Your Mixtape Stories
We’d love to hear your story about a mixtape from an old love. What was the name of the tape? Who gave it to you? What was on the tape? And what happened next?
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About
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.
I did this right before graduation from highschool. I was in love with a boy who would only date me in private. He carried a CD walkman with him everywhere, so at his graduation party I gave him a mix CD. I even made the cover art and had a letter inside telling him how much I loved him and would miss him in college. I think I picked everything mostly for the lyrics. It turned out pretty awesome though. I’ll have to see if I still have the playlist somewhere. He married a girl who looked like my best friend.
In 1986 I fell in love with Iciar, a woman from Seville. We were in our late teens. I was rambling in Spain, the home of my maternal grandparents. I met Iciar at La Casa Pata, at the time the only place in Madrid providing a venue for young, non-traditional Flamenco artists. I am a flamenco maniac. Iciar was mad about Spanish rock , especially the boom that exploded a few years after dictator Franco’s death.I knew nothing about rock en español. On our first date she gave me a hand-painted 90-minute Fuji cassette tape that featured on its cover Iciar’s beautiful drawing of a Madrid’s Plaza Mayor (where we had agreed to meet that night) rendered as the stage for a rock trio. For me, Iciar’s tape was an epiphany twice over. A revelation of extraordinary music, I figured it also revealed Iciar in all her glory. Antonio Vega, Gabinete Caligari, Waq, Los Rápidos, Albert Plá, Ray Heredia, La Polla Records, Semen Up, Los Hombres G, Mecano. At first I didn’t understand most of their lyrics. Iciar patiently deciphered their mysteries for me until we became lovers. Then she became the only mystery. I lost the cassette in 1998, somewhere between Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
This might not be a “Universal Truth” but for me and mine, we all use to communicate through the art of the mixed tape. Even in High School, where we saw each other constantly, the mixed tapes were passed around frequently. Titles like “My Tiny Universe”, “Beautiful & Strange”, “Catching Bliss”, “Sturm Und Drang”, and “That Feels Oddly Excellent” all came intricately adorned with collage-like cover art (our Details & Interview Magazines were ripe for the cutting in those days). But those precious tapes from those whom you desired, and awkwardly assembled to pitch her some woo were moment, minutes and sometimes hours of ecstatic joy (those tapes, when well done took serious time and effort.) Through various crushed I learned to love Fear, Echo & The Bunnymen, Trio, The Fabulous Poodles, and Black Flag. In return, I slaved over mixes that might hopefully capture both the burning desire AND the playful whimsy I felt about a specific girl at some specific time - ALL WITHOUT TOTALLY TELEGRAPHING IT WITH SAPPY LOVE SONGS (It was that important)! I miss those days. I went into college radio to try and replecate these complex feelings for the masses, I still make mixes today, but less and less of them are on cassette, but just as much heart and soul goes into them still. In fact, I think I’ll start a new one. The title? “The Simple Joy of Tape Hiss”
1. Van Morrison – into the mystic - every couple thinks that this is “Theier song” right
2. Never been to Spain 3 dog night - played by some friends of ours and dedicated to us at our wedding
3. Angel from Montgomery – bonnie - we considered naming our daughter Montgomery
4. Some kind of wonderful – grand funk - his dedication to me
5. Etta James – again -the song for our first dance at our wedding
6. Elton John – tiny dancer - our family song
7. grow old with me – John Lennon and Mary Chapin Carpenter -part of our wedding ceremony
8. Nora Jones – run through the yellow fields - a “love song”
9. Dr Hook –years from now - another “love song”
10. Cover of the Rolling Stone – dr hook
11. Steamroller – james taylor - just plain fun
12. John Mayer – daughters - because of our daughter
13. Preacher’s son – dusty Springfield - another just plain fun that we grew up with
14. silver springs – Fleetwood mac - his song to me way back then
15. Van Morrison – into the mystic - of course you wrap it up with “your song” again
I made this playlist for my husband for his birthday.
Your right it is a snapshot of your ife at the time.
Too bad we ended up divorced.
COOOL! man, the first mixed tape i ever got - and the first being flirted with experience i ever had..this total heavy metal/glam rock japanese dude secretly dropped of a mixed tape for me. man, i wish i still had that. first time i think i ever heard ‘rocks me like a hurricane’.
We had been seperated for a month or so… I was trying to get her back - we’d been together for a long time, and had gotten married a year before - just out of college.
Thats when I found some mix tape from the other guy in the player of her Sentra. I knew with some other dudes mix tape it was over.
I gave her my ring back right there on the street in Downtown Seattle.
Never saw her again.
I hate mix tapes.
1. Queens of the stone age - little sister
2. System of a down - shimmy
3. Sex pistols - Anarchy in the uk
4. Jimi Hendrix - Purple haze
5. Jimi Hendrix - Hey Joe
6. Bob Marley - is this love
7. Rage against the machine - bullet in the head
8. Smashing pumpkins - today
9. Greenday - good riddance
I made this tape when I was about 17, for my then boyfriend. He had hundreds of cds, and we probably listened to all of them in the two years we knew eachother. Now I make mix tapes for my friends…I don’t think you really grow out of it.
In a former life, I often did intros and voice overs over my various most-awesome-mixtape-ever tapes. With equipment that looked it was found in a basement in Eastern Europe, I made these super-timely odes to girls who didn’t know they were dating me.
http://jamsbio.com is another great site for sharing your memories of songs. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. And you’ll definitely laugh.
I have a friend who taught me to make a “ruined songs” playlist. Any song that links to a memory you want to run from and is often skipped in itunes playback would go on said playlist. So, I made a “ruined songs” playlist, which turned out to consist of 123 songs. When we feel like reliving old memories, we break out the playlists and explain their relationship to the certain memory that made it ruined.
Some of the songs on mine (because I’m sure you don’t want to know all 123) are:
1) All You can ever Learn is What you Already Know- The Ataris
2) Going Away to College- Blink 182
3) Swallowed in the Sea- Coldplay
4) Hard Candy- Counting Crows
5) (Nice To Meet You) Anyway- Gavin DeGraw
6) Can’t Stop Now- Keane
7) Setting Up Sunday- Meg & Dia
8) Come Home- OneRepublic
9) Dare You to Move- Switchfoot
10) Look Where We are Now- Teddy Geiger
11) Our Time- Tyler Hilton
12) Taste of Ink- The Used
13) Shadows and Regrets- Yellowcard
14) You and Me and One Spotlight- Yellowcard
The reasons for their ruined tags range from broken friendships, confused status, and one song I heard so many times I could sing it in my sleep. However, the lyrics of the songs each relate, relatively, to the situation that ruined them.
My favorite mix is by a girl from the bigger island of Australia (cos I’m from Tasmania) who I’d played gigs with over in Melbourne and then in Hobart. She came to visit and we spent about twelve straight days together and with every day I loved her a little bit more, making songs and such and dreamscheming a move with mutual friends into living in our own little Big Pink house in the country. Aaah, the complete fear of knowing that you’ll fall in love with them and doubt filled certainty that their feelings to you are platonic kept me awake camping in my sleeping bag a lot. It just seemed also scary cos she’d just broken up with a boyfriend I’d just gotten to know. The good part of this sentimental story is that I sent her a two-tape mix once she’d gone back home. Around the same time she sent me the best mixCd with a last song written by her which was simply called “Yes” and made the fears go away. It’s just her singing whilst playing a slightly outta tune autoharp. Now we are together and have a band and I’m scheming a series of mixtapes for globe-travelling for gigs at the end of the year. People’s best mixtapes are yet to be made I think. Then again, those first ones are one of a kind.
Oh and here’s some Australian bands included in the mix in case anyone is interested:
Grand Salvo (not known outside Melbourne but amazing), New Buffalo (who wrote that 1,2,3,4 Feist song), Pikelet (dream loopy accordion pop), Decoder Ring (did the Sommersault soundtrack), Billy Whims (my girlfriend). I write songs as Sam J Nicholson but don’t check them out. All the best to you out there on the intertron. Have a good future.
Perhaps the greatest mix I ever made was for Erica, whom I met when got into the food business in 2004. In perhaps the most foolish crush ever, I was the newly hired delivery driver and she was the manager on weekend nights. We were both, for lack of a smarter way to put it, involved with other people but maintained in the process aserious affection for each other. I had been making mixtapes for years (since the 90’s) but never did I put so much effort into a disc than the one I made for her. It was a gesture of futility as I could never actually pursue her at the time, but I wanted her to KNOW what was ticking and tocking in my crazy little head every night when we closed up shop together.
Track list:
the slits “instant hit”
nas “the world is your’s”
fleetwood mac “you make lovin’ fun”
the afghan whigs “creep” (TLC Song)
squeeze “take me i’m your’s”
kevin coyne “cheat me”
george thorogood “one bourbon, one scotch, one beer”
the replacements “more cigarettes”
CCR “i put a spell on you”
leon haywood “i want to do something freaky to you”
dead moon “40 miles of bad road”
the police “walking on the moon”
bruce springsteen “i’m on fire”
candi station “another man’s woman, another woman’s man”
ween “cover it with gas and set it on fire”
…and the narrative is clear: you boy, the world is his oyster, and he meets girl. they mess around on their significants, and it’s the result of a night full of booze and cigarettes. the spell is cast, the freakiness ensues, and although this probably means a rough road ahead—he can’t sleep at night and ponder’s the situation of cheating. his conclusion is to cover the evidence with gas and set it on fire. Could Hollywood have written a better script?
I was very recently engaged to a girl who was three kinds of hilarious and five kinds of awful. There were complications which ended up in her crying hysterically and me drinking myself to sleep for a week. Needless to say, we were no more. I’m sitting right now on my way to go to her place and give her back her things (minus her harmonica and cigarette case, since she has my coat and my favourite record).
And I have a tape.
