Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song as a Time
By Lisa Fary
The first album I bought that my parents truly hated was Pearl Jam’s Ten. They hadn’t been fans of Vanilla Ice or New Kids, but I like to think that at least Mom, having lived through her own pre-teen infatuation with The Beatles, had understood those lapses in musical judgment. For years, my parents’ disdain was the main reason I listened to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Another reason was because – and pardon the residual teen angst in this statement – their music sounded like I felt all the time.
Love is A Mix Tape has nothing to do with science fiction or comics. There’s no scene when author Rob Sheffield holes up to watch all three Star Wars movies (because most of the action takes place pre-prequel) in a nacho drenched marathon. He doesn’t identify with Captain Kirk – or if he does, he doesn’t say so.
However, he speaks to something that just about everyone from my generation is familiar with (and laments the loss of): the mix tape.
While I read about Sheffield’s life and the tapes he made, I couldn’t stop thinking about my own. Tapes I made to listen to on the drive to my job at Borders or on the way home from the grad classes I’d desperately enrolled in at University of North Florida that one semester. The tapes I made to bring with me to Madagascar – I spent two weeks making about ten tapes that would get me through the two years of service. Tapes for homesickness, tapes for rainy nights, tapes for doing laundry in a bucket behind my hut. I never got to listen to those tapes for any of their intended purposes; they all became homesickness tapes.
Every break up tape I ever made with the genuine intention of sending it to the guy who dumped me, usually starting off with Ani DiFranco, working through songs that spoke to my hurt, and ending with something about how much it sucks to be alone. I never sent those tapes, but I’m proud to say I never once included Alanis Morrisette’s “You Outta Know”.
It was all music that, like Pearl Jam’s Ten in high school, spoke to how I was feeling, what I was going through. In Love is A Mix Tape, Sheffield takes the reader through his life through the tapes he made for the middle school dance, his wedding reception, and throughout his marriage.
Love is A Mix Tape made me wish that I hadn’t scrapped my old tape deck and all those tapes because, more so than even my journals at the time, they were the kind of biography that could evoke that old feeling. Whether it was the celebratory tape I’d made the day I was accepted to AmeriCorps and my path out of Jacksonville was clear or the tapes my first boyfriend, Ed, made for me or the thousand other tapes made for a thousand other reasons, Sheffield makes the point that each one is a little time capsule and each one fraught with meaning.
Now, after finishing the book earlier tonight while John was in the kitchen making dinner, I’m thinking about the tapes I’d make for him and the tapes I should have made before for other reasons.
Love is A Mix Tape stuck with me, is still on my mind. I think I’m going to play with playlists in iTunes, label it, and send it to John through iChat. It’s not the same as handing over a tape with a hand-painted jacket, but it’ll do.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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You can still burn CDs if you want!
Then you can draw really awesome cover art!
You know, I don't think we even have a CD player anymore! Maybe I can do a fun iPod sock to go along with a playlist.
And – FYI – 'Ten' has just been reissued in some super deluxe sets, including vinyl.
To juxtapose your mothers liking The Beatles to your preference for New Kids or Vanilla Ice as lapses in judgment, I don't even know where to begin… I guess I'll state it simply since its too early for me to worked up – Musical genius vs. putrid schlock!
I know. I know. However, I was aiming more at the screaming teen idolness of the Beatles, rather than actual talent. Because the Beatles, like, had some. The other guys didn't.
I just rediscovered an old mix tape I made in high school. It was still in the old radio I abused for a decade. Just for fun I pressed play and I was overwhelmed with nostalgia. It is it's own time capsule in a way.
Every break up tape I ever made with the genuine intention of sending it to the guy who dumped me, usually starting off with Ani DiFranco
I've always loved 'Untouchable Face'. 'You Outta Know' has NOTHING on that song.