else. I’m sure I never listened to it unless I was alone. Scorpio Rising picks up that angry mantle and gets in little digs at that guy. The version of The One I Love is a live version from an old bootleg, before it was released on a studio album, because it’s still really raw. If you heard this version first, there would have been no chance you would have mistaken this for a love song.

So we have our anguish off to a good start, then we start bringing in the fear with 9–9. Conversation fear. Check. Altitude. “I’ve been watching so long I’m afraid to move.” Yup, that would have been accurate. And on it goes, wrapping up the first side with the album version of Crazy, with the overdub of Vanessa singing “I’m not crazy” at the end. Had I not been driving, I’d likely have hurt myself trying to dance like 25 years hadn’t passed. What was I afraid of? That I would say the wrong thing. That I wasn’t cool enough. That things wouldn’t work out the way I wanted them to, or that they would. Honestly, I was pretty ill-equipped to deal with either one.

Side B – Lamenting
Does Everyone Stare – The Police
Androgynous – The Replacements
Scotty’s Lament – The Connells
That Voice Again – Peter Gabriel
Cotton Alley – 10,000 Maniacs
Maps and Legends (live at McCabe’s guitar shop) – R.E.M.
In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel
Try – The Connells
I Will Dare – The Replacements
Age of Consent – New Order
Kiss Me on the Bus – The Replacements

Side B keeps the good times rolling with songs that seem practically tailor-made for me and this untouchable guy. Does Everyone Stare, Androgynous, Scotty’s Lament. Ha! Subtle as a brick. It’s really remarkable the power that music has to bring moments from the past into clear view. I’m certain I haven’t heard that Police song in decades but there I was, singing along, picturing events on my college campus like it was just last semester.

Some of these songs are so deeply entwined with my life in college that they don’t just bring back the memories, they bring the emotions back up too. Especially when they are stitched together in this way. Of course, that was the intention at the time. What’s that? You’re not a reeling mess yet? Ok, let’s see if this one will push you over the edge. I needed a cathartic release and sometimes the only way out was the hard way. “Nothing can hurt you, unless you want it to.” Part of me definitely wanted it to. 25 years later I’m not dialing those emotions up to 11 like I would have in college but singing along, alone in the car, I still felt a little red in the face here, faint butterflies in my stomach there.

I’d backed it off toward the end there, going for songs that had a hint of hope to them. I hadn’t totally given up, I was just, cautious. Wary. Life sucked, and it was maddening to always get thiiiiis close to my dreams. Maybe, just maybe that last semester would hold some surprises. A girl has to try, right?

*”Anguish, fear, lamenting” is a line from a 10,000 Maniacs song that’s really about nuclear war but at the time it seemed too good to pass up.

Can I Kick It?

A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick It?

Today for Tape Deck Tuesday we have one of the many tapes lacking any kind of identification. It stood out to me because it has purple on the (blank) cover and it’s only a 60-minute tape. Normally I would have chosen a 90-minute or I’m finding some 100- or even 120-minute ones, but 60? That’s not nearly long enough for most of my taping purposes.

I put the tape in and it started up about half a minute into “Interesting Drug” by Morrissey. Ok, I thought, this must be a copy of Bona Drag. But then next came “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite. I laughed out loud, both because that song always makes me laugh and because it was not what I was expecting. What was this tape?

The third song was 52 Girls by the B-52s. Now I was beginning to remember. When I graduated from college I didn’t have a job lined up or any grad school plans, nor any clue what I wanted to do. I went back home to Maine and, eventually, got a job at the new record store in town. It seemed like a pretty good gig while I figured out my next steps. Listen to music all day long, order new releases, talk to other music lovers, there are worse ways to spend your day. I got to know some of the regular customers pretty well, some of them college students with radio shows.

Which is how, by the fourth track, I knew what this tape was. Shazam didn’t recognize the song, and I wasn’t 100% sure myself, but I had a strong feeling it was the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies*. I had gone over to the college radio station with a friend who had an early morning show and he helped me make a tape for a party since I wanted a bunch of songs I didn’t have.

My brother and sister were sharing a big old farm house with a couple of other friends about 20 miles away out in the sticks. I’d go over there once or twice a month just to hang out. They were going to have a party and I thought it could use a little new music. I picked some songs I knew they would know, some I liked that they wouldn’t know and a guilty pleasure or two.