It’s called “Flash and a half-dozen bridges” and it goes like this:
Side A
Say Anything - Belt
Commander Venus - Do You Feel at Home
The Mountain Goats - Lovecraft in Brooklyn
Taking Back Sunday - Little Devotional
The Pink Spiders - Back to the Middle
Alkaline Trio - My Friend Peter
AA Bondy - Vice Rag
The Good Life - I Am An Island
Archers of Loaf - Web In Front
Bright Eyes - Sunrise, Sunset.
The Matches - The Jack Slap Cheer
Ambulance LTD - Primitive (The Way I treat you)
Biffy Clyro - 57
Cursive - The Casualty
Side B -
The Good Life - Inmates
Park Ave - She Teaches Art?
The Mountain Goats - Standard Bitter Love Song #4
The Wombats - Moving to New York
Colourbook - Wimbledon Riot
Thursday - Signals Over the Air
Northstar - Pornographer’s Daughter
Taking Back Sunday - 180 By Summer
Los Campesinos! - This is How you spell “HAHAHA We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics”
The Mountain Goats - Anti-Music Song
The Format - If Work Permits
It is a perfect example of why I should never date again. Ever.
when i heard this segment on john’s show today, i howled. this is definitely a generational thing! i lived in the village in a small 1 bedroom on the corner of bleecker & 6th ave. i had two turn tables and used to make tapes for john s. who i was madly in love with. he was having a new year’s eve party and i made 2 of the best dance/party tapes EVER!!! my favorite part of the story is that i am currently in the process of uploading, (in an attempt to save them) 25-30 year old polaroids. saturday i found polaroids i took of my living room after the marathon mix. i was hysterical. i can remember it as if it were yesterday. i loved giving and certainly receiving tapes. it was truly an act of, if not love, tremendous interest! what a great segment. and i have been a loyal FOUND person for years!
My ex had a cassette, which was a compilation of tracks he had played as a dj at college. i loved the music and asked for a copy. For some reason, he was unable to make me a copy, but since I loved it (and his mellifluous voice introducing the songs in a very college-dj voice), he gave it to me to make a copy of. Now back in the day, it was easy to screw up the copying process or the actual cassette, and I accidentally erased the first 20 seconds of the tape, containing an early Bruce Springsteen bootleg (”Thundercrack”, for Boss fans). He was an enormous Bruce fan and I don’t think he ever forgave me. I keep telling myself that he must have that song on his ipod today. Some of the other tracks I remember:
Quarter to Three - Gary US Bonds
Ariel - Dean Friedman
Thinking - Steve Forbert
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
I Don’t Want to Go Home - Southside Johnny
I was in 7th grade - long brown hair, braces, a school uniform and a pair of rust colored mary jane dock martins that I wore with my knee highs. In a world where shoes were all you have to define yourself against the masses, I thought I was pretty rad. I had a huge crush on Bobby Buckley. Tall, blond floppy hair and a worn baseball cap. His shoes were always untied, his hands shoved in his pockets as he strolled the halls. (I imagine him this way because I tried my hardest to cross paths with him between classes…we’ve all done it, right?)
In a conversation about music where I declared the Indigo Girls Gods, he mentioned he would make me a mix tape with music that is “actually good.” I’m not sure if he ever would have made it if I didn’t ask him about it everyday - casually of course.
On a winter Friday morning, he handed it over. On the bus to ski club that night, I put on my headphones and listened for a hint of love in any of the songs. It was mostly Van Halen. But Satallite - Dave Matthews was my favorite. Listen. Rewind. Listen. Rewind. The rest of the tape I don’t remember much, but for a long time, even in college, when I heard a song from the mix, I fully expected the next song on the mix to play. Needless to say Bobby started “going out” with my best friend Aynsley not soon after - but I always had the mix tape.
I remember trading tapes with one of the few New Wave girls in H.S. I’m not sure she liked the MX-80 Sound songs. When I got to “Girls on Film” on her tape, I realized I didn’t like her in that way. She went on to write poetry in college that was published in a student art/newspaper. Didn’t see her at the H.S. reunion.
Last year I went to Amsterdam on a semester’s exchange for 6months. Four months earlier I had started going out with this guy Matt and it was serious enough that we didn’t break up while I was away. Mutual taste in music was one of the things that got us together and most of our dates have been going to concerts. We’re still together.
Anyway while I was away he kept saying he would send me copies of a whole lot of local ep’s that I hadn’t heard but I didn’t actually get anything until Christmas. He sent it a bit late and i didnt get it until i came back from a week in england - and the day I got his package, my laptop (which was the only means i had of listening to music apart from a really bad clock radio) decided it didnt want to charge anymore and I had nothing to play music on. as well as several new eps there was also a mix cd entitled Love From Matty.
So luckily on New Years day when I was too hungover to move, my flatmate went for the traditional new years swim and i managed to borrow her laptop and listen to the mix while lying on my bed with my eyes closed trying to block out the light.
1. Amsterdam - Peter Bjorn & John (Kind of self explanatory, I was in Amsterdam, he wasn’t. Also I had an insane amount of love for Peter Bjorn & John but can no longer hardly listen to this song because it makes me miss Amsterdam too much)
2. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) - The Beatles
3. Stella - White Birds & Lemons (a local song, we went and saw them play about a trillion times)
4. You Got A Friend In Me - The Zutons
5. Where Has She Gone - The Checks (another local band, lived down the road from Matt and are pretty sweet, also the title kinda fitted in with him missing me)
6. Hospital Beds - Cold War Kids (one of our favourite collective songs)
7. Amsterdam - Coldplay (because of the title, obviously. But also he thought it was funny because I dislike Coldplay lots.)
8. Tender - Blur (just the lyrics, its a nice song)
9. Oh Girl - Cut Off Your Hands (another local band, not as down-the-road local but from New Zealand, the lyrics say something like, oh girl wont you come over to my house i want to see you tonight)
10. Tell Yourself It’s Alright - The Have (another local band)
11. True Love Way - Kings of Leon (we both loved Kings of Leon a lot. Even had matching t-shirts, bought before we knew each other)
12. We Danced Together - The Rakes (he liked the rakes, i liked dancing)
13. Miss You - The Rolling Stones (explains itself, yeah?)
14. One Night On Earth - The Veils (another local band)
15. I Wanna Make It Wit Chu - Queens Of The Stone Age
16. Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits (my name is Juliet so that really says it all. Also his dad used to tease me about the lyrics of this song - “when we made love, she used to cry” - i never thought it was funny, just embarrassing.)
Sadly its probably the most romantic thing I’ve got from him. But romance is overated.
Gosh this is long.
i love this site… i don’t have my mix tapes anymore.. but i’ve got some fairly unpleasant mix cds an old boyfriend made me. I think i am going to make a mix tape for the current boyfriend, as a parting gift perhaps, if we part company soon….
‘time is never time at all’ is a smashing pumpkins lyrics, my best friend throughout my teenage years made me a mixtape because i’d never heard that song before, and she put mickey mouse stickers she’d got from McDonald’s on it (ironically, yeah, we were so like completely ironic then), and drew stars and lyrics all over it. I miss that tape, along with her unreadable writing….
It was the summer between my junior and senior year. My boyfriend had cheated on me for the 5th time. I dumped him. But I was still way head over heels for him. Well, he knew what to do. He sent his friend to my house to deliver my jacket that had been left at his house months before. In the pocket was a mix tape, sprayed conspicuously with Obsession for Men. One side was him talking - begging me for forgiveness. The other side included these beauties:
1. Honey Pie - by the Beatles
2. I’m a Loser - by the Beatles
3. Sit Down - by James
4. Sowing the Seeds of Love - by Tears for Fears
5. So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry) - by R.E.M.
Crap I really wish I still had that tape. I can’t even remember the rest of the songs! I did go back to him for another 3 years or something, but he cheated on me countless more times. We are still in touch a little bit, and those songs still give me butterflies, as does the smell of Obsession.
I’m still not sure how it all happened.
Actually, that’s being a bit disingenuous. I know exactly how it happened. The night had gotten swept away in a wash of forty-ounce bottles of malt liquour. It’s all a faint blur until the point where I was making out with a girl I had had a crush on forever. We were in various stages of undress when she looked at the clock and gasped.
“Oh fuck! It’s almost six A.M.! My boyfriend’s gonna be home any minute! You have to get out of here! But let’s hang out soon.”
I recalled from the haze of that evening her complaining about not having any new music to listen to. So I did the honorable thing. I made a mixtape, kicked it off with “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” by Prince, and dropped it off at her work the next day.
Things have been really weird between us ever since.
i once was in love with this girl
its so hard to recollect what happened that dropped us from talking
but over the course of a year we lost contact…..
well this is when i was a sophmore in highschool
i met this girl named michelle
and i was so increadibly in love with her
like i know its high-school love but i knew it was bigger than that
this is a women that got me to stop smoking (not just ciggarettes)
and i moved away new jersey and i lost contact with her
and right before i moved i gave her a cd with a song by
sky eats airplane-she is just a glitch
and she cried so hard
and ever since i havent been able to talk to her
its killed me
Back in high school a really close girl friend (note, not a GF, but rather a good friend who happened to be girl) and I decided to do a mixtape collaboration. We wanted to have the ultimate tape to have sex to.
Now you need to know that this was back in the 80’s when the biggest thing on TV was Miami Vice. Anyone who was around then knew that the thing that made the show was the incredibly awesome “mood music” that always played in the background. Well we decided to call this tape: “MVFM” which stood for “Miami Vice F*** Music”. Again, when you put it into context of the show, it really was not as crude as it sounds now.
I do not remember the exact songs on there beyond it having a lot of Phil Collins/Genisis. The way the songs were chosen was that we wanted it to start off really slow and mellow so the mood would be set and then have it build to a climax (so to speak) and then come down from there. Many hours were spent finding just the right song that expressed just the right message at just the right time. We got a lot of laughs from the fact that the last song on the tape was Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” - it seemed to be quite appropriate.
A couple of weeks later she called me up and said we had to make some adjustments to it. She tested it out and said that we made the “ramp up” portion of the tape a little too long - I guess once she got out of the gate, she ran a pretty quick race.
One of my regrets to this day is never “testing” out the MVFM tape with her as we were making it….for quality control purposes of course.
