Welcome to another Mixtape Monday here at The Hideaway. If you're playing along at home, this is the 48th tape from The Somewhat Alphabetical Mixtape Series we've featured on Mixtape Monday. Click HERE to see the previous tapes featured.
Tape BBB is Volume VIII of the Greatest Hits subset of The Somewhat Alphabetical Mixtape Series. It is a TDK SA90, like all the others. The j-card has the tape's title, a gold star, and the names of the artists written on it. In case you're wondering, we look at the j-card after listening to the tape. Then we scan the tape and the j-card so we can feature them in the post.
One thing we did differently this time after popping BBB into our Sony deck was to fast-forward the tape to the end, then flip it over and repeat the process to compare the readings from the real-time digital tape counter. They matched at 46:46, including the leader tape. This might be part of our process going forward. Or maybe not. What if the tape breaks? These are precious memories, people! Another thing we did differently this time was take the tape out of the Sony deck and listen to it on the back porch under the stars during a rare cool summer evening here in the desert. We plugged our new portable cassette player into one of a stereo-paired set of Sonos Move speakers and let it rip, at an appropriate volume level, of course.
The opening chime gave it away. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" came playing in on that pulsing bassline. The only question in my mind was whether it was going to be the single edit or the Feed The World 12" mix. About two and a half minutes in, we had our answer: Feed The World. This makes me think that this tape was dubbed in mid-to-late December 1986, when it was Christmastime and there was no need to be afraid.
More tinkling bells and chimes announce the arrival of USA for Africa's "We Are The World". It's been a bit since we last heard the song; it has regained some of the emotional wallop that it once held for this listener. There's a documentary on Netflix about the recording of this song that is worth your time. But right about now, I couldn't be more ready for the next song.
"Ahhhhhhhhh Sun City!" I was that guy who put three all-star charity singles back-to-back-to-back on a cassette for his best girl. It was the Eighties, man. "Sun City" is still a banger, and Little Steven did a magnificent job lining up the talent. Once again, I'm briefly curious if I included the seven-minute album version or the nine-and-a-half-minute Last Remix, but the two versions begin differently, so I was 99% sure this was the album version. Learned today that The Africa Fund distributed the money raised from the efforts of Artists United Against Apartheid. Had this song kicked off BBB, I would be feeling better about this tape.
So she's been a Beach Boys fan since she was a kid, listening to her big brother's albums and tapes whether she wanted to or not. She owned nearly every song on this July 1986 compilation, Made In U.S.A. The double album included two new songs. One new song is a cover of "California Dreamin'" that does not sound like the Beach Boys and the other new song is "Rock N Roll To The Rescue," which sounds like a Beach Boys tribute act. Don't think we ever heard it on the radio or even had a conversation about it, yet here it is on a tape I made to impress her. As I sit out here by the pool listening to this tape from dang near forty years ago, I am just extremely grateful that she was able to look past this weak tape I made for her and all the other foolish stuff I did during our courtship and decided to hitch our wagons. #grateful
Did not expect the next song, but I was so glad when "Beat It" started to play. I may have nudged the volume up a bit. The song still brings it. And I love Steve Lukather's guitar riff up to the knock at the door, then Eddie Van Halen comes busting through. Gives me chills each and every time I hear it. Just a quick editorial before we move on: Thriller was released at the end of 1982, just after Thanksgiving, they say, but it will always be an 1983 album for me. I agree that the album's first single, "The Girl is Mine," was released in mid-October 1982. No argument there. That's it. We now return to our program.
There's no mistaking the Dance Mix of "Legs" when it begins to play. That propulsive synth riff that I read some engineer created on the spot carries the song along. I'm glad it's not the album version. More than forty years down the line and hundreds of listens later, it throws me off when I listen to it now. I always enjoyed hearing Eliminator until maybe ten years or so ago, when I first heard the high-resolution digital download from HDtracks, and noticed someone at the label or the band's management had subbed in the 3:35 single edit in place of the original 4:33 album version. And now that's how I like to hear the Eliminator album when I listen to it.
It is clear to me that I was all over the place when I created this tape in December 1986. There is no rhyme or reason to this playlist so far. Still, it gave me joy when "Twisting By The Pool" began to play. It is the seventh song on the tape, and it takes all the willpower I can muster not to just rise out of my comfy porch chair and dive into the pool. You may have stood up and begun to twist by the pool, as the song instructs you to, but I was thinking about just diving in. I was still considering a swim when the song ended and the feeling quickly passed.