Not remembering what was coming next meant I laughed most of the way to work this morning. It’s exactly what I was hoping for with this little project. Reminiscing in the car and enjoying some old songs I might not have listened to in a long time. This seems pretty 1990 to me. Here’s the complete track listing, which I will finally write down on the cover.

Side A
Interesting Drug – Morrissey
Groove is in the Heart – Deee-Lite
52 Girls – B-52s
Do You Remember – Chickasaw Mudd Puppies
Been Caught Stealing – Jane’s Addiction
U Can’t Touch This – MC Hammer
Can I Kick It? – A Tribe Called Quest
The Only One I Know – The Charlatans (UK)
We Saw Jerry’s Daughter – Camper Van Beethoven

Side B
Temptation – New Order
Love Vigilantes – Poi Dog Pondering (cover of New Order song)
What the World is Waiting For – The Stone Roses
Ugly – Fishbone
Life During Wartime – Talking Heads (Stop Making Sense version)
Look Alive – Pylon
Ask – The Smiths

It was pretty rare for me to make a tape just for a party. Mostly I made tapes that had some deeper meaning, a hidden message, or a theme perhaps. I might make a tape for biking or for a road trip, but even those usually had more going on than met the casual listener. This tape is not trying to say anything more than Can I Kick It? Yes, you can.

*YouTube to the rescue. Also, I think there is one more track on side B but Shazam didn’t know it and I forgot once I got inside what it had been.

Situation

Yazoo – Situation

Over the weekend I finally bought a car to replace the one I’ve been driving for the past four years. I needed something that was cheap but reliable, didn’t already have too many miles on it, and gets good gas mileage. I bought a ’99 Toyota, very basic (manual everything still) but I hope it will be good.

Given that it’s a real no-frills car, the stereo doesn’t have a CD player, and it’s of course too old for an auxiliary jack for an mp3 player, but it does have a tape deck. My husband had an old Saab for a while that had a tape deck but it didn’t work. Mine works! So as long as it’s working I thought I would haul out my old tapes and listen to things I haven’t listened to in a really long time. It’s perfect for my long commute. I’ll pick a tape from my stash then write them up here as tape deck Tuesday, like throwback Thursday, or the once a month Where I Lived Wednesday that I love doing. It should be entertaining, especially as I seem to have a large number of tapes without any identifying marks whatsoever. I had this theory that my siblings would be less likely to steal my tapes if they didn’t know what was on them as they would just not take the time or risk to find out. That was a fine plan when I knew the difference between what I’d taped on the 90min TDK with the red label versus the Maxell with the blue label. Now it’s all lost to time and I’ll find out as I drive to work.

This first tape deck Tuesday (guess I should hashtag that) features an old tape my oldest sister made. It’s titled “New House/Xmas ’83” and she made it at Christmas, our last spent in our house in New York as my mother had finally found a house for us to live in up in Maine. My oldest sister had just graduated from college earlier in May and she had been living in the house and commuting in to Manhattan. She had made some other tapes that are legendary in our family (if I can find them, they’ll probably appear on some other Tuesday), but I think this is the last one from that time period. We spent that Christmas break packing up the house and this tape was pretty heavily in rotation.

It’s a curious mix, like her tapes could be, some big radio hits, other lesser known songs that my sister just liked, and very 1982/1983. This song is the fourth track on side B. When I picked up my 8-year-old son from school today he was so excited to ride in the “new” car. As I started up the engine and the music started playing he asked if it was one of my tapes and I replied yes, it was one my sister had made. He gasped and said, “She made it?! How could she make a tape?! That is sooo cool! Can we make one?!” He has seen my Walkman before and knew you could listen to music on tapes but I guess I just never bothered to explain the whole culture surrounding it. Honestly, I didn’t think he would be that interested or have the attention to span to listen to me rattle on about how much work was involved, etc.

I did, just today in fact, see some blank Maxell’s for sale when I went to a store to buy some other things for the car. I don’t have a cassette player for my stereo anymore (just my Walkman and now the car) but there’s one sitting in my mother’s basement. I don’t remember if that one works but I told him we could check it out next time we’re visiting and maybe we could bring it home and make a tape together.

If you’re curious, here’s the track list.  (more…)