I liked a friend in college and we seemed to have a special vibe that summer. Just as things were getting interesting she had to go away to London for a semester in the Summer. Well, I decided to give her a cassette mix for her trip abroad and she apparently listened to it almost every day. It did the trick! When she came back, she was all over me and we started dating. We ended up dating for 5 years after that. My ex still remembers this mix and we both have a copy. I must’ve made her 20 mixes during the time we dated.
“Twelve Pupps On A Hill”
Side A:
1. Got My Hand In Your Head - MONEY MARK
2. Bali Eyes - PORNO FOR PYROS
3. To Be A Millionaire…Was It Likely - SPACEHOG
4. Shine - DAVID GRAY
5. Vulgar Appetites - THE GOOPS
6. The Dancer - PJ HARVEY
7. Tomorrow, Wendy - CONCRETE BLONDE
8. All Your Way - MORPHINE
9. Sissyneck - BECK
10. Chicken Strut - THE METERS
11. Tonight, Tonight - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
12. I Love You Truly - MITCH MILLER & THE GANG
13. Something About You - PIXIES
Side B:
1. Goin’ Home - J MASCIS
2. Season Of The Witch - LUNA
3. Slider - FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON
4. Ab Dawlin’ - ABSTRACT RUDE
5. Soul Power ‘74 - MACEO & THE MACKS
6. In My Head - THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS
7. Army Of Me - BJORK
8. Don’t Wait That Long - JAMES
9. Tell It Like It Is - AARON NEVILL & THE NEVILLE BROS.
10. The 13th - THE CURE
the greatest mixtape that i ever made was for a girl that i had a crush on for 2 years. she’s of the milky white skin and smoky saucer eyes persuasion with a penchant for classic country music so of course i was smitten. we started out as friends/acquaintances. however, whilst hanging out one night, i put on a bootleg zombies outtakes album to ease my nervousness. “ooh! what is this?”, she exclaimed. i had my opening. with her curious mind properly piqued, i told her i would make her a tape of some later zombies songs and some later everly brothers songs (another topic over the course of the evening) along with a few choice personal favorites. i had my mission: to woo her with this tape without being too obvious. this would be a challenge not to be taken lightly. being a perfectionist when it comes to the art of the mixtape, i went through about 5 drafts before i came up with the proper sequencing as follows:
SIDE ONE:
“vanishing girl” - the dukes of stratosphear
“i could be so good to you” - don and the goodtimes
“i know she will” - the zombies
“long walking down to misery” - the beau brummels
“baby don’t go” - sonny and cher
“trouble” - lindsey buckingham
“girl help me” - the zombies
“the rubber room” - porter wagoner
“the lady with the braid” - dory previn
“joanne” - michael nesmith
“i’ll call you mine” - the zombies
“cool summer” - bob lind
“duchess” - scott walker
“i could spend the day” - the zombies
SIDE TWO
“love is strange” - the everly brothers
“pools of blue” - barclay james harvest
“beautiful flyaway” - alice cooper
“glendora” - the downliners sect
“man with money” - the everly brothers
“walk on into my heart” - bobbie smith
“i’m so glad” - jessie mae hemphill
“it’s my life” - the animals
“please stay” - the cryan shames
“summer wine”- lee hazlewood and nancy sinatra
“the price of love” - the everly brothers
“ship of fools” - john cale
“there’s nothing more to say”- the millennium
“bowling green” - the everly brothers
well, it worked. however, i eventually had my heart broken. never again have i laid my soul out on tape such as this. perhaps one day i will…
oh, and i have never received a mixtape from someone i have dated. just one of life’s little jokes…
The best tape I ever recieved was from my current boyfriend of two years. Four years ago, when we first met, we had the concept to “keep it loose” for a summer. When we were supposed to be making out just for fun, I fell madly in love with him among the strains of Ziggy Stardust and the Cramps. We played records for each other and lay sprawled on the floor in the heat, intertwined. At the end of the summer, he gave me a mixtape titled “Hold My Life” after the Replacements song. I listened to it all through my fall semester of my junior year until we broke up on the same night that Bush was re-elected.
We spent a year apart dating the kind of people who only make mix CDs until I gave him a mixtape I had made him called “Great Anticipation, a year later during a night out at McCormick’s. We’ve been together since December 2005, making mixtapes for birthdays, holidays, or just because.
Back in 1998 I was living in Denver, Co, I was still in my 20’s, young and free. Looking for the ultimate love of my life. Well I placed a singles ad W./my a local paper for me to find me a guy. &, well I met him. WOW! He was the type of guy who was a mixture of a thunderstorm on the horizon, to a calm blue sea the next. I really fell hard for this guy. I credit him as the guy I lost my virginity to, the 2st guy that I ran out & bought a wedding ring and wanted to marry W./out a 2nd thought.
Well anyways at 12 Midnight (We Crossed from 1998 into 1999), New Years Eve (we had been together almost a full Year!) I asked him to marry me.
He simply said, “No.”. I was crushed, heartbroken etc. We dragged out the relationship another 2 months, and finally on 02/14/99 we went our separate ways. It’s now been over 8 Years, or so. I haven;t seen him since May of 1999, there still is a place in my heart for him.
So Here is my Tape:
Beautiful Child - Fleetwood Mac
Blue Denim - Stevie Nicks
Running Through the Garden - Fleetwood Mac
Sometimes It’s a Bitch - Stevie Nicks
I Can’t Make You Love Me - Bonnie Raitt
Missing You - John Waite
Angel - Madonna
Take A Bow - Madonna
The Power Of Good-Bye - Madonna
You’ll See - Madonna
Beautiful Stranger - Madonna
Crazy For You - Madonna
With or Without You - U2
If I Could Turn Back Time - Cher
Just Like Jesse James - Cher
The Boys of Summer - By Don Henley
I Love You Always Forever - Donna Lewis
Don’t Dream It’s Over - Crowded House
These songs are for Brad. Wherever you are, I hope your happy!
I survived a 5 year relationship with a guy I met in high school who actually auditioned for a play just to meet me (and believe me, he had no business acting!) I had never met or dated someone as charming and intense as he, and our relationship was just as hot and fiery, but a bumpy ride from beginning to end. He was a boarding school kid from Atlanta who loved film, music, and riding his bike through the foothills of the colorado rockies. He made me several mixtapes over the course of our 5 years together, the best of which I no longer have. When I listen to this tape almost 20 years after he made it, I can vividly remember our sunday afternoon drives through the canyons and making out in the back seat of my chevy blazer. We made a lot of mistakes, and suffered the consequences, but we were always good at make-up sex. The fact that the “MegaLoveMix” was the tape that survived is indicative of what we did best….
The MegaLoveMix - “lets record our love” (created 4.22.90)
side one
Love Me Two Times- The Doors
Tequila - Herb Alpert
Give Me a Kiss- Van Morrison
Something- The Beatles
Lovin’ & Touchin’- The Red Hot Chili Peppers
You Never Give Me Your Money- The Beattles
The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
Somebody - Depeche Mode
She’s a Rainbow - The Rolling Stones
Behind the Sun - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Are You Happy? - Iron Butterfly
Dirty Love - Frank Zappa
Mr. Cab Driver - Lenny Kravitz
Viv Woman - Steve Vai
Planet Claire - B-52’s
side two
Domino - Van Morrison
Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz
Rock Lobster - B-52’s
Moonlight Drive - the Doors
Blue Sky - Allman Brothers
Little Martha - Allman Brothers
Our Love is here to stay - Billy Holiday
The Weight - The Band
I’ll be your Mirror - The Velvet Underground
Changes - David Bowie
Topaz - B-52’s
Poison Years - Bob Mould
James Bond Theme - Naked City
Deadbeat Club - B-52’s
Thank you Boys - Jane’s Addiction
1. I-10 by Japanther
2. Sleep Tonight by Stars
3. Catform by Rogue Wave
4. Loro by Pinback
5. Tchaparian by Hot Chip
6. Windsurfing Nation by Broken Social Scene
7. The Good Life by Weezer
8. Bees by Caribou
9. Stupid Boy by Happy Supply
10. Penelope by Pinback
11. Parenthesis by The Blow
12. Three Shy Cubs by Holopaw
13. Slow Hands (Britt Daniels Mix) by Interpol
14. Lost at Sea (remix) by Eisley
15. You Can Have It All by Yo La Tengo
16. Yeti by Caribou
17. Small Stakes by Spoon
18. Rebellion (Lies) by The Arcade Fire
19. So Begins Our Alabee by Of Montreal
I had originally met Erin at one of my frat parties in the fall semester of 2007. I got her number, but then proceeded to get very drunk that night and didn’t really remember that I had her number. So then spring semester rolls around, and I re-meet her, this time quite sober, at another of my fraternity’s parties. Erin was very full of life. She had this energy about her that gave her an almost ADD like personality. She spoke 1000 words a minute but each sentence was layered with deep thought and character. She truly was one of a kind. We spent the whole party talking about music: everything from Marvin Gaye to Daft Punk to the awesomeness of Weezer. A week later, I took her out to this whiskey bar in Downtown L.A. called Seven Grand. She was gorgeous. We spent that night talking about drugs and Lost–I felt like I had found the most amazing girl ever.
We continued to date for 3 months, which culminated in several highlights of that semester from Valentine’s Day at Opera to rewatching the first season of Lost to discovering the awesomeness of electronica, techno music, the culture of raves, and ecstasy.
For her birthday, I made Erin four mixtapes, entitled: I’m In The Mood For An Adventure, D.A.N.C.E. mix, I Think We Should Smoke a Bowl–Chill, and I Think We Should Smoke A Bowl–Trippy. I’ll just come out and say it–those 4 mixes were probably the best mix cd’s I’ve ever made. And it made sense, too. I cared alot about this girl. We always had such a fun great time hanging out. She was just way out there. However, by the time 3 months came along, we just kinda grew out of each other and went our separate ways.
