Love is a Mix Tape
And the award goes to Rob Sheffield for having written a one-of-a-kind, can’t-put-it-down love and music story, where music in the form of mix tapes is the narrator. Rob, hands down a brilliant story. I felt you the entire way through. I adore you.
I plan to purchase 4 copies of this book to send out to my sister-flanks with whom I have always shared mix tapes and mix CDs. Back in high school the two angels on either side of me were Kristin and Kelly, affectionately, we were the KGK! The mix tape took us everywhere together. The songs on the tape would screech out through small speakers in Kristin’s VW Rabbit with the top down while we drove, hiding Miller Lite cans between our knees, singing at the top of our Marlboro lungs to Madonna or R.E.M., driving out to the lake, down to the beach, across the Mexico border or up into the mountains in New Mexico. I still have a mix tape that Kristin mailed to me from Italy after we had
graduated from high school and she went to study abroad. Kelly had gone off to school in Lubbock (God help her and the mix tapes I listened to for 8 hours while driving through the flatland to visit her one Halloween weekend). Kristin was the furthest away, across the pond, the little brat, living in Lecco, on Lake Como. I was still stuck in San Antonio. I treasured this cassette so much. One of my best friends was living out her adventure in one of the most beautiful places in the world and she took the time to make me a mix tape. And god knows that took twenty times longer than making a mix CD. The tape featured 10,000 Maniacs, Elton John and much more, but one thing that I remember vividly, and always will, is that there was either a glitch in her dubbing or an intentional use of space, but right at the end of “rolling like thund(ah), under the covers….” suddenly it slips right into the one big drum hit that leads Whitney Houston’s massive voice into the modulated moment…”AND eeeeyyyyyyyeeeeeeyyyyyyyy will always love you(oooo,ooooo), eeeeyyyyyyeee, will always love you.” And the song is over. That the only part of the song that made it on to the tape. Every single time I hear that Elton John song, I sing the last lines of Whitney’s genius performance (not as well, I might add) . I cherish that tape, though it was played so many times in my VW Rabbit convertible that the tape itself is a little loose and doesn’t play very well these days. I thought about the KGK so much while reading his book. Most of it takes place in the 1990’s which is when the three of us were running buddies and when Kurt Cobain died.
As what happens to many friends, we are now all split up again, much like our freshman year of college. One K is in Chicago, the other in Portland, but the KGK is always with me in my heart and in R.E.M., Depeche Mode, Madonna, Morrissey, Abba, Nine Inch Nails and of course, Whitney.
Skip forward to the late 90’s and you find me again flanked by two new best friends with whom mix tapes were shared on a frequent basis. Sarah Dashew, Vera Salamone and I were world-traveling buddies and stage-mates. Though my time spent with Sarah is chronicled on two CDs we released together, the private side still lives on in the form of cassettes that the three of us made while traveling together in Italy. Back when I still traveled on the train in Europe (now I drive), we carried with us a boom box that we would strap to one of our backpacks. Funny enough, the KGK did the same thing when we traveled Italy together. But in the late 90’s and at the very beginning of 2000, MP3 players were on the market, but not as accessible as today. And what was so great about traveling with a stereo is that we could return to our hotel room or our rented room in some old ladies house, pop in a tape or a CD and rock out together in unison.
Vera, Sarah, and I would find our way to a sleepy beach town in Southern Italy and spend an afternoon on the pebble beach with our stereo, a few books of CDs, and three blank cassettes. The game was that whoever had her turn would plug in the headphones and make a mix tape out of the handful of CDs we had with us. Surprisingly enough, we rarely all chose the same songs or the same order. Once the tape was ready, we’d all listen to the mix. I believe we spent more lira that summer on big fat batteries and blank cassettes than we did on pasta and wine. But it kept us busy, sharing music with each other, even off the stage. The picture here to the right is in Cesena, Italy at sound check when we performed with Michelle Shocked, who showed up a few times on some mix tapes that Sarah made.
Though we rarely communicate these days, I have boxes of mix tapes from back in the day, full of Meshell Ndegeocello, Joe Henry, Neil Finn, Chris Cornell, Ani DiFranco and so much more. All of the music we shared (our own and from others) took this trio all around the country, Europe, and New Zealand. I miss those times, but am very thankful to have had the years and the mix tapes together.
(For more on Sarah, visit http://www.sarahdashew.com – she’s dropping a new CD this month!).
Technology today makes it so easy for us to take music for granted. Each song is at our .99 fingertips. We can place them in playlists, delete them from playlists when we get sick of them. With real live cassette tapes, you’d actually have to fast forward through a song you were bored with or you’d actually have to rewind to hear one again. You’d actually have to choose carefully the songs you wanted to put on a cassette. You’d have to record them real-time, all 3 minutes of the song would have to pass by before you could add the next song (or the next partial song like when Whitney took the encore for Elton). It took so much more thought than today. But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate modern technology. Due to the mad invention of MP3’s, Internet, iTunes, and iPods, I can distribute my music very easily. And very importantly, my pals and I can’t ever get bored with the amount of songs that can fit onto one iPod or on disc in the 6-CD changer.
But I have to admit reading the pages he wrote about his love and his loss while integrating the music of his mix tapes into the narration of the story hit the nail on the head: Love is indeed a mix tape. I feel nostalgic for the process of ordering songs onto cassette in just the perfect way so that the songs can flow and shine against each other. I miss giving those mix tapes to my sisters. Instead, I’ll send them each a copy of the book. Gladly.
It’s easy to see why Ginger Leigh’s fans completely obliterated all the competition in the February voter’s poll. She deserved it. The Austin songbird’s popularity continues to skyrocket and her schedule gets busier by the day as her fan base grows to monstrous numbers. With appearances booked from Amarillo to Italy, she’s on a frenetic and exciting course to stardom that is truly fitting for an artist of her caliber.









