“The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”
— Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape
I remember this mix tape I made in like (gulp) 2002. It was for a man who was 34. I was 22 and 34 seemed ancient, especially because he had an ex-wife and a real job (lawyer/professor) and THREE (count 'em) kids from his marriage. It is heart-breaking to think of how ploddingly I selected the songs, and taped pictures to the case and probably quoted poetry on the insert -- and it was the twenty-first century for God's sake! WTF was I thinking? A fucking mix tape! Ugh. Painful. He returned the gesture with a mix CD. Half the songs on the CD were songs from his band (I can't). The other songs were dark and gloom and doom, but sort of new wave and/or UK shit. It was a pretty good mix CD. The cover art was a cartoon of how ethanol is made/processed/concocted/whatever. I clearly didn't study it. He was an environmental lawyer. Very big deal.
Some songs from my tape:
Ted's Waltz (Beth Orton)
Words (Low)
New Slang - the EP Version (The Shins) -- that Garden State crap had not come out yet.
Waking Up To You (Hefner)
Colors and the Kids (Cat Power)
Fillmore Jive (Pavement) -- omg I used to die for this song, pretended he said "I need to sleep / I need to sleep / I need you to sleep"
Nashville (Liz Phair)
Some songs from his CD
spiders (His Band)
hamsun (His Band)
Please, please, please, let me get what I want (The Smiths)
Torch (The Psychedelic Furs)
Some songs from the second tape I made (we were totally finished by this point. I was not ready to accept this fact and so decided to plow ahead, with a kind of principled unwitting fuck all attitude. This tape was seriously tortured, almost demented.)
I Break Horses (Smog)
Bad As They Seem (Hayden)
Disaster (The Ashtray Hearts)
The Swimmer (Sleater Kinney)
Sun Don't Shine (Haley Bonar)
Lalala, back to trying to get something done today...
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