She called me the other night. I was kinda taken aback as I hadn’t talked to her in months. She wanted to know what song #6 was on I’m In the Mood for an Adventure (M79 by Vampire Weekend). We ended up catching up for 2 hours after that. I admit it: I missed her. Two days later, someone spilled water on my computer, and I lost those mixes (thankfully I had my music saved on a hard drive). I had lost her, and I had lost those mixes, too. Thankfully, though, I have the one mix she made me the night we were studying for midterms. It was the first mixtape I ever got from a girl that was into me.
She was quite an experience.
I just found the full written tracklisting (with annotations and important lyrics) that went with the mix tape I used to woo my first “proper” boyfriend, when I was 15. Sadly, I only have page one of what must have been two. So, verbatim:
1)Cigarettes and coffee by otis redding - because I love the idea of being so content with someone that I don’t need anything else “I don’t want no cream or sugar, cos I’ve got you”
2)The calendar hung itself by Brighteyes - You might hate brighteyes if you haven’t heard them before. They are a band of attrition who take some listening to. But I love this song for its intensity (and bons points for wokring in ‘you are my sunshine’ in an un-trite manner) “does he know that place behind your neck that’s your favourite to be touched?”
3)You by Radiohead - I first heard this on some bizarre Japanese import but it completely explains the ridiculous unrequited thing that I have down so perfectly. “you… are… the sun and moon and stars”
4) Teenage Kicks by the undertones - who doesn’t love them? “I’ll have her over cos I’m all alone”
5) Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground - Self obsession, caffeine and a brilliant bass, I just can’t fault it. “I’ve had too much caffeine and I’m thinking about myself”.
6)Pale Blue Eyes by the velvet underground - mainly because it’s so chilled… reminds me of that lazy, all the time in the world, lying in bed with somebody nice feeling. “it was so good what we did yesterday, and I’d do it [a hundred times] again”
7) Bright and yellow by the gin blossoms
8) You go to my head by Billie Holiday - I adore Billie holiday even though all her songs are so sad “I find you spinning round in my brain”
9) Brown eyed girl by van morrison - Apparently [and here Amy scribbled out apparently and wrote "!!! It really was!"] written for my friend amy’s mum, I love this because it is so filled with private references but you still get so involved.
10) In love with the world [I can't remember who this is by]
He made me a mix at the same time called “The Best of Sam”. I listened to it a lot, and now it is in my little brother’s car and when I am feeling nostalgic I put it on while we are driving and listen to the confusing blend of Blink 182 and Louis Armstrong. I still see him sometimes and we are both still music nerds, and that makes me happy.
(sorry about my bad english - i’m from Brazil) I have a story about cassete for my ex-girl too… one day, we (me and my girlfriend at the time - named Clarissa) had a figth… and we put a end in our relationship… we used to record mix tapes to express our love… and to show new and good songs… but this day, the day that we decide to finish the romance… we was talking by the phone… and I have a (apparently) great idea… record her voice in our last mix tape… and I say: “tell me your last words cause will record your voice… to remember you for the rest of my days”… but something doesn’t works… her voice was to low… and I can´t hear anything, any word that Clarissa told to me… but I don´t say it to her… we disconnect the phone… and never more talk again… I still don´t know what she said to me that day… I like to beleive that she say good things… like “i love you”, “i´ll miss you”, “i need you”… but i realy don´t know what she said.
Mine was called “I Count Your Eyelashes”. This is the only mix album any girlfriend has ever made for me. It had an actual personalised cover with cut-out letters stuck together on a background of blue and purple sugar paper. It was from my first serious girlfriend back in 2004ish when I was about 17. She was 18.
Aside from the age difference though, there was also a big musical difference; as a budding punker I was sitting in my room scowling while listening to Damaged and Plastic Surgery Disasters on shitty headphones, begging relatives in America to send me the CD reissue of ‘Walk Among Us’. She - I don’t want to give her name, it seems weird - was a casual music fan who probably bought a few cds a month based on what she heard and liked on the radio. Even back then, that was behaviour I sneered at, but she was my first girlfriend and I wasn’t about to tell her I though her tastes were wack. God knows I listened to some shit in retrospect. I definitely made her a CD featuring the Used, who she thought were great - looking back that was a bad sign, not about her but about the Used.
I don’t think I listened to the mix she made me more than a couple times, but certain tracks have stuck with me. I can’t see myself ever throwing it out. I do know that I can never hear Maroon 5 (She Will Be Loved), Idlewild (I Never Wanted), or REM (Nightswimming) without being reminded of her. It also featured bands which I thought sucked back then and suck pretty bad still. Badly Drawn Boy I’ve always hated, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers ‘Under The Bridge’ inevitably showed up, and the Calling were also on there (remember those guys? Nickelback for pussies? “I’ll go wherever you may go” was the big hit).
Things didn’t end too well between us, and we don’t talk anymore, so I regret not thanking her. It’s probably the sweetest thing a girlfriend has done for me. The title of the mix, “I Count Your Eyelashes”, was from an REM song included, “At My Most Beautiful”. Recently, in order to hear it again, my Einsturzende Neubauten loving ass risked big mockery from my indie-police friends by recently buying “In Time”, the same REM best-of my ex had. (Doubly non-indie - a band people have heard of, AND a best-of compilation!) I guess she did like my eyes at least.
I’m getting older now, and I’ve made tapes for over half my life. From the neon 90 minuters of my early teens that I taped for car journeys just so I didn’t have to listen to Joan Baez or Johhny Mathis (featuring 80’s rock taped from the radio and excruciating UK rap), to the hand-crafted meisterworks of my later years. There have been mis-steps, audible pops, terrifying wow and flutter, tape chews and snaps, dubious cellotape fixes. But gradually I got really good at them. And they were a certain thing, part of the process of meeting someone I liked, boy or girl. Eventually I’d make a tape, and that was it. Friendship cemented, love declared, or somewhere in between. One notable one was a 60 minute tape consisting of 24 Lemonheads songs called Lemony Goodness. It finished right on the button for both sides too. No snazzy cover, but it was probably the best tape I’ve ever made.
Only ever got one mixtape from a girl I was seeing though. We met at the Freshers fair at Uni, and gradually, things just fell into place. Sadly I was the other man in a love triangle, and I couldn’t make her leave her man. Never asked her to, although I wanted to. It just didn’t seem right to me, breaking up someone else’s long term relationship. And all I could do was think about her, and think what we were doing was wrong. It was a hard situation. Probably bored half my friends to death talking about it.
Anyway…she gave me a sixty minute tape back in return for one I’d made her, which was a nice surprise. It wasn’t the best tape I’d ever heard, but it did have a couple of good things on it. I can’t find the outer sleeve, so can’t give you the whole track list. You get the highlights.
The Animalhouse doing Small (great single, under-rated band), an indie pop band called McCabe doing a song called Nothing (which lyrically encapsulated her take on our relationship, I suppose). Indian Rope Man doing Dog in the piano (I picked up that dodgy single years later out of nostalgia). It wasn’t perfect, but as a tape it worked. There were thirty seconds of pop tracks from the 90’s at the end of each side, intended to cut out and allow me a sigh of relief, I suppose.
The relationship ended badly (how did you not see that coming?), but we eventually got to the point where we didn’t hate each other. Spotted her at a gig the other night, and got that cold chill I used to get when she contacted me out of the blue after a year of silence. She didn’t recognise me. I look a bit different now, heavier, glasses, etc. She was with her husband, I think; didn’t want to just ghost in, freak her out and do one. So there you have it.
I’ve still got the tape in a box somewhere, and although I’ll never listen to it again it reminds me of a time when I was really crazy about someone. I’d been that way before, and have since, but that tape serves as a memento of a great time in my life. It’s not like I’d grab it first if there was a house fire, or build it a shrine. But it lives in my house like she lives in my memories. It’ll travel with me when I move.
I’ve given and received a few different mix tapes. The first one was for a boy I met on holidays when i was 14. I left without getting his number or address, so I made a mix-tape of love songs, accompanied with a soppy love letter, and sent it to the hotel - asking them to forward it to him. I’m not sure if he ever got it. But I remember crying my 13 year old eyes out when I was on the plane coming home. The last mix-tape I received was called ‘Country Music Appreciation 101′, from my then-boyfriend/future husband/now divorced. It had Johnny Cash, Clay Walker, Tim McGraw and Alison (can’t remember her surname). It was great… very fond memories.
A mix tape from my first girlfriend in high school was to me about the equivalent of a promise ring. I was in deep for this girl, who was two years older, and had issues commiting to a sophomore as she was headed for college the next year. She was often giving mixed signals, but the tape was for me a huge pacifier–almost like a kiss I could steal whenever I wanted. Just looking at her perfectly feminine handwriting on the paper insert brought her a little closer to me. Funny I can still picture her handwriting but as I search my memory for the actual songs I draw a complete blank other than Van Morrison’s ‘Brown-Eyed Girl.’
I’m terrible at making mixtapes. They always come out sounding like a compilation of “NOW That’s What I Call Music,” full of too many singles and not enough personality. But in a way, my lack of mixtape-making skills makes the ones I receive all the more endearing, as I marvel at the products of a talent I will never have.
The first great mixtape I ever received came the summer before college. I was deeply infatuated with a boy named Zack, and his best friend Teddy was quietly chasing my stubborn heart. That summer, in the sweltering Sacramento heat, I saw the two of them almost daily. I would call, wanting to hang out with Zack, and Teddy would energetically join, wanting to see me. This was when gas was cheap, which was fortunate since we spent so many hours idling around the streets of our quiet suburb, wondering what to do next. For one amazing week, we watched the meteor shower every night, but typically we ended up at my house, watching Tivoed shows and enjoying the wonders of Limewire.
One night, a sore throat overcame me, leaving me sickly enough that I typed an AIM to Teddy: “Can’t hang out tonight – not feeling too great.” It was the type of sick that keeps you from leaving the house, but doesn’t keep you from enjoying a book in bed. And so, as I curled up and read The Fountainhead, I heard a knock on the door. It was Teddy and his friends, bearing gifts.
