Love is a Mix Tape

I recently received my copy of Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield which I had loaned to a friend of mine from work who subsequently quit his job, moved to North Carolina to get a Ph.D. in journalism/mass communication, and, two years later, finally read and returned the book.  I was flipping through it and remembered how much I enjoyed reading it the first time.  I won’t give away any plot points but the gist of it is a memoir of falling in love as told through and by mix tapes.  Yes, magnetically encoded ribbons of tape with songs painstakingly chosen and recorded by pushing the “play” and “record” buttons on a (most probably) large and unwieldy tape player at the same time (aside: mom has a tape of me as a wee lass reciting the alphabet and if you listen carefully, you can catch a snippet of my inquisitive nature at work with the query, “why you pressing two?”).

Almost all of my old tapes have been tossed out because I now have that music on CD or in MP3 formats.  I don’t even have a device with which to play these tapes anymore ever since I sold my Toyota Cressida (ah, I still miss you, Cressie).  Still, there are some mix tapes that I have kept for sentimagical reasons even if I don’t have the means to listen to them anymore.  One such keepsake was one of the first, if not THE first, mix tape TP ever made for me.  It really is a melange of songs ranging from punk to 1960s Latin folk, from Brit pop to rockabilly music.  Titled “Bored with the Bar,” the play list goes a little something like this:

• Sports Guitar – Bong Bong
• Archers of Loaf – Harnessed in Slums
• Sebadoh – Good Things
• The Simple Ones – Riff City
• Mekons – His Bad Dream
• Pylon – Feast on my Heart
• Gang of Four – Natural’s Not in It
• Fugazi – Greed
• The Sandpipers – Enamorado
• Helium – Superball
• The Modern Lovers – Girlfriend
• Skin Pops – Finest Hour
• Husker Du – These Important Years
• Bongwater – Women Tied Up In Knots
• Skin Pops – DDSF and Truckstop
• Stewart Copeland – Franco
• XTC – Making Plans for Nigel and You’re the Wish You Are I Had
• Helium – Honeycomb
• Tom Waits – San Diego Serenade and Little Trip to Heaven and I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You
• Nanci Griffith – Listen to the Radio and Outbound Plane
• Fugazi – Bed for the Scraping
• Cake Like – Fruitcake
• The Collins Kids – Lonesome Road
• Shellac – Boche’s D

Is it any wonder I fell for the guy?

We celebrated(ish) a milestone anniversary last week(ish) and I can’t help but wonder what a mix tape from him would look like today.  We have little to no opportunity to explore and encounter new music these days.  On the rare occasion we do, it gets put on the back burner in favor of one of the children’s tunes from They Might Be Giants (luckily, we dig them too) when we are out and about (trust me, it’s a question of survival, not variety).  I would ask TP to make me a mix tape, but he’s is illiterate when it comes to MP3s and uploading and downloading and ripping shipping and burning shurning.  I would end up making the mix myself and where’s the fun in that?  So, all you non-TPs out there, I implore you, what would you feature on your “best of” mix tape?  Please send your suggestions to the comment box below and/or ship to me directly.  Bonus: if you get the mix to me before my birthday, you could win fabulous prizes, cash money, or nothing at all!  Hurry!  Offer, like everything else in this world, ends quickly.