I’m doing my best to combat cabin fever with some early spring cleaning.  In my efforts, I found the very first mixed tape I ever made.

Here it is.  Notice the zero in the corner?   I numbered all my mixed tapes.  I had all the songs on them listed in a notebook so I could find whatever song I needed to listen to at any  moment.  Not exactly itunes, but I was satisfied with it at the time. I must have been around eleven or twelve when my mother gave me this cassette full of hymns to listen to on my brand new tape player/radio.  I was very bored with the tape, likely before I ever made it through one side.  The radio, however, was amazing.  This was the first radio I had for my very own self to listen to whatever station I wanted to in my bedroom.  The rules in our house were that we could only listen to the oldies (which is why I still know all of them by heart), or the Christian college station where this tape was made.

In my own room, while I was doing homework behind a closed door I rebelled.  I listened to Top 40 radio.  The likes of Paula Abdul, Depeche Mode, and Bon Jovi ruined me.  Thirty year old music on the oldies station was no longer enough for me.

My two sisters and I were all given that same tape along with radios for Christmas.  It wasn’t too long before we figured out how to tape over those tapes with songs off the radio.   My cassette player didn’t have two decks so the dubbing option wasn’t available to me.  Even if it were, I didn’t have other tapes to take music from.  I taped songs on both sides quickly.  So then, without another tape to use, I re-taped.  Over and over I did this until at some point in the future I bought blank tapes.

The result of this method is a tape full of terrible sound quality and half songs with deejay  voices interrupting much of the beginnings and endings.  Listening to this tape reminded me of when I would listen to one of my tapes for so long if I heard one of the songs I’d recorded on the radio, I’d automatically start singing the next song that was on my tape or recite whatever the deejay had said.  There was no shuffle, you listened to the whole tape, or risk finding what you wanted with fast-forward.

Here’s the list of songs.  It’s fairly boring, nothing obscure or hip.   Well, one exception near the end.

Side 1:

1Hold On-Wilson Phillips

2.Corina-Temptation

Really funnyslashstupid song.

3.Signs-Tesla

Tesla covered this song that I already knew from the oldies station.

4.Proud to be an American- Lee Greenwood

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  I’m not laughing about being proud to be from the USofA.  I’m laughing because I recorded only the part of the song where they say, “From the lakes of Minnesota….”   I had gopher pride.

5. (Everything I do) I do it for you- Bryan Adams

Oh yes.  Summer after the sixth grade this song came out.  The movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves came out.  The video combining the song and the movie came out.  And I remember it well. Also, one of my sisters fell in love with Christian Slater that summer.

6.Shiny Happy People-REM

Blender.com named this one of the worst 50 sings of all time.  Blender dot com you are so wrong!  I really loved this song.

7.One More Try-Timmy T

This song is bad.  Jump to 3:01 for the worst part.

8. Hole Hearted-Extreme

It was Christmas Eve when I recorded this one.  The deejay told me so.

Side 2

1.Can’t Stop This Thing We Started-Bryan Adams

I didn’t really like this song.  I think I just wanted to because I loved Robin Hood so very much.  Sorry Bryan Adams.

2.Fading Like a Flower (every time you leave)- Roxette

Why am I adding the music videos of some of these and not of others?  I just didn’t feel like watching some of them, or even bothering to look for them.  And what was it with parenthesizing half of the title of a song in the 90s?

3.Love Thy Will Be Done- Martika

Marika also sang Toy Soldiers.  She’s so serious.

4.Losing My Religion-REM

Not posting this video.  MTV played it so many times it’s burned in my brain.

5.Twin-believable- (I have no idea who sings this…it’s an EMF cover)

This made me giddy beyond belief.  If you are also a Minnesota Twins fan, it might make you giddy too.  I almost want to dedicate an entire post to this song alone.

In 1991, the Twins won the World Series.  With the exception of the ’87 Series, it seemed like pro sports in Minnesota were almost a joke.  When they began doing so well in 1991, a local radio station made a parody song using EMF’s Unbelievable, calling it Twin-believable.  Lots of teams do this, I know.  But I have never heard EMF’s song without silently singing the baseball lyrics since.  Also, I looked high and low for this song online.  It’s not there.  I may have the only recording of “Twin-Believable” on the internet.  And it sounds SO badly.  There’s a long break in the music around 1:18. Wait, it ends.  Possibly KDWB can post the full version themselves and make a whole bunch of people happy.  Or at least me.

That’s it.  That’s the end of my tape.  I had fun. Did you?  I have another tape I’d like to review soon but then I’m out.  Out of all the tapes I carefully made and labeled in my pre-MP3 days, only two remain.  I had to go out and buy a cassette player from a thrift store to listen to this, and it has duel decks with high speed dubbing capabilities.  Perhaps I can begin to make them once again.  Rad.