There was a cake, but more importantly, there was a CD. “GET BETTER SARAAA!!!” blared across the top, followed by the curious title: “Darkness is Spreading.” The mix was hastily put together, Teddy warned, but under the circumstances it was the best they could do. It came from the entire group, but it was clear who the mastermind was. And while it did sound a bit thrown together – with the Pixies followed by Justin Timberlake and the Beatles – the music hardly mattered. Knowing that someone – a boy, at that – made a CD just for me, just for a sore throat, spread warmth through my body as I lay down and listened.
Looking back, the mix perfectly embodied pre-college Teddy. He was a kid with high-brow cultural taste stuck in a middle-class suburb that did everything it could to mainstream him. The CD included indie favorites of the time, like The Shins’ “So Says I” and The Decemberists’ “July July.” Refusing to conform to one genre, just like Teddy, it also rocked Jay Z’s “Lucifer” and RJD2’s “1976.” I was blown away by songs like Ryan Adams’ “So Alive” and the Velveteen’s “Caspian Can Wait,” and less than excited with tracks like Weezer’s “Holiday” and Ozma’s “Rocks.” All in all, it provided musical enjoyment for weeks as I cruised around in my old red Saturn, sunroof down.
Two months later, Teddy and I started dating. Surrounded by unfamiliarity at a huge university, 400 miles from home, we found comfort in each other. We dated for three years, and in that time period Teddy made me nine more mixes. Each was impeccably perfect, and caused me to fall deeper and deeper in love. Each CD came with a title, scrawled in Teddy’s signature all-lowercase hand. Teddy knew so much about music that I could never catch up, but with my previous favorite groups including Dashboard Confessional, the Starting Line, and Jason Mraz, I had nowhere to go but up. With his help, my ears were opened to Wilco, Sly and the Family Stone, Yo la tengo, Sue Jorge, The Good Life, and so many others.
Like most first loves, ours lasted longer than it should have. He started falling for someone else – a mutual friend I introduced him to – but I was too blindly in love to notice until it was too late. Even as my heart was breaking, and I banished everything that reminded me of Teddy to a suitcase on top of my bookshelf, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of those mixes. One remained in my car, and on a particularly trying afternoon – when the heartbreak turned to angry bile that ate up my insides – I imagined myself pulling over to the side of the road, opening the door, and flinging the CD like a Frisbee over the hill that overlooked his house. I would leave his mix scuffed up in a pile of weeds just like he left my heart battered and broken. But who was I kidding? I liked the music too much, and as my anger subsided the CD found its way back to its case.
Thinking back, I should have known our love was fading when the mixtapes stopped coming. What started with veracious frequency soon turned into half-baked promises. “I’m working on a mix for you, but I can’t seem to finish it” he said a few months before our three-year anniversary. When our anniversary passed, I started badgering him for it. But when you have to ask your love for a mixtape, it’s time to wake up and hear the music. We broke up a few weeks later.
The wounds are slowly healing – it’s still been less than a year – but if I ever feel like wrenching those wounds open a bit, I only have to open my iTunes. There I can find the playlist “Teddy’s mixes to me” – 188 songs, each one holding a memory. The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” reminds me of when I studied abroad in Italy, and we had to endure the excruciating pain of being apart for four months. Nico’s “These Days” takes me to a trip to Michigan, and the ’60s mix he made me for the flight. The Avalanches’ “Since I Left You” is from that amazing summer mix, the one that so perfectly captured what it meant to be 19, with no obligations and three months of freedom ahead of us. And on and on. Certain bands will always be “Teddy bands” in my mind, but that’s okay. Someday, when I stop being so angry, I’ll want to remember my first love fondly, and music will help me do just that.
“Darkness is Spreading”
1. !!!: Me and Guiliani Down By The Schoolyard
2. Jack Johnson: Bubble Toes
3. The Decemberists: July July
4. Yo la tengo: Sugarcube
5. Pavement: Cut Your Hair
6. Mates of State: Flake
7. The Shins: So Says I
8. Ryan Adams: So Alive
9. Hot Hot Heat: Talk to Me, Dance With Me
10. The Velveteen: Caspian Can Wait
11. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists: Parallel or Together
12. Ozma: Rocks
13. Weezer: Holiday
14. Jay Z: Lucifer
15. RJD2: 1976
16. The Pixies: Where is My Mind?
17. Justin Timberlake: Rock Your Body
18. The Beatles – And Your Bird Can Sing
19. Wilco: E.L.T.
20. Beck: New Pollution
21. Belle & Sebastian: Judy and the Dream of Horses
In 1992, following an engagement that had gone bad and a subsequent short-time romance with a former high school sweetheart, I decided I’d had enough of my life on the North Shore of Massachusetts. I went on vacation to Indianapolis for a week, got married to a woman I had been corresponding with for almost two years, and then flew back home to pack up my stuff. This, of course, shocked a lot of people. And some people I didn’t even say goodbye to. What was the point? During that time I was an emotional basket case. What was the point of bringing other people into it? I scraped my life off my shoe and happily set up shop here in the Midwest.
I had regrets, though. One of the people I neglected to say goodbye to was Peggy, a woman I got to know through a writer’s group sometime around 1990. When we first met, the attraction was instant for me, but the timing was just bad. My engagement was starting to deteriorate and the relationship she was in wasn’t any better. I think we both figured if we started something, it would burn hot for a while, then fizzle out. That was a scary thing to us. So we kept things as friendly as we could, but it was an emotional struggle. There was a lot of embracing and hand holding, but nothing ever went beyond that. For two people obviously attracted to each other, it was maddening.
After being in Indianapolis for a few months without any friends or family, I suddenly got homesick one night and called Peggy out of the blue. When she spoke, I could tell she was choked up and I asked her what was wrong. Through tears she told me she had thought something bad had happened to me because I had practically vanished off the face of the earth. Then she told me she was getting married the next morning. As always, our sense of timing seemed to be one step off. We hung up, vowing to stay in touch with each other. Somehow, throughout or various marriages and commitments, we’ve managed to keep that promise.
The “Angst Mix” came to me in early September after five years of hashing things out through letters and e-mails. There just came a point where I felt it was better to say things like, “Yes I loved you and I feel like I messed it up.” Even though we were both married, I was tired of dancing around it and wanted to let her know how much she had meant to me even though a lot of the relationship went unspoken. Yeah, it was awkward putting it out there, but at the same time the truth was liberating. We could finally move forward as good friends. And what we couldn’t say or write to each other, we tended to put into mix tapes. Peggy’s “Angst Mix” was just one piece of her side of the story. But it’s an important piece. Despite the anger inherent in her choice of songs, it’s the start of a dialogue still active to this day; a dialogue that remains open and truthful for the both of us as friends.
“Angst Mix”
SIDE A
Matchbox 20:
1) Long Day
2) Push
3) Busted
Concrete Blonde:
4) Everybody Knows
5)Simple Twist Of Fate
Rasputina:
6) Transylvanian Concubine
7) Endomorph
Fiona Apple:
8) Shadow Boxer
9) The First Taste
SIDE B
Fiona Apple:
1) Carrion
Oasis:
2) Hey Now
3) She’s Electric
Toad The Wet Sprocket
4) Whatever I Fear
5) Dam Would Break
6)Desire
Candlebox:
7) Drowned
Better Than Ezra:
8) Cry In The Sun
9) This Time Of Year
10) The Killer Inside
Billy Bragg:
11) The Fourteenth Of February
Somehow, I managed to leave out a couple of tracks from the list in the above post. So here’s the actual/corrected list:
“Angst Mix”
SIDE A
Matchbox 20:
1) Long Day
2) Push
3) Busted
Concrete Blonde:
4) Everybody Knows
5)Simple Twist Of Fate
Rasputina:
6) Transylvanian Concubine
7) Endomorph
Alanis Morrisette:
8) You Oughta Know
9) Ironic
Fiona Apple:
10) Shadow Boxer
11) The First Taste
SIDE B
Fiona Apple:
1) Carrion
Oasis:
2) Hey Now
3) She’s Electric
Toad The Wet Sprocket
4) Whatever I Fear
5) Dam Would Break
6)Desire
Candlebox:
7) Drowned
Better Than Ezra:
8) Cry In The Sun
9) This Time Of Year
10) The Killer Inside
Billy Bragg:
11) The Fourteenth Of February
That ought to teach me to post before getting my daily dose of caffeine. My apologies to Peggy. But this forum really needs an “edit” function ;-)
After dating the same boy for almost a year and fighting for about 8 months of it, he and i had enough of eachother. As a freshman in high school this was a tough thing to deal with, but everyone knew it had to be done. Heartbroken, i did the best i could to forget that i loved him, because i do think i really did, by destroying or hiding anything reminding me of him: presesnts, flowers, jewlery, pictures and yes, the mixed cds containing his terrible taste in music. He like what is called “Grind-Core”. It is very heavy, very short songs with much screaming. I never even pretended to enjoy it, but that did not stop him from giving me cd after cd of the same sounding songs. I put the cds on my itunes, and forgot about it shortly after.
The terrible day our relationship finally fell apart i found these cds and put one entitled “one day you’ll understand”. i still did not understand. i still only heard bass and screams. frustrated and dissappointed that we were over i grabbed my ipod and decided to run.
i set it to shuffle and ran. low and behold, the first song on his “one day you’ll understand” cd came on. and i did get it. i gradually pushed myself harder and harder,until i was enjoying this run. then the song ended and one of my “dumb acoustic songs” came on. so i put it to his cd, and ran without thinking. without caring. without feeling.
it was great.
So the tape is called, The Sky Can Sometimes Change Minds, which ironically is what happened with us. Everything was over before it started, yet it was perfect, but then on a rainy day before thanksgiving he confessed all he had been doing on the side and pretended that we were nothing.
