Mix-Tapes I have Known and Loved

I was thinking about the first ever gift of music I received from a boy the other day.  I was 13, he was 17 and we met at the local ski hill, he thinking me much older-looking and more mature than my 13 years.  (The fact that the Boy is about to turn 13 doesn't perturb me at all when I think about this liesliesalllies)


I was wooed by his worldliness, his maturity, his dreamy eyes.  And then he gave me a cassette-tape.  It wasn't a mix, but it had a song on it that made him think of me, *swoon*!  The cassette-tape in question was Skid Row's self-titled album and our song was I'll Remember You.  I listened to that song so many times, rewinding for the memorized number of seconds to the start of the song to hear it again and again.  I still remember the lyrics.  I eventually broke up with him because I felt that at 13, I simply couldn't offer him what an older woman of say, 14 or 15 could offer him and didn't feel it was fair to him.  It broke my young heart at the time and I wept for an eternity (or maybe a week, which is an eternity in teenaged time).  I had let him go for noble reasons, but my heart ached, so I kept listening to the song as I wept, star-crossed lover that I was.  Oh Skid Row, how your brilliant and poignant lyrics tore at my heart strings.


A few years later, a different kind of boy entered into my affections.  His aloof nature, Bon Jovi hair and superawesomecool Monte Carlo made him irresistible.  We would talk about philosophy, the universe and the Doors (all related).  We had a deep connection.  One day he gave me a mixed cassette-tape.  It was such an earth shatteringly personal gift.  The song that became worn out on that tape was She Talks to Angels by the Black Crows.  It's still my go-to song when we hit the Karaoke bars.  But what I remember about that mix, was not exactly all the songs on it, but rather the process of trying to read meaning into every song selection.  Why did he chose this song, this. Specific. Song.  What does it mean?  What is he trying to tell me?  MY GOD WHAT IS HE TELLING ME?  Another eternity was spent trying to decipher his cool-boy code, wondering if maybe I just wasn't cool enough to know what exactly he was trying to tell me.  I would have run away with him, but eventually he told me he was just too mixed up with life and didn't want to hurt me.  So nothing ever came of our cosmic connection except a collection of songs that meant something in a foreign thought process and an eternity of pining from afar.


Fast forward a couple of years to college.  Another cool dude I met and hung out with made me a mixed-tape with all the coolest songs that everyone loved in the mid 90's if you were into obscure alternative indie stuff that is.  And I was.  I had my green 8-hole Doc Martens, striped tights and plaid shirts.  This was perhaps the most confusing mixed-tape because I never did figure out if he was interested in me or just really dug music and wanted to share.  Regardless, I was still underaged in a college with a bunch of people who were of age and I felt so supremely cool to have been bestowed with such a collection.  I knew that the music on my compilation was most certainly the same that was being played at Zaphod Beeblebrox every weekend.  Oh how I yearned to get past those bouncers.


I made a couple of mixes in my later teen years that I would bestow upon oh-so lucky members of the opposite sex.  I remember meticulously selecting each song for a specific meaning or message, but only as long as it wasn't *too* obvious.  Each selection almost a test of whether they could find the hidden meaning.  And people say women over think things.  Pshht! 


As time went on, a couple of girlfriends of mine and myself would make tapes for each other and it became much freer, sharing the top tunes being played over our respective college radio stations or from bands that had just played at this intimate college pub and for-sure they were on the cusp of making it big!  One friend of mine had sent me a mix that included Massive Attack and Tricky, whom she had seen in two consecutive weekends and those two songs remain favourites to this day.


Nowadays, I get super mixes from my Gay and my Audiophile and fellow blonde trouble maker over at Life In Audio.  It's not quite the same as the Mixed-tape of my youth, but the music keeps me going.


So I'm curious, have you ever made a mixed-tape?  I guess now it's mixed CDs or MP3 Playlists, but as someone mentioned yesterday, you can' decorate a playlist.  What factors do you use in selecting your music?  Is there a hidden message or is it just, Hey, I'm digging these tunes right now and I think you will too!