Mix tapes. Those time capsules for the ears and hearts of youth.
When people made custom music collections for each other and called them cryptic things that must have meant something, those were the days. To catalog a few, I remember making cassettes called Voice of the Eyes, and I received a two-volume set called Immortality for M.E. They now live in a box with others called Canon of Proportions, Masala of Nift Bresiliance, Truckin' and Shake Well Before Using. And others. Does this still happen? Is there cover art for play lists? How does one collage or hand-letter these auditory feasts?
A few years back when I received a playlist, it came announced in an email that it was in dropbox for me, and it was called Miss Hailey Sings the Blues. It was a bit of a chore to download and discover it, but the thrill was pretty much the same. Minus the handwriting and cover art.
As I recall, mix tapes were magnificent tributes to something you had, something you wanted, or something you never wanted to forget. I took a closer look and listen to my Immortality collection on a long drive tonight, a double cassette collection of a pure slice of the early 1990's. It was an 18th birthday present. Remember how important it seemed to hear and mean every word of every song on tapes like that? That thing about decorating the covers and listing some songs with twisted words, and messing with the artist names to be clever, or ending with a ghost track that ignited either panic or pleasure with it's surprise appearance.......the patience it took to make a reveal like that! It sounds like an archaic form of communication considering the ubiquitous handheld device days upon us now.
What I remember about Immortality from back in the day was that it was eclectic and surprising and loud.
What I loved about it tonight, 21 years later, was how eclectic it managed to be with its ballads, lullabies, nostalgic nods to music from our parents' era, loud and contemporary and even local (Completely Grocery, anyone?) and hallmarking pretty much everything it was to be a teenager that year. REM figured prominently, but so did The Beatles. Along with Led Zeppelin, Live, Simon & Garfunkel and Hendrix and Marley. It was a fabulous birthday present with staying power! I had not listened to it in nearly two decades, but I could still sing along arguably well to every song there on the auditory feast. Even with the forgotten ghost track. "Oh, you know, I will." Those magical Beatles ;).
P.S. I wonder, is there such a thing as a mix tape from the 90's that doesn't feature at least one track from the Indigo Girls?
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