Lay Lady Lay–Bob Dylan
Masterfade–Andrew Bird
Golden Brown–Stanglers
Something–The Beatles
Is This Love–Bob Marley
I’m The Man Who Loves You– Wilco
Whole Wide World–Wreckless Eric
First Five Times–Stars
Bron-Y-Arr Stomp– Led Zeppelin
Dear Yoko– John Lennon
Taylor– Jack Johnson
Kiss Me– Merri Palmer(local musician that I am in love with)
Good Vibrations–The Beach Boys
Porcelin(sums up the relationship)– Moby
Four Fingered Fisherman– Sun Kill Moon
Farmer Chords–Ben Gibbard
Cocain–The Fotoelectric Effect(one of his friends bands that is actually pretty good)
Honestly, as much as that relationship messed with my mind, today I am thankful for all of it.
That boy taught me how to treat people, and I never treated him the way I was supposed to, nor did he.
Hes and ass, and i’m a bitch and it fits
I had my first boyfriend in 8th grade and he made me my first mixed tape. Yesterday he heard Skid Row’s I’ll Remember You, a song from that tape and sent me an email. We’re in our 30’s now and those songs still remind us of each other. We dated briefly…he was my first boyfriend, first slow dance, first kiss, first mixed tape, first to “cheat” and the only one to be forgiven for it. First to break up with me and first that I broke up with (obviously we got back together). I ended up dating his best friend longer than I did him, but he’ll always hold the spot of first love, and first heartbreak. When I mentioned that I should find all the songs on the tape to make a mixed cd (so I can actually listen to the songs again) he offered to do it for me, though 1,000 miles separate us and before yesterday we hadn’t spoken in a couple of years. I dug out the tape, and Skid Row isn’t even on it! We both thought it was.
There isn’t any artwork on the case or cassette. I’m amazed that I can still read what he wrote since it’s all in pencil. He listed the songs, and told me he loved me.
Side A: Slow Songs
Love Song - Tesla (our song)
Hell is Living Without You - Alice Cooper
Living in Sin - Bon Jovi
I’ll Be There for You - Bon Jovi
Every Rose Has It’s Thorn - Poison
Love Bites - Def Leppard
Side B: Slow Song and Others
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zepplin
Gimme All Your Lovin’ - ZZ Top
Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top
Legs - ZZ Top
Be a Man - Tesla
We’ve exchanged half a dozen emails over the past 24 hours because of a song that wasn’t even on a tape…but still made us think of each other. He closed his most recent email to me with “all these years later, it amazes me that some of the people I met so long ago are still some of the most decent people I know. Be well my friend.” I couldn’t agree more.
i fell in love with this bad boy, who did everything he could to break my heart. And despite that fact, i was still deeply in love with him, and the love only grew stronger. We used to exchange mixtapes with each other whenever we have songs we wanted to share with each other. I still have the songs, but i don’t have him anymore.
Wow. When I found this site, it brought up a lot of memories… I’ve been making mixes (on tape back in the 80’s and 90’s, now cds) for so long, since I was ten or so. I’ve made them for everyone - friends, family, girlfriends, lovers I have wanted and for myself in whatever emotionally-charged time I might have been in.
In fact, I am making one now. For the one who still holds my heart in her hands, seven months after she said she couldn’t love me the way I wanted and seven months after I realized I am real bad at settling down and so on and so forth.
I don’t know if I’ll ever give this mix, however. Only time will tell.
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? – She & Him
Shotgun Down the Avalanche – Shawn Colvin
Save It For Later – The English Beat
Mount Washington – Beth Orton
Movies of Myself – Rufus Wainwright
Dirty Little Secret – Sarah McLachlan
The Needle Has Landed – Neko Case
Sunny Road – Emiliana Torrini
Coming Up For Air – Patty Larkin
U Want Me 2 – Sarah McLachlan
Stay – Shakespheare’s Sister
Videotape – Radiohead
The Good Life – Julie London
Original of the Species – U2
Stay In Touch – Joni Mitchell
Man, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a mixtape. Haha I feel so dumb all of a sudden. I’m gonna go make a mixed tape for my baby! :D
Really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments. It was so well written and so bittersweet! Hahah, hopefully I will be back someday and that I have a worthy story to tell as well.
MIXTAPE PWNS \m/
My first mixed tape came from my first “car-date” in 1993. The boy’s name was Mike and he was just so nice. Plus he could drive and I was only 13. It was here that I first really heard the lyrics of “Mandy” by Barry Manilow. Yes, he put Barry Manilow on a mixed tape. He was cute enough to put Barry Manilow on a mixed tape. Mandy made me cry. The tape was perfect. I was hooked to the art of mixed tape love letters. Lucky for me, my first real high school boyfriend Ryan made me mixed tapes and took the mixed tape to the next level. I think he made me 3 in total and I held on to those for years, almost 15 years, and were accidently thrown away during a move. I never really asked him, but I think he treated the mixed tape not just as a love letter, but as a serious lesson in all that was essential in music. Ryan was a senior and I was a freshman, so he caught me at that moment where I hadn’t yet formed my music taste. Ryan shaped my music world by introducing me to a small singer-songwriter Sarah McLaughlin (this was the Spring of 1994-he swore she would be huge), the first Phish songs I ever heard, the Cure, Built to Spill, the Smiths, and classic REM. He captured the early nineties for me and really helped shape my music world. I do like to think that I have evolved with the times, but nothing beats “Resuming McCarthy” by REM on a hot summer afternoon with the windows down or “girlfriend in a coma” by the Smiths. We split amicably that summer and remained friends, so those tapes were never tainted with heart break and angst that could come with a mixed tape by an ex-boyfriend. Best mixed tapes by ever.
We met while working at a record store in 2004. I was a year younger than him and into vastly different music. He made me a mixtape, though, (because that is the “punk” thing to do) and I listened to every night, long after we dated, broke up, dated again and broke up again, when I fell asleep. It is called” The Race Wars.
Side A:
1. The Clash - Safe European Home
2. The Descendants - Clean Sheets
3. The Groovie Ghoulies - Carly Simon
4. The Methadones - Annie
5. Matt Skiba - In Your Wake
6. The Ergs! - Extra Medium
7. Delay - Jumpstart My Heart
8. The Copyrights - Not For Shaving
9. Face to Face - A-OK
10. Hot Water Music - Tradition
11. Iggy Pop - Fix Me!
12. Joe Strummer - Get Down Moses
13. The Murder City Devils - Rum to Whiskey
Side B
1. Blackstar - Brown Skin Lady
2. Ice Cube - I Wanna Kill Sam (he wrote next to this listing “Sorry!”)
3. Marvin Gaye - What’s Goin’ On
4. James Brown - Get on the Good Foot
5. The Temptations - Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
6. Wu-Tang Clan - M-E-T-H-O-D MAN!
7. Marvin Gaye - Let’s Get It On
8. Mos Def & Talib Kweli - B-Boys Will Be Boys
9. ODB - Shimmy Shimmy Ya
10. RZA w/ Masta Killer - Brooklyn Babies
MY FIRST LOVE.
i was in secondary school when i met a guy named GUGU.perfect guy.i used to hate him but after a year we were thick friends and the whole school thought we werei= dating.but unfortunately i had to go on with his best friend and so we couldnt go out.but after i broke up we had a misunderstanding and he became a stranger to me.he avoided and hated me.i still love him.
THE SONG FOR THIS.
stranger-hilary duff
music means so much to me and always has been, so a few years back, i decided to mail a mix CD to the love of my life. we had already parted ways, but it just felt the thing to do. i don’t know if he ever played it or what’s happened to it (if he still has it), but i made a copy for myself and i’ve no idea where it is…
suited exactly for us and the very first song on the disc is corinne bailey rae’s “like a star”. i still think that to this day.
My junior year in college I transferred schools. I’m always fine in classes, but I hadn’t actually talked to anyone socially until a guy from my poetry class approached me in the student union. Later that year he made me a tape called “musical enjambment: for kate and the son of god” (with a picture of John Ashbury on the cover). He was a huge Magnetic Fields fan and said I was the first girl he’d met who’d heard of The Sixths. We were fast friends (or, as fast as two nerds who met in a poetry class could be) and he made me several more tapes over the years. I think I destroyed the friendship by not returning just the right kind of affection (or musical taste), but I still have the tapes. I figure one day he’ll work at a bar that has a tape deck and I’ll get a co-worker of his to put them on late at night when the bar’s almost dead…
I’ve been reading this for ages, but have only recently gone back to my Mum’s, to the old shoe box in my cupboard at home where I keep a box called ‘ex’s’, not that none of them were too unimportant to have their own box, it was just easier to keep them all together.
I only have one mix-tape in it. There’s a few mix cd’s, but in my eyes they’re not as important. Cassettes show time and effort. Anyway, it’s called ‘A CD for Claire But In Tape Form - (subtitled ‘here comes the sun, in the form of a girl, she’s the finest sweetest thing in the world’).
It was given to me to a girlfriend of 2 years from the tender age of 15-17. We met through mutual friends and were both young, out lesbians. She invited me to gigs, I said yes. We were in love. We met during our school days and saw each other as a saviour from the norm and a complete refreshment to the depression of growing up gay. Needless to say, it ended painfully. She and I argued, fell out and barely spoke for years. We both moved on, lived in the same small town and caused each other hurt when we saw each other. We grew up, moved on and moved away.
We saw each other as friends last summer, it was all a bit too painful and complex. However, she made me this tape, the only and sole tape I have.
Elastica - A Love Like Ours
Elastica - I Want You
Muse - Unintended
Oasis - Stand By Me
Pulp - The Birds In Your Garden
Placebo - Lady of the Flowers
Super Furry Animals - For Now and Ever
Garbage - Til The Day I Die
Hole - Heaven Tonight
Elvis Costello - My Funny Valentine
Gemma Hayes - I Wanna Stay
RHCP - I Could Die For You
Possibly if I could go back and change things, I would. I doubt she will ever read it (she hated the Internet then, and I’m pretty sure she still does). But I’d just like to say thank you. xxx
It was the summer after 7th grade (1989) and I was going to sleep-away camp for two weeks. My boyfriend made me a tape to take with me so I wouldn’t forget him while I was away. Not only did this tape feature “our song” (”I’ll Be There For You” by Bon Jovi) along with other classics from that summer, but he and several friends acted out interviews featuring their alter-egos and recorded live originals (such as the classic “I’m Deep In A Pool And I Can’t Swim” - which I sing to myself 20 years later when I’m in a questionable situation and need to laugh). We’re still in touch (thanks to the wonders of Facebook) and I still have that tape, and it still makes me laugh out loud whenever I listen to it. It’s a treasure of a time capsule.