I have a few favorite episodes of Miami Vice that I watch on a loop, and I think they are all favorites because they feature one or more of my favorite songs soundtracking the onscreen drama or action. Glenn Frey's "You Belong To the City", the next and possibly last song on the A-side of tape BBB, is from the 1985 episode Prodigal Son. The song is heard during a scene with Sonny Crockett walking through the city at night in a matching baby blue jacket and pants with a white t-shirt. As I had guessed, the full-length album version of "You Belong To The City" is the final song on this side of the tape. We'll take a quick potty break before playing the tape's flipside.
I love Long Distance Voyager, the 1981 Moody Blues album, and turned her onto the two Top 20 singles that were spun off to radio. "Gemini Dream" is one of those charting singles and seems like a good choice to kick off the B-side of BBB. One of her chosen descriptors for her favorite music is "peppy and upbeat." She said it back then, and she still says it today. Her walking playlist is made up of a few thousand peppy and upbeat songs. Her affection for the Moody Blues continued on through their next three albums (The Present, The Other Side Of Life, and Sur la Mer), while mine did not.
The sounds of a cash register are heard at the beginning of Pink Floyd's "Money", the second song on the flip side of BBB. I've heard the song enough to know that this is the 1981 re-recording that David Gilmour did because Columbia Records, the band's then-current label, was unable to license the original version of the song from Capitol Records, their previous label. Gilmour played every instrument on this remake except the saxophone, which is played by Dick Parry on both versions. This was the only version of the song I had until I picked up a copy of Dark Side Of The Moon a year or two later. The differences between the two versions of the song include the key and tempo.
I loved The Game and Hot Space, yet she was the one who jumped on Queen's The Works, buying the cassette to listen to in her car. I couldn't get into the album until one day when it all just clicked. She had been buying me the twelve-inch singles of the songs on the album as she found them, helping my "conversion" a great deal. The third track on the second side of BBB is the 3:19 album version of "I Want to Break Free", a rare instance of the album version being shorter than the 4:18 single version. The extended version from the twelve-inch single is more than seven minutes long. It is my humble opinion that the B-side of tape BBB is superior to the A-side, and we're just three songs in. Hope I didn't just jinx it.
She was with me the first time we heard "19", the tape's next song, playing one night in a mall record store (likely The Wherehouse) after seeing a movie at the mall's theater. It stopped me in my tracks, causing her to ask if I was okay. I don't think we went home that night with the Paul Hardcastle album or the twelve-inch single of the song due to lack of funds, but soon enough, I'd add both to my collection as I already had Hardcastle's earlier "Rain Forest" twelve-inch single and Rain Forest album. The speakers did a commendable job with the song's many effects, though the tape's sonic shortcomings were most pronounced on this song, too.
Another pleasant surprise is Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" as the fifth song. I'm fairly certain she brought his Killer On the Rampage album into the marriage, though I'm pretty sure she let me tape it when I found out she had it a few years prior. If she were here listening alongside me, she'd be grooving in her chair to this song. Watching her groove is another in a long list of reasons I wanted to marry this girl.
In December 1986, to the best of my memory, there were four extended remixes that my friends and I liked to use to demonstrate our car audio systems:
- New Order's epic "Blue Monday",
- The Murder Mix of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)",
- The Shep Pettibone remix of Level 42's "Something About You",
- and Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)"
That last one just happens to be the next song on the tape. Like "19", I notice the tape's shortcomings soundwise, but must commend the speakers for making the most of what they have to work with. At this point, I'm wondering if my trusty Sony deck would sound any better. "Major Tom (Coming Home)" is definitely one of her peppy and upbeat songs.
The next song is "You Can Call Me Al" from Paul Simon's Graceland. She loves this tune a lot, though she never really took a liking to any other songs from the album. I question my programming of this song and the previous song together. Even more so after the next song begins.
Yaz's "Situation" is the next song on the tape. I'm thinking it would have sounded really good going into "Major Tom" or even coming out of it instead of "You Can Call Me Al". I also think that "Situation" might have been another song we used to show off our car stereos. I think I may be getting tired because of how critical I'm being. The tape will be over soon, then I can call it a night.
I talked about her grooving earlier, and "Locomotion" was another track she would groove to: Close her eyes, shake her hips, and swing her arms. We called the group OMD, but they were more formally known as Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. She fell in love with a few of their songs after we saw them open for the Thompson Twins in January 1986. In April 1986, we saw Pretty In Pink featuring OMD's "So In Love" in the final scene. And later, in August 1986, "(Forever) Live And Die" became one of our favorite songs. Neither of those songs got her grooving. After I close my own eyes and imagine her grooving to "Locomotion", both the song and tape end.
She had shared a memory after listening to tape AAA of getting all of these Greatest Hits tapes at once, and the more I thought about it, I grew frustrated that I really couldn't remember that, especially after being prompted. Based solely on the songs on this tape, I'm still thinking I made then gave her this tape in mid to late December 1986.
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