Anatomy of a Mixtape - Olive Juice '87 Part III "Auto Reverse"
"Auto Reverse"
As I started to weave in and out of the tables displaying a fresh hodgepodge of donations laid out like multiple Islands of Misfit Toys, all desperate to find homes, including more than “gently-used” housewares, baseball card collections, assorted golf balls that looked like they’d been sitting at the bottom of water hazards for several years, and sporting goods whose best years were far behind them — I started to get very excited.
More excited than a normal person should be about the possibility of reuniting with a mixtape made by a person who I had never met, did not even know the identity of, and who was likely expressing sentimental feelings towards another person whose identity was also a mystery.
But I felt like Indiana Jones, complete with leather satchel, on a last crusade, making my way through the Temple of Doom, raiding a far away land for a lost ark and I had to complete this quest. And among the hundreds of Cape Codders here at the Dennis Union Church Auction and Bazaar, most of who were shopping for things they didn't really need, the paranoid music fan in me couldn’t help but think that there must be enemy crate diggers and music collectors on the same trail to find a rarity such as “Olive Juice ‘87” first. An item I had mentally convinced myself that I DID need.
So I casually picked up my pace, scuffling my vans through the dew soaked grass of an early August morning, while silently singing a line from Joy Division’s “Dead Souls” in my head, which I always thought would be an excellent soundtrack to an archeological excursion I would likely never be a part of, but just in case I ever was a part of one, I had this song queued in my head, ready to go, and its moment had arrived....
“Conquistadors who took their share....”
Except it was Trent Reznor’s voice I was hearing in my head, not that of Ian Curtis, because I was singing the Nine Inch Nails version from “The Crow” soundtrack.
After a brief debate in my head about which version of "Dead Souls" was better, I regained focus on the important task at hand. Scoping the grounds for anyone that might look the slightest bit hip, and believe me, at something like this, there aren’t many, I tried to intercept any potential suitors for “Olive Juice ‘87”. Unfortunately, these types of music hunters are incredibly difficult to pick out, because the beauty of intense collectors who put the time and energy into searches at places like this remain calm and unassuming.
While some may boldly announce their presence in the form of a replica “The Who Live at Leeds” t-shirt, they often don’t look like Robert Plant or John Lennon or any other member of the bands for which they are intently searching, adding to the difficulty in spotting them. In fact, you're likely to mistake them as someone searching for spare parts to a TRS-80.
But it works. Because the last thing you want to do when looking through records is draw attention to the fact that, in between yet another copy of the soundtrack for “Jesus Christ Superstar” and Johnny Mathis’ “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, you found an original mono version pressing of the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds”. There may be more gems to follow so keep your head down, remain calm, and keep flipping.
Fortunately for me, cassettes are in far less demand than LPs and therefore my bet was that I would run into less competition at the shoe boxes of tapes. I took a few deep breaths in an effort to remain crate-digger calm and made my way around the tables lined with DVDs, LPs, and CDs and continued towards the cassettes. My plan was to casually start at the first box and slowly make my way down the rows, hoping to eventually be reunited with “Olive Juice ‘87” somewhere along the way.
Diaries of the young have been studied and published for centuries, proving to be magical windows into eras of years past and times forgotten. The struggles of life. The progress of history. All through the eyes and words of children.
If successful in my conquest, I was about to embark on my own great study of American youth from decades prior. Granted, it was a time that I myself had lived through, but I had not viewed it or listened to it, through the soundtrack according to Olive Juice. I would be reliving years past through someone else’s headphones.
The thought was magical.
What could I possibly learn about that person, the curator of the mixtape, if I’m able to get my hands on it? What were you trying to tell the world on that Maxell XLII 90 minute cassette about your life in what I’m guessing was the year 1987?
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