Mixtape Monday: Q

Guess who finally found the long missing Q tape in the alphabetical mixtape series?  Not only that but Mrs. HERC gave it 150% in an effort to re-create the missing j-card but in the end we mutually agreed that without that original green pen she used way back in 1985, things just aren't as authentic as we would both like them to be so there will be no recreated j-cards going forward.  Heck, I even seriously thought about giving up on making Spotify playlists that recreate the music on the mixtapes cause it just ain't the same.  But we'll put this out there and see what kind of feedback we get.  There are many more tapes in the series - by my count, 36 more tapes from R through FFF.

The letter is Q so it must be a tape filled with the saxurated songs of Quarterflash.  By late 1985, Rindy and hubby Marv had released three albums, charted six singles and had a song each included on the soundtrack albums to Night Shift, Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Gremlins but were fading from the spotlight rapidly.  Or maybe the tape is filled with selections from the four albums up to that point by Quiet Riot - the couple of weak ones from the Seventies and then their two platinum sellers of the Eighties.  Nah, who are we kidding.  Mrs. HERC basically "discovered" Queen through the videos and singles from their 1984 album The Works, their historical performance at Live Aid (where they performed in between sets by George Thorogood and Simple Minds) and it was her enthusiasm for their music that made me want to make a dub of the album for her and then lace the second side of the cassette with an assortment of older Queen hits.

		SIDE A		42:21
1984	*	Radio Ga Ga	Queen	06:53
1984		Tear It Up	Queen	03:28
1984		It's A Hard Life	Queen	04:07
1984		Man On The Prowl	Queen	03:28
1984		Machines (Or Back To Humans)	Queen	05:10
1984	*	I Want To Break Free	Queen	07:16
1984		Keep Passing The Open Windows	Queen	05:21
1984		Hammer to Fall	Queen	04:25
1984		Is This The World We Created?	Queen	02:13
		SIDE B		43:52
1974		Killer Queen	Queen	03:00
1975		I'm In Love With My Car	Queen	03:05
1975		You're My Best Friend	Queen	02:51
1975		Bohemian Rhapsody	Queen	05:54
1976		Somebody To Love	Queen	04:56
1977		We Will Rock You	Queen	02:02
1977		We Are The Champions	Queen	02:59
1978		Bicycle Race	Queen	03:01
1980		Another One Bites The Dust	Queen	03:35
1980		Need Your Loving Tonight	Queen	02:49
1980		Crazy Little Thing Called Love	Queen	02:43
1980		Flash	Queen	02:49
1982		Under Pressure	Queen + Bowie	04:08

I've mentioned my own fascination with The Works before, including buying expensive import singles (blissfully unaware they were available domestically) and two of those - "Radio Ga Ga" and "I Want To Break Free" - appear on the tape in their extended versions.  (Though neither is a part of the Spotify playlist below.)  The second side plays like a chronologically-ordered version of the band's illustrious Greatest Hits album from 1981 though I did drop a few of the album's songs in favor of my own favorites and evidently played the chivalry card, removing "Fat Bottomed Girls" so as not to offend her pretty ears.