The Tapes Of Listening Past
Visiting friends in Burlington recently, I unexpectedly had large chunks of my music collecting past come back to me in three tidy boxes.

Allow me to explain.

You see, we've moved around a lot. Different towns and cities, various provinces. Typical stuff you do in your twenties. And we all know that you can't take it all with you, as the conventional wisdom on another subject entirely would have it. Also, of course, sometimes personal tastes change with time. So, I would give friends things I was not going to carry with me on the next adventure. Books, tapes, and eventually (as formats changed) CDs as well. It's just the kind of guy I am.

One friend in particular, whom you will have surmised by now is the one we recently visited in Burlington, was recipient of a lot of these things while we still lived in Ontario. He is a true collector, one who will never throw anything away or sell it off, thinking that someday he might need it or want to listen to it. And so he has a rather extensive collection of his own, as well, to which he constantly adds new things.

Anyway, I was telling him the story about my new (to me) car and how it has a rockin' tape deck instead of a CD player. He got a big grin on his face and said he had a surprise for me. From the depths of his storage piles in his basement, the man brought forth these aforementioned three boxes (two of which have those awesome sets of three drawers, for cassettes - remember those?), which contained a surprising collection of my old tapes from when I was a kid. I was floored to be confronted with so much personal and musical history, and doubly so when he said I should definitely take them back. He was done with them.

Oh my.

Just looking at the following list (included in no particular order), I am kind of embarrassed by some of the cassettes listed here. But then again, we all have albums and artists in our distant pasts that we definitely loved at the time but who surely make us cringe now. And on the other side of that coin, there were some gems, too, proving I eventually got some taste somewhere along the way.

Check it out:

Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
Starship - Knee Deep In The Hoopla
Ugly Kid Joe - As Ugly As They Want To Be
Chartbusters (1985 various)
Beverly Hills Cop Sndtrk
Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair
Heart - Brigade
Gowan - Great Dirty World
PM Dawn - Of The Heart, Of The Soul and Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience
Footloose Sndtrk
Sting - Dream Of The Blue Turtles
Madonna - Erotica
Glass Tiger - Diamond Sun
John Cougar - American Fool
Bell Biv Devoe - Poison
Sting - The Soul Cages
Platinum Blonde - Standing In The Dark
Bryan Adams - Bryan Adams
INXS - Kick
This Is Music 6 (1989)
Bobby Brown - Bobby
Madonna - Who's That Girl Sndtrk
Doctor And The Medics - Laughing At The Pieces
U2 - Achtung Baby
C&C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat
Steve Winwood - Chronicles
Mariah Carey - Mariah Carey
Madonna - Madonna
George Michael - Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1
Honeymoon Suite - Honeymoon Suite
London Symphony Orchestra - Symphonic Music Of The Rolling Stones
Whitney Houston - I'm Your Baby Tonight
Madonna - Like A Virgin
Much Music Dance Mix '93
Whitney Houston - Whitney
The Blue Jays Album - Class Of '92
Young MC - Stone Cold Rhymin'
Toronto Virtuoso Ensemble - Baroque Masterpieces For Trumpet And Organ
Alannah Myles - Alannah Myles
Billy Joel - An Innocent Man
Genesis - We Can't Dance
Wham! - Music From The Edge Of Heaven
Glass Tiger - The Thin Red Line
Wynton Marsalis - Tune In Tomorrow Sndtrk
Wynton Marsalis - Quartet Live At Blues Alley (2-tape set)
Duran Duran - Rio
Glass Tiger - Simple Mission
Rick Astley - Whenever You Need Somebody
Huey Lewis And The News - Fore!
Huey Lewis And The News - Hard At Play
Huey Lewis And The News - Sports
INXS - Live baby Live
Tesla - Five Man Acoustical Jam
Mr. Mister - Welcome To The Real World
Gowan - Lost Brotherhood
Wham! - Make It Big
Gloria Estefan And Miami Sound Machine - Cuts Both Ways
Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston
Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
Bryan Adams - Into The Fire
2 Live Crew - Banned In The USA
Madonna - True Blue
Platinum Blonde - Alien Shores
U2 - War
Bryan Adams - Waking Up The Neighbours
Phil Collins - Serious Hits...Live!
Top Gun Sdntrk
Temptations - The Best Of The Temptations
AC/DC - Back In Black
Pioneers Of The Jazz Guitar (various)
Janis Joplin - Pearl
Billy Joel - Storm Front
George Michael - Faith
Hamilton Pop Orchestra - Golden Trumpet Greats
Al Hirt - Blows His Own Horn Vol. 2
Rock Eighty Eight (various)
Vanilla Ice - To The Extreme
Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Phantom Of The Opera (Orig. London cast)
Awesome Hits (various 1992)
U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky
Al Hirt - 30 Greatest Trumpet Hits Of All Time
Wynton Marsalis - Standard Time Volume 1
Honeymoon Suite - The Singles
Neil Young - Ragged Glory
Stanley, Son Of Theodore (various 1992)
SMC Sample This (various 1996)
Guns 'N Roses - Use your Illusion II
Eric Clapton - Unplugged
Reservoir Dogs Sndtrk
Bob Dylan - The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan
U2 - Rattle And Hum
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Born To Choose (various 1993)
Point Break Sndtrk
INXS - X

And who can forget the amazing Cassette Single?

Rod Stewart - Downtown Train (fade) / The Killing Of Georgie (Pts 1+2)
Spin Doctors - Two Princes (album version) / Off My Line (live)
Jeff Healey Band - I Think I Love You Too Much / Something To Hold On To
Dead Eye Dick - New Age Girl / Sentimental Crap
Kim Mitchell - I Am A Wild Party / Rock N' Roll Duty
Tom Cochrane - Life Is A Highway / Emotional Truth
Right Said Fred - I'm Too Sexy (catwalk mix) / I'm Too Sexy (7" version)

Oh, and there were roughly 10 mixed tapes here as well, ones I'd long forgotten. Sweet! That takes me right back to the day, you know, sitting around and making those mixes in real time. Damn. I'm such a High Fidelity geek.

***

Whoa.

That's quite a list.

You know, I cannot begin to fathom how much music is sitting here, how much of my life time I spent listening to these tapes, And there were countless others I sold off or traded for still others, too, like the complete Lionel Richie collection up to and including Dancing On The Ceiling, which I traded for mid-seventies Rolling Stones tapes... Oh man. I remember doing that, in a tape store on the corner of the main street of Port Elgin (it's a photo developing place, now). Wow, that takes me back.

If I had kept every tape I've ever bought, and every CD, I would need an entire room full of shelves to even begin to hold it all. It's mind-blowing.

So there's more here than I can even begin to comprehend, and I'll admit to being a bit staggered by having all of these tapes come back into my life all in one fell swoop like that. It's beautiful.

And you'll want to bet that I'll be grabbing from this pile at random and listening to them all, over time. And each time I do, I'll be swept back to my early music collecting years, parts of the formative time when I started choosing my own records. This pile represents a big chunk of that period, give or take another list that's likely just as extensive, if not more so, of tapes I traded, lent or lost.

Holy shit. This is awesome. Awesome bad, sure. But awesome nonetheless.

Thanks so much, Brian!