Classic Mixed Tapes versus Burnin' the Itunes

I remember Christmas morning circa 1980 like it was yesterday: the smell of pine sap filling the air as I was blinded by the biggest boombox ever to grace my presence. Its speakers stared at me blankly like a wide-eyed alien while its antennae intimidatingly shot up straight into the upper atmosphere, claiming its fair share of airspace. But the deal-cincher was the (sing hallelujah brothers and sisters) double tape deck. I now held the power of Dolby at my fingertips and it felt so good.

Yes, this was a defining moment in my life; I put away my Urban Chipmunks 8-track and my Big Bird record player in anticipation of living a more enlightened life inspired by such current MTV hits as "I Want Candy" and "Hey Mickey." Not only did I help kill the radio star, but I totally bought into the mixed tape movement. I recall excitedly ripping the tapes from their cellophane jackets and going through the ritual of determining Side A from Side B, painstaking affixing the labels, and spending hours upon hours listening to Casey Kasem's Top 40 for just the right songs.

Indeed, I'm fairly certain I had a mixed tape for every moment of my young life. I listened to these tapes all of the time which has resulted in an array of aural flash-backs from my first slow-dance song, REO Speedwagon's "I Can't Fight this Feeling Any Longer," to a devastating high school break-up, "Angel Eyes." I made and distributed all sorts of themed mixed tapes for friends, crushes, and fellow band geeks, and there was a certain labour of love that went into designing the perfect mixed tape.

I dust off the old tape deck every once in awhile, but my love for playing dj has been replaced with indexing my ITunes library. Frankly, it's just not as meaningful to me as when I made the tapes. Perhaps the fact that the tape deck was a little less anesthetic and a lot more raw appealed to my artistic senses. There definitely was a certain enjoyable anxiety associated with getting the timing just right for the fade-out. It was also a great way to pass the time and get all mushy thinking about the things and people that were important to me at a particular point in time. Now all you have to do is stick in a CD, click eight or nine songs, and voila you're ready to go within a matter of minutes. The time for reflection zapped by technology in an attempt to make life easier on all of us.

That's not to say that I haven't bought into ITunes. I love being able to type in any old song in the world that I'm in the mood for and adding it to my library in the time that it takes to warm-up a cuppa. In fact, I've recently been thinking about my life and what the soundtrack might look like. Here's what I've come up with thus far:

Abba's "The Stranger" and The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" are what I recall as my first favorite songs.
Bonnie Tylor's rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" followed suit.
Images from Dire Straits' "I Want my MTV" go through my head on a daily basis.
Throw in a little side of Billy Joel's "Pressure," along with some Dee-lite, and add a heaping portion of the likes of MC Hammer, De La Soul, and the early Yo! as remniscient of my high school days.
College: my era of punk and goth which never really ended but can be summarized as anything performed by "The Cure" and "Bauhaus." Soundtrack must include "Bella Logossi's Dead" and "Into you like a train" and "Temple of Love"
My Scottish travails: "Irish Rover," "Flower of Scotland," Evlis' "Blue Moon" and "The Bare Necessities."
Loves loved and lost: Frente, OMD's "Secret," Anything by the Cocteau Twins, "Take the Weather with You," Tom Wait's "On the Wings of your Love," "If not for You" by Bob Dylan, and "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas," by They Might be Giants.
Joey: Let me hear the calming call of a cello anytime (thanks, Jay-man); "So nice to come home to" "Someone to watch over me," "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones; "Do you realize?" -- Radiohead; "Busby Berkely Dreams" by the Magnetic Fields; and anything by the Palace Bros.
Milo: Brak's "Smell you later, get a job," "Baby Mine" from Dumbo, and "Candle on the Water" from Pete's Dragon. And I can't hear the Beatle's song "Two of Us" without melting down from pure love and joy.
My last year and a half in grad school: "Downtown," "Your mother should know," by the Beatles, Beck's "Everybody's got to learn sometimes," the Carpenters "Rainy Days and Mondays," and Morrissey's "Sing your life."