Anatomy of a Mixtape - Olive Juice '87 Part II "Rewind"


"Rewind"
Part 2 of 12

I love to know what people listen to. And I love to know why. And I love to know, if a person was going to pick 10-20 songs to put down on a tape, what would they be? What’s the occasion for this collection? What’s the mood they’re trying to create or the event they’re celebrating with these songs?

So of course, I picked up “Olive Juice ‘87” to check it out. I couldn’t wait to see if there was an actual tracklist written out on the back cover of this tape. Something that would give any clue about what “Olive Juice ‘87” was all about. 

And, to my delight, there was. And I read through the songs. A complete side one and what appeared to be a half completed side two. I laughed at it. Put it back in the box. And moved on. 

The sheer thought of someone’s personal mixtape for sale at a church auction — I don’t know — while it made me laugh, there was also something just really innocent and “real” about it. This was a part of someone’s past.

And even though it made me laugh, after we left the bazaar, I couldn’t stop thinking about the tape. I regretted the fact that I didn’t buy it. I mean, that’s got to be the only copy of “Olive Juice ‘87” out there, right? It would be kind of a funny thing to own. I’d kill to get back some of the mix tapes I made back in the 80s and early 90s. 

Why not be part of this unknown person’s world?

But I let it slip. And without my wife standing at my side with her usual reassuring and less cautious approach to these things where she’d tell me, “Just buy it”, I didn’t pull the trigger, as if the dollar I would have spent was going to make a difference when it came time to pay for our kids’ college tuition down the line.

And I kicked myself for a good while after that.

And even a year later, on the second Friday of August while we were at my parent’s house in Dennis, I saw that the Dennis Union Church was getting the property set up for the annual “Auction and Bazaar”. Because after all, tomorrow would be the second Saturday of August. And the only thing I could think was, “I should’ve bought that friggin’ mixtape last year.” 

And wouldn’t it be funny, if the next day we went to the Dennis Union Church Auction and Bazaar and the “Olive Juice” tape was there again this year? 

Come on, what’s the likelihood that someone would have bought that last year after I left?

Who’s buying any tapes these days?

Better yet, who’s buying personal mixtapes made by STRANGERS these days??!

My strong bet was that the organizers of the “Auction and Bazaar” probably just take all of the unsold items from each year, throw them into storage, and then pull them all out again the next year, right? The second Saturday of each August, the stone is magically lifted from the storage tomb and all of these unwanted bazaar items are resurrected once again!

So sometime after breakfast, my wife, two boys, and I made our usual pilgrimage through the backyard of my folk’s house, cut through the Cape Cod Playhouse parking lot, made our way across Route 6A onto the Dennis Union Church grounds, and into the depths of the annual “Auction and Bazaar”.


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