This is an unusual mix CD. A friend an I started putting together collections of five songs that represented specific moments/days, and this is the first four of them put together. It’s the ‘Five for…’ collection; ‘Five for the Moment’, ‘Five for Another Moment’, ‘Five for a (Sad) Moment’ and ‘Five for a Puffing Moment’. Because of the mix being a collection of four, they don’t really flow together as well as mixes normally do, but it gives a good cross-section of my music taste, and really communicates the feelings and experiences that put them on the lists in the first place:
(From ‘Five for the Moment’:)
1. If I Were A Boy - Beyonce
2. Rise Up With Fists!! - Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
3. This Will Be Our Year - The Zombies
4. Epistemology - M. Ward
5. Hey Little Rich Girl - Amy Winehouse ft. Zalon & Ade
(From ‘Five for Another Moment’:)
6. Train Song - Feisr & Ben Gibbard
7. Fighting Away The Tears - Feist
8. The Good That Won’t Come Out - Rilo Kiley
9. Elevator Love Letter - Heart
10. One Life Away - M. Ward
(From ‘Five for a (Sad) Moment’:)
11. Mushaboom - Feist
12. Father And Daughter - Paul Simon
13. Singing In My Sleep - Semisonic
14. When I First Met Your Ma - Paul Kelly
15. When I Get To The Border - She & Him
(From ‘Five for a Puffing Moment’:)
16. Southern Manners - The Watson Twins
17. Islands In The Stream - Feist ft. The Constantines
18. Goodbye Stranger - Supertramp
19. The Power of Love - Huey Lewis and the News
20. Warwick Avenue - Duffy
Sadly, I was the person who made mixtapes all the time for all my friends and especially for every boy I liked, but very rarely was given one–I can think of only a few mixtapes I got from boys, some of which are missing. Since, after digging through some dusty boxes to no avail, I couldn’t find the best one (which featured an edited version of “Creep” by Radiohead–hilarious) and the one from my first Email Relationship in college included way too much of the boy’s original goth/raver music with essay-long titles, I figure this is the best I can do: here is the fastest mixtape I ever made for a boy. It was 1993.
I had just met him the night before. I was an artsy poetry-writing 16-year-old who had semi-nerd status at school. As one male friend finally explained to me, “guys think you’re cute, but weird…and your dad…” …which meant that no one was remotely interested in dating someone whose dad was a teacher. But worse, there were no guys who were more interested in music and literature and other cool geeky stuff than sports and beer and getting bad grades, so there wasn’t anyone I could even write tortured poetry about! But then, there was this guy from far away… We had bonded over music–while he was more into metal and I was more into “alternative”–we liked some of the same bands, which meant that we were destined to be frenz 4-eva (at the least!).
As soon as I got home that night, I rushed to my room in a flurry of like and got down to business. I was going to see him one more time before he got on an airplane and jetted home, so I had to do it with what I had. A challenge! Normally I made elaborate collage covers and used those serious chrome tapes in slim cases (that dared you to even TRY taping over them–remember those? how there would be a ghost track in the background if you did?). But I didn’t have any blank tapes on hand, so I had to settle for a crappy quality recycled tape I’d gotten from school (had some talk on it, I think), ripped off the labels and cut out my own cassette frame from some blurry photos I had of a painting I had done. It was an impressionistic tangle of trees in psychedelic colors, and so clearly, it was crying out for me to name the mix “a walk through a sonic forest” (of course, i was into e.e. cummings at the time). My goal was to make him appreciate more subtly poetic music of the alternative species with less distortion/screaming, and make a nice mix of both big label bands and little local bands (one track even came from a demo!). [I do remember, though, trying very hard to not copy half the songs off the Singles soundtrack (you'll see 3 in the playlist) or that seminal compilation Never Mind the Mainstream (just used one).]
But I just *knew* this was the beginning of something momentous, so I started taping a copy for myself before going to bed super late. Hence, this preserved playlist. (Interesting how in the age of CD burning, everyone is able to retain whatever playlist they’ve made up for someone else…think of all the great playlists we made back in the real mixtape days that are now lost to us…wah.) The great thing about the time constraint was that I had no time to put together a cryptic subliminal narrative about our fated beautiful relationship that was bound to happen soon. Instead, the tape was merely about the music. Of course, when he gave me a tape before saying goodbye, I couldn’t help but try to decode the entire thing.
End of story: it really was all about the music. We never hooked up. But we stayed friends, won each other over to our non-mutual favorite bands (I came to appreciate hardcore and screamo, even), and spent our college years going to a million rock shohttp://www.cassettefrommyex.com/?page_id=29#comment-15141ws. And we’re still friends today.
Side A
1. higher ground - red hot chili peppers
2. would - alice in chains
3. gold - the violet burning
4. new year’s day - u2
5. kyrie - glasshouse
6. fait accompli - curve
7. do it for love - the 77s
8. a kissed out red floatboat - cocteau twins
9. message in a bottle - the police
10. consider - the choir
11. stars of warburton - midnight oil
12. black birds - the throes
Side B
1. hearts & minds - the farm
2. then - the charlatans uk
3. little bones - the tragically hip
4. inside out - the prayer chain
5. seasons - chris cornell
6. tale o’ the twister- chagall guevara
7. nearly lost you - screaming trees
8. spirit of 76 - the alarm
9. release - pearl jam
10. end - the cure
These ollllldddd songs are what is dragging everything behind.
I didn’t see a whole lot of The Cure. “Love Song” should be on any mix tape/cd that you give to someone you love. Period.
I’d have a lot whole lot of MGMT, Incubus, Nine Inch Nails, Minus The Bear, Zero 7, Thom Yorke… etc.
Well, it’s not from my ex-, it’s from me to her…though she’s not really my ex- but more of a never-could-be… Like they say, “Keep your girlfriend close, and your girlfriend’s girlfriend closer…” Funny, though, as she likes guys as much as girls…
It was 2005, and she was alone…physically, emotionally… She looked to me to fill in some of that empty space for those weeks/months that turned into years…and I did; more so that her lady did. And so I made it for her, thinking that things would disappear or be lost when SHE got back into town…wanting to make her think of me when she was alone and feeling unloved/unappreciated. Well, it worked for awhile…and it works to a lesser extent now… She’s the love of my life…the ONE that I can’t get over, and if I died tomorrow, I’d die happy knowing that we had our time together…
Therefore, I give you L3…Lust, Love, Loss…
Burnin’ for You—Blue Oyster Cult
My Kinda Lover—Billy Squier
Here Comes My Girl—Tom Petty
Jet City Woman—Queensryche
No One Like You—Scorpions
Stone In Love—Journey
Patiently—Journey
Faithfully—Journey
Waiting For a Girl Like You—Foreigner
Closer to the Heart—RUSH
You Make Loving Fun—Fleetwood Mac
Storms—Fleetwood Mac
You’re Not Drinking Enough—Don Henley
Always Somewhere—Scorpions
Still Loving You—Scorpions
The Party’s Over (Hopelessly In Love)—Journey
Wish You Were Here—Pink Floyd
Songbird–Fleetwood Mac
She’s an amazing woman, and I treasure every moment I spend with her.
I dated a guy named Mike. He was the bad boy that everyone loved, dressed like Bender from “The Breakfast Club,” and eventually won me over by playing the cello for me privately one rainy day in our school’s band room. I remember how his brown hair swung in his face as his fingers held the strings and his arm pumped emotively back and forth, carving out music. It is so hard for me to believe that we were even together- there were just so many things about us that were different. But one thing we always appreciated in one another was our taste in music. What music to listen to was something we could always agree on. We did lots of things on Friday nights, and Saturday nights, too, but mostly I remember the driving. Driving around. Driving from his house to my house. Driving to my house to his house. Always in his car. He had perfected the art of driving while lighting a cigarette with a match. We would find a place, park, and look up through the moon roof at the stars and moon. Together, our playlist was:
“Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz
“All this Love” by The Similou
“Jennifer Juniper” by Donovan
“Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” by The Beatles
“Junk Bones” by Dark Dark Dark
“All These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers
“Bones” by The Killers
“We Are the Few” Streetlight Manifesto
“Jimmy” by MIA
“Starlight” by MUSE
“Big Poppa” by Notorious BIG
“Drop it Like its Hot” by Snoop Dogg
“On Top” by The Killers
“That Time” by Regina Spektor
“Sleepy Tigers” by Her Space Holiday
“Business Time” by Flight of the Conchords
“No Children” by The Mountain Goats
His music has blended so much into mine that I forget which songs were “ours”… they have now become mine. All the bands and artists that I defined as “Mike’s band” or “Mike introduced me to this band” or “Mike loves this artist” I grew to love. They are now mine, too. He broke my heart, eventually. I now have the right to love them, because I no longer love him.
After we broke up, I decided to burn him a CD. The playlist was:
“Cardigan Weather” by Meg and Dia
“Back in Your Head” by Tegan and Sara
“Don’t Cry Out” by Shiny Toy Guns
“Shut Up and Let Me Go” by The Ting Tings
“Its Nice to Know You Work Alone” by Silversun Pickups
“Was It A Dream?” by 30 Seconds to Mars
“Its a Hard Life” by Queen
“Trouble No More” by Dark Dark Dark
“This is Twice Now” by Lydia
“Sleep Well” by Lydia
“Show You How” by The Killers
“They” by Jem
“As You Cry” by The Hush Sound
“Conquest” by The White Stripes
“No Children” by The Mountain Goats
I think we all know who got the last laugh.
