I'm moving for the first time in over 12 years from my humble little apartment in the city, and I can't believe the amount of crap I've accumulated.
I've decided that moving is good if only to motivate you to purge unnecessary items from your apartment. This is Spring cleaning on a massive level.
I found a draw filled with 80s cassettes, Cassingles and college mix tapes.
It's really hard to part with a mix tape, especially the ones you made. There's a sentimental connection to the format, or should I say art form. But there's also a sense of ownership to the creations.
As I was tossing them one by one into the garbage it dawned on me that I could recreate the mix tapes on Spotify. These tapes were mainly for my listening pleasure, and each one represents a very specific moment in my life.
I'm thrilled though not only to rediscover the tracks for myself, but also allow anyone out there with Spotify to experience them too.
All of the following original packaging images below click through to the Spotify lists...
NEW YORK CITY MIX
I know. Really original title for this one. I made the mix when I had first moved to NYC in 1995. It's the one mix tape I always had with me though and listened to it pretty much nonstop until MP3s...
I'M NOT MONKEY BOY
This has mid-90s all over it. Collective Soul, The Rembrandts, Paul Westerberg, Bjork?! Not all the tracks on this (or some of these other tapes) are on Spotify, by the way, but most of them are. The title for this one came from something I'd mutter under my breath as a miserable Executive Assistant starting out in the Entertainment Industry.
YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ME VERY UPSET
The title comes from Tom Cruise's line in
Mission Impossible, which I would quote pretty much daily in my 20s. There's a ton of techno, trance and dance stuff on this one that didn't survive past 1999. What ever happened to Deep Forest, by the way?
SILENT GLANCES FROM WAITERS
This one is dark, for the most part. I remember the title came from the fact that I was really bad at realizing I was being hit on when I went out. I got a lot of silent glances, sometimes from waiters, that didn't add up to anything ever.
MAGWITCH PROVIS BOOGIE
I never read
Great Expecations in school. It probably wouldn't (still to this day) be my favorite book of all time. It had a profound impact on me reading it in my mid 20s. The title of this tape comes from a major character in the book (known as both Abel Magwitch and Provis).
VICKI 4.0
My roommate Vicki came out of the closet exactly 5 months before I did. The range of emotions, drunken binges and broken hearts that occurred during the year we figured ourselves out was epic. Joking about how she constantly was reinventing herself to be newer improved, I would call out each version, and right about Vicki 4.0, this was the soundtrack to our lives. It's also, pretty much, the soundtrack to any gay bar in New York during the late 1990s.
