Amy Vaerewyck: “… so you can finally understand what I sound like.”
He was 17, and I was 19, and we lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. We met in a Yahoo chat room (I hate the way that sounds) and emailed daily for about a year and half. His name was Bill, but I called him Willi. He lived in Wales and used those British slang words, like “knackered” (tired) and “pissed” (drunk). He called me “Angel” and signed his emails, “Love you all the time – Bill.” I found a lot of dramatic, angst-y satisfaction in calling Willi my “unattainable soul mate.”
Because we met during the fleeting moment at millennium’s end when analog and digital media coexisted, we could sign out of our Hotmail accounts and then step over to our stereos to express our affections through mixed tapes. This isn’t the best tape Willi made for me, but it’s the one with the best story.
Side A is all Gomez—addictive music but no real story there—and the end of side B is actually music I added to the blank space Willi left. At the beginning of side B, however, Willi did two important things:
First, he recorded his own voice. “… so you can finally understand what I sound like,” I read on the case insert when I opened the package. You might be able to imagine the way I swooned. Friends were called to my dorm room to listen to the recording and to respond to my question, iterated ad infinitum, “Isn’t he adorable?!” I’d begged for weeks to hear his voice, and now I could finally absorb my darling Willi with a sense other than sight. And the accent. Even today, I could fall in love with someone—man or woman—who can make insults sound like terms of endearment the way Brits do. Tragically, I seem to have taped over his voice with Idlewild. I’m sorry that you can’t hear his voice. You might swoon too.
Second, Willi included a cover of Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” which, he notes, is by his own band Immodium (the name, I know). Willi was Immodium’s lead singer, so when I heard the crooning vocals that weren’t Britney’s, there was little to be done to keep me from hitting rewind over and over and over. I fell even deeper into infatuation with my online beau.
The cover was rough, the lead singer’s voice cracks, and there’s a lot of background noise—all making the recording seem authentically amateur. Which made it that much harder to swallow when, a year or two later, I found out that Willi wasn’t the singer on my tape. The cover had not been done by a bunch of rag-tag Welsh kids named after a diarrhea remedy but by the bona fide Scottish band Travis. (Here’s proof.)
Perhaps I should’ve been proud of his mixed tape ingenuity. He would’ve had to do some clever mixing of new and old media to get the cover on the tape for me, right? But I wasn’t. I was hurt that my darling Willi had lied to me (and if I’m honest with myself, I was probably more than a little hurt that my darling Willi was not, in reality, a sexy lead singer).
I emailed to confront him. I did it in a joking way, allowing that his dishonesty was an error of youthful romanticism. He insisted once more that the vocals were his. I emailed a one-word reply: “Liar.” I haven’t heard from Willi since.
“Gomez Album |
Immodium: Baby One More Time. Idlewild: Prelude |
Originally from LaPorte, Indiana, Amy Vaerewyck is the Communications Coordinator for Roots & Shoots, the global youth program of the Jane Goodall Institute. She’s also a freelance writer, focusing on non-profits. Amy made her last mixed tape in 2006 for the occasion of her move—via Nissan Sentra with tape deck—from Boulder, Colorado to Washington, D.C., where she lives today.
They were into you, so they made you a tape. Today you don't have a cassette player, but you still can't toss that mix. We share the stories and the soundtrack to your earliest loves.
Oh, Aim- this is a vivid memory of mine, as well. I think it’s funnier now than it was then (if that’s even possible).
Kate
Listening to this music makes me think of all the times that I heard it coming from your room when we were studying. :-)
Sarah
What a great story!!!
Don’t remember him too harshly though. Some people lie about the dumbest things when they’re in love. And then don’t know how to make them right.
Did Willi write the bit about Travis on the track listing or did you?
I think we’ve all used the “I’m the lead singer of a band that is actually Travis” line though. What, just me?
That was a great story though!! I also liked the bio bit about the last mix tape for the move. and cute smile by the way.
willi wrote the comment about travis. perhaps, that should’ve been a clue to me from the beginning, but i just thought he decided not to include any travis. much more than harshness, i remember willi with amusement.
this is painfully similar to the story of my first love. he never made me any mixed tapes though he shouldve because he had amazing taste in music. he introduced me to a lot of the music that i am now insanely passionate about. i actually think it was his taste in music that made me fall for him so hard. his name was bill too though i called him billy. internet love. lies. i confronted him jokingly. lied again. we lost contact. but i was younger than 17 so after a few months i went back and just avoided the inevitable for a year or two on and off.
I remember getting a tape in 11th grade from my long-distance friend whom I was developing a major crush on…we sent music to each other all the time, but he had promised to send some song by him and his other musician frenz, and this was supposed to be the tape with said song. Well, the sides got mixed up, and the first song I heard was by some ‘legit’ band I had never heard before…the song was awesome and the vocals were oh so manly, and I remember sitting in the girl’s bathroom with my walkman, rewinding and playing and melting away at the thought that this was my soon-to-be-soulmate (who clearly would go on to be an indierockstar). But then I eventually got to the next side. Which started with the promised song. Which was sweet and funny and charming but indeed, sounded like a bunch of high school boys recording something from a bedroom stereo. I had to laugh at myself even though I was a bit disappointed. But I still developed my crush into fullblown lovesickness. The big drama was that we missed each other time-wise when it came to crushing on the other person, and thus, never even dated later when we lived in the same town for college. But happily (and probably b/c we never dated!), we’re still friends almost 15 years later…power to the mixtape!