Anatomy of a Mixtape - Olive Juice '87 Part I "Press Play"


"Press Play"
Part 1 of 12

Each year, on the second Saturday in August, the Dennis Union Church in Dennis, MA, hosts its annual Auction and Bazaar to help raise funds for the church and its missions throughout the community. My parents live just on the other side of 6A from the church, and for the last decade or so, we’ve been checking out the extravaganza pretty regularly as we’re down in Dennis most weekends during the summer. 

While it’s a festive and fun mid-morning event, it also comes with a touch of sadness. Not because the tables displaying the goods for sale border the Dennis Village Cemetery, a backdrop that brings forth an uneasy reminder that the used hedge trimmer you’re eyeing may have belonged to someone who lays close by, but because the event itself has become synonymous with the approaching end of summer. It’s about the time extended family visiting on vacation get ready to head back to their home states, summer evenings start to feel cooler as the days get shorter, and there are noticeably smaller crowds venturing to the Cape on weekends. All of these things are a sudden fast forward to the closing of summer. And I really do love summer.

But as the sadness creeps in, it quickly dissipates at the sight of the lively crowd of hunters and gatherers that descend upon the grounds of the Dennis Union Church to browse, bid, and order food from “The X-Grill”.

And the event itself is essentially a large outdoor flea market, yard sale-type thing where the goods being sold are from donors cleaning out attics, basements, garages, and anywhere else around the home where people have been storing items they’ve forgotten about since the late 70s or early 80s.

It’s an eclectic mix of shit, for sure. But every once in a while you find a gem. And my favorite part of it, and the first place I always go as soon as I get there, is the area of a few clustered tables dedicated to records, CDs, and cassettes.

While technology has advanced and streaming via smartphones has made listening to music, basically anywhere, at just about any time, as simple as the tap of a “button”, my affinity for physical music products has not waned. And I love to browse through worn out LPs, cracked CD cases, and faded cassette tape covers at places like the Dennis Union Church Auction and Bazaar. Because you never know what you might find.

In fact, at 2016's event, I was going through a box of cassette tapes on the second Saturday of August, and I came across what I thought was a peculiar donation. There were the standards you might expect: Englebert Humperdink, John Mellencamp, Barbara Streisand, Van Halen. 

But what I didn’t expect to find was a homemade personal mixtape. Someone had made a mix on a Maxell XLII 90 minute tape and labeled it “Olive Juice ‘87”. And it was for sale. At the Dennis Union Church Auction and Bazaar.

This made me chuckle. 

I’ve made dozens and dozens of mixtapes on Maxell XLII 90s over the years (eventuallyI I made the switch to the TDK SA around 1991) but as far as I know, none of them are for sale anywhere in the country. While I’d argue that some of those mixes might indeed be worthy of garnering a couple bucks if they were put on the market, to my knowledge, I don’t have the prestige of being able to claim that any one of them has ever been offered for sale.

So seeing this — “Olive Juice ‘87”, tucked in between cassettes of Phil Collins, The Bee Gees, and Herb Alpert — it was proof positive that when the local church puts out a call for donations for the annual Bazaar, the bizarre is often what is donated without much vetting. A sure sign of some of the “cleaning out” that happens behind the scenes. 

What’s the saying? “One man’s trash is another Church’s fundraiser”? Yes, I believe it’s  something like that.

And In this particular case, I imagine mom was in the attic rummaging through her kid’s belongings that were left behind when he or she moved out after college. Items that were never to be claimed again. Mom probably came across this box of tapes, couldn’t remember who they belonged to or where they came from, and didn’t bother to review the contents to see if there were even cassettes in the cases, let alone to see if there were any of her kid’s personal mixtapes in it.

Let’s take this box of junk...and donate it to the church. Mom’s gettin’ ridda’ shit.

And that’s a bold move mom. I mean, really, it’s not far off from donating your child’s teenage diary that happened to be tucked in a box full of Judy Blume books.


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