Two former musicians in the house means lots of boxes of tapes—two inch studio masters, quarter inch 8-track and boxes and boxes of cassettes, including a number of mixtapes. I’m down to one working tape deck—the trusty old four-track recorder that I used to test out melodies and present rough ideas to fellow bandmates. There aren’t any lost masterpieces. Those were the days when you perfected your live performance and tried to scrape up enough cash for some studio time—so they’re mostly just poorly labeled ideas and quick soundbites to keep me from forgetting some cool riff or progression. The other day I came across one tape that is typical of the bunch labeled simply—This Side.
A tape from my collection.
It belonged to a friend and bandmate who passed away in his mid 20’s—so it’s a bit surreal to hear recordings of him or find stuff that we shared. We would often pass tapes back and forth with notes about what particular sound or inspiration we were getting from a playlist—which in turn inspired our own music making. A lot of the time it would just be a message on our answering machine saying, “Hey man, I left a tape in a plant on your porch. Tell me what you think about the guitar on track 3.”
A few months ago, I was over at some friends and we were sharing music. We were using our phones to call up YouTube videos, furiously playing just a few bars of a song before moving onto the next one. It was like a commercial for ADD meds: Too distracted to listen to AN ENTIRE SONG? Maybe you suffer from YOU’RE PATHETIC which affects millions of people every year.
We even commented how listening to a whole song was just not happening and resigned ourselves to the funny yet bizarre moment. Oddly enough it reminded me how much I used to love getting mixtapes and how I still love active listening. I’d never go back because I love music accessibility and listen to much more new music now than then. But there was something intimate about the crappy writing and sometimes other unexpected recordings you would hear on a tape someone had given you.
With that, I thought it would be cool to share with you what was on this 1985 cassette. The Alternative Music scene was sort of in transition and even some of our post punk idols like Hüsker Dü were toning it down a bit. The pop scene was in the spotlight—thanks to MTV (Madonna, Wham! Bananarama, Prince, Michael Jackson and the like) and college radio was the rage with bands like REM being consistent chart toppers. We were looking for something else, but we just didn’t know what it was yet.
The Waterboys sounded fresh at the time. When I played the track Spirit today, it really rang true.
All the mixtapes I made like this are probably sitting in friends’ basements! :p My tapes were admittedly a bit more thrashy than this. I was longing for more female-centric music that wasn’t so mainstream and it would be a few years before bands like Hole and Babes In Toyland were on the scene. I did find a love for 80’s pop music around 2003—and I’ll save that for another blog!