I don’t think it was meant to be romantic. It was sent to me inside a letter by by closest friend, Tim. My initial reaction was of confusion and annoyance when I saw a CD plastered with the names of bands such as Anal Cunt. A joke, of course. I put it in my CD player, lay back on the couch and waited. I thought I knew what the first song would be, and I was right. The song that reminded him of me. “Whistle for the Choir” by The Fratellis. I never knew if that was something I should be flattered by but, at the time, starved for affection as I was, I took it to mean only nice things. A girl like you’s just irresistable.
The whole CD was drenched in Tim. His love for every type of music under the sun was one of my favourite things about him and he didn’t disappoint with his playlist. Gogol Bordello sat alongside Lily Allen, Leonard Cohen with Maroon 5. On the surface, I suppose it didn’t have the makings of a love tape. Lyrically, “Nelly the Elephant” doesn’t say “I want you”. The sentiment was there, though. The time, the wanting to share his passions with me. I listened to it over and over.
Nothing came of it. We grew closer and closer but at some point began to drift again. There are some people you’re meant to always keep as friends, but that doesn’t mean that that CD wasn’t full to the brim with love.
I just had the surprise to see a site that mentions mixed tapes, I am a teenager in the 80s and had a huge collection of cassettes; and made many many mixed tapes for myself, for my friends and specially for my girlfriend. I remember making a mixed tape for her on her birthday (just an add on since I gave her also a cake), she liked it for two reasons: 1) both sides A and B is carefully balanced off in terms of length, no sudden song disruption due to lack of tape space and no excessive tape space remaining for both sides and 2) It contained an original composition of mine for her. Anyway, I am not very sure already of the exact song sequence but I remember somewhat like :
Side A :
1) Wicked Garden - Stone Temple Pilots
2) Love of A Lifetime - Firehouse
3) Love Song - Tesla
4) Patience - Guns ‘N Roses
5) Daughter - Pearl Jam
6) Cutie Pie (Hold ME In Your Arms) - Original
Side B
1) Here For You - Firehouse
2) Regret - New Order
3) Bed Are Burning - Midnight Oil
4) Love Song - The Cure
5) Save A Prayer - Duran Duran
6) Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm - Crash Test Dummies
It is still sitting someplace in my collections and I am sure it is in fine condition since I put my mixed tapes in moisture free cassette bags. My girl, she is my wife already and (counting the girlfriend stages) is together for 17 years, now with 2 kids and happily married.
My girlfriend of 3 years and I had broken up right before our first semester of college, distance being the biggest hurdle. This breakup was shortlived. We separated for about 2 months before giving it another shot. Before the (if you can even call it this) breakup I always had the intention of making her a mixed CD but never did so I decided to quit putting it off. One can never be too sure of the stability of a relationship during those first booze soaked years of college. We ended up breaking up a year later for good but I hope she still has, and maybe even occasionally listens, to the CD I gave her
The Perishers- Nothing like you and I
Bare Naked Ladies- If I had a million dollars
Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Maps
Christian Castro- Cuando me miras asi
Eisley- I could be there for you
Iron and Wine- The Trapeze Swinger
Bob Dylan- Mr. Tambourine man
Lifehouse- You belong to me
Snow Patrol- Chasing Cars
Marc Anthony- I need you
The Stranglers- Golden Brown
Andrew Bird- Imatosis
The Decemberists- We both go down together
Lifehouse- You and Me
I’m sure there were another couple songs on there, but I can’t for the life of me remember what they were. Some of the songs on that CD are, to this day, a bit difficult to listen to.
I’ve made tons of mix tapes and CDs over the years, for various reasons and various people, but never had one made for me that came as a surprise, or a crush type thing. I’ve made trades and what not, but never that special surprise type mix.
This story is about the mix tape that got away.
She was in sales, I was a shipper. She was incredibly hot, but aside from that she was also friendly and had a great smile.
I’d just gone through a break up, and was enjoying the idea that I could actually look at other women again without feeling guilty.
So, naturally, I made her a tape.
I only remember two of the songs, one was ‘Fool For Your Stockings’ by ZZ Top, the other was ‘No Daddy No’ by Pretty & Twisted. I left it on her desk one morning before she got in and waited to see her reaction. Penthouse letters type fantasies went through my mind. As if!
The tape ended up being placed in her garbage can so that I would have to see it when I came back from lunch. One of the owners of the company had a chat with me about sexual harassment. Whoops.
I was too proud at the time to retrieve it from the garbage, but I wish I had. It was a damn good tape. I just wish I could remember what all the songs were!
Obviously nothing ever happened with her, but strangely I heard from someone a couple of years later (long after leaving the company) that she’d asked about me.
If You Shoot Me In A Dream, You Better Wake Up And Apologize: Honoring the Cassettes to My Exes (And Would-Be Exes)
The mixtape is still the love letter for dorks. Hell, we still make them; an iTunes playlist may not require the same Blood, Sweat & Tears (a band that I hope has never been included on a mixtape in the history of the medium) that went into making a C90 or C120 mix, but the intent is still the same–expressing emotion through song.
Like other pop culture-obsessed dorks, I made making mixtapes an art. If you were a female who I had more than a passing interest in, and you were in my life between 1992 and 2003, invariably you received a mixtape from me, most likely with a title ripped off from a cult classic (example: My title of THIS rant comes from an old mixtape title, which is a line from “Reservoir Dogs”). I doubt you thought I was clever when I would title Side A “This Side” and Side B “That Side,” but at the time, I thought I was Lester-freaking-Bangs. If I made you more than one (and if I REALLY liked you, I surely did), you were probably rolling your eyes at my insistence on putting Prince and Bjork on every single tape–even if you pleaded with me, “I don’t like Prince!” And if you are one particular young woman who I am thinking of, I now admit, it was probably creepy and more than a little pretentious to end Side 2 of that mix I made back in ‘96 with a repeat of Prince going “I love you…I love you” (taken from the song “Orgasm” from his ‘Come’ album).
But, oh la’mour…what’s a boy in love supposed to do? Particularly when he really believes every single word Morrissey sings and is the kind of guy who prints out the lyrics to NIN’s ridiculous song “Eraser” and tacks them to his bedroom wall?
You know what? It’s no wonder I couldn’t get a date in high school.
But for all of my self-absorbed “Catcher In the Rye” ridiculousness, I knew how to make a damn good mixtape in those days. And in fact, I STILL make them using CD-Rs and my 9000 song iTunes library. True, burning a CD isn’t nearly as sexy as spending hours and hours with your cassette and CD library in front of you, trying to find that *perfect* next song. But the practice still serves a purpose, and as long as there are slightly neurotic pop culture dorks in this world, the mixtape will never die.
Here’s a tracklist from a mix I made a few years back for an ex-lover.
Cool Cool Breeze–Peter Murphy
Debaser–The Pixies
Fairytale in the Supermarket–The Raincoats
That Great Love Sound–The Raveonettes
California Girls–Magnetic Fields
Happy When It Rains–The Jesus and Mary Chain
The Beautiful Ones–Suede
Haunted–The Pogues
Explosions–The Mary Onettes
Venus in Furs–The Velvet Underground
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want–The Dream Academy
Just You–”Twin Peaks” cast
Song to the Siren–This Mortal Coil
Superstar–Sonic Youth
I Wanna Be Your Dog–Iggy and the Stooges
Confetti–The Lemonheads
Going Underground–The Jam
Sex Changes–The Dresden Dolls
Blasphemous Rumours–Depeche Mode
In high school (’96 - ‘00) I made a ton of mix tapes for myself, friends, and others; but the best mixtape I ever received was from the 23 year old librarian I worked with at my hometown library when I was sixteen. She was a former punk rocker and I had a bit of a crush on her (mostly because she was college educated, into music, and commented on my punk rock t-shirts… esp. my Black Flag bars t). I was mr. hardcore punk at the time and before I left that job she gave me a tape called “Music to Expand Your Horizons” (which I still have). The listing is:
Side 1:
X - burning house of love (live)
Butthole Surfers - who was in my room last night?
Delta 72 - satellite
Swervedriver - for seeing heat
Pixies - break my body
Throwing Muses - snakeface
Sonic Youth - Teenage Riot
Swampfox - brainblender
Side 2:
Beth Orton - stolen car
Velvet Underground - what goes on
Elliot Smith - waltz #2 (xo)
Kristin Hersh - a clearer light
Ween - voodoo lady
Dinosaur Jr - not you again
Social Distortion - ring of fire (secret track)
The best and worst mix tape I ever got was one song over and over and over on both sides until the last song on side two. The repeated song: “Release Me” by Wilson/Phillips (hey it was popular). The last song: “Here’s Where the Story Ends” by The Sundays. It was the only thing I listened to for six months after the breakup.
I had known him for about a year. We where in two different places, both in time and in geographic location and we knew it wouldn’t be right to be together. He was finishing his last year of college and me my last year of high school and we where both just waiting for the summer to come again so we finally could actualize the love that we had both recognized for so long. Music is something we always shared. When we first met each other, it wasn’t long after discussing how terrible the juice we where both drinking was to begin exchanging favorite concerts and bands we had seen/ listened to recently. He had a niece that he adored and would tell me constantly how he wanted to help raise her, teach her to be cool and most of all introduce her to music.
A month before the summer was set to kick in I decided I needed to make a grand effort to ensure that when we where together again it would be exactly what I had anticipated. So I set out on a mission, create a beautiful mix cd of lullabye-esque songs covering a wide range of artists that he and I both enjoyed, but not for him, for his niece. This was a much more difficult task than I had initially anticipated. Not only must the album cover a variety of favored artists, all the songs must in some way relate to sleep, dreams, or night and be suitable for a three year old. After a day or two of toiling I had come up with a completed album. It began with “Go To Sleep” by Radiohead, ended with “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire and everything in between worked to fulfill my vision. I painted the cd with white-out and drew the sun changing to a moon. I called it- For Dreamers.
When I gave him the cd he was so touched he didn’t know what to say. It was then that I realized the cd would never actually make it to his niece and that really, I had made it for him all along. We dated for a year and the breakup was heartbreaking. But he is still a dreamer. And so am I. And that’s what it was about all along.