Anatomy of a Mixtape - Olive Juice '87 Part IV "Fast Forward"
"Fast Forward"
Upon arrival at the cassettes, I immediately took my place at the start of the neatly aligned boxes. Unfortunately, as anxiety got the best of me, all sense of calm quickly vanished. I started to feverishly scan the rows of tapes from 30 to 40 years ago, ping-ponging back and forth, no sense of structure at all, like the needle of turntable that’s accidentally been bumped, skipping across the wax, hoping to land somewhere familiar and not on the paper label. I was praying my landing spot would be on the familiar white spine label and gold trim unique to the Maxell XL brand.
By the way, shoe boxes were the greatest storage for cassettes back in the day. What is everyone doing with their shoe boxes since the demise of cassette tape collecting?
As I forced what little composure I could upon myself and scanned through the tapes, I began to lose hope after I came up empty, row after row. Things were looking grim. Maybe during last year’s cleanup, someone noticed that a mixtape had been donated with the pre-recorded cassettes and it was taken out to save someone the embarrassment.
Oh well. I deserved this failure.There was absolutely no excuse for passing on Olive Juice a year earlier. But just when I was about to hit pause on my search, something happened. Maybe it was luck. Perhaps it was fate. Maybe it was karma payback for that time I gave an extra U2 concert ticket to an Irish kid standing in front of me while we both waited in line to meet Bono at Barnes & Noble a few hours before the U2 show later that evening. I thought giving away the ticket was a nice gesture, but it ended up backfiring on me. When we finally got in front of Bono to meet him, I barely got two words in because Bono spent the whole time talking to this Irish kid from County Mayo, Ireland. And the next thing I knew we were shuffled off, out of the meet and greet and into some back alley where the streets had no name.
But either the music gods were on my side that August morning or it was the sheer fact that no one on Cape Cod would have the slightest interest in buying a random mixtape made by a stranger three decades prior, but…
There it was.
“Olive Juice ‘87.”
I finally had found what I was looking for.
Nestled safe and sound between a copy of Juice Newton’s “Juice” and The Cure’s “Disintegration”. Of course it was. Because why would anyone buy someone else’s mixtape?
I would. And I did.
I probably should have bought “Juice” as well. Seriously, “Angel of the Morning” and “Queen of Hearts”? But too overcome with joy in the moment, I made a single purchase of “Olive Juice ‘87” that day at the Dennis Union Church Auction and Bazaar. And that was enough for me.
What do our mixtapes say about us?
Is it possible that we give away too much about ourselves and our innermost thoughts and feelings when we put music down on tape? Or does it just feel that way because, as the creator of the tape, we truly know why we are picking songs, what our intentions are and the premeditated thought that went into song selection, song order, and careful labeling? And knowing all of those things, maybe we just think we’re being too obvious?
As Rob Gordon says in High Fidelity, there are many dos and don’ts when it comes to making a compilation tape, “You’re using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”
So you must choose wisely. And you need to deeply consider the meaning of an entire song. For example, R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” is not the sort of song you put on a tape for a person you care deeply for despite what its title might suggest.
Being aware of possible gaffs and misinterpreted lyrics that can happen in the world of tape making, is it at all possible to accurately learn anything about Olive Juice — the person — from this cassette?
Who was this mix for?
What was the occasion?
Was Olive Juice in a deep, romantic relationship with another person or was this just an innocent crush on an unassuming friend? Maybe it’s just a tape of his or her favorite songs made for a road trip, or a weekend party, or “just because”.
Whatever the occasion, I’m fairly certain that we can closely pinpoint what it was as well as deduce quite a bit about Olive Juice with a solid profiling of this mixtape.
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