All Mixed Up

I remember '92 Cool Songs pretty well. There was some Bobby Brown a little SWV, maybe Salt and Peppa, and even Right Said Fred. It was my premier mixed tape, and, well, fortunately my music tastes in no way resemble my beginnings. I was Nine. I can remember sitting in my room with my little two cassette AM/FM stereo listening to Q99.5 for hours until my favorite songs came on. I would even call incessantly to try and make requests, but I only got through once in my three years of annual mix tape production. Frantically pressing play-record when the song started, I would slowly begin my tape. Flipping in the middle and writing down the song list.Once I was finished with the tape, I would make copies for my few close friends, and label it accordingly: '92 Cool Songs. It amazes me how much time I must have had as a nine-year-old to devote to this task.

Soon thereafter I started "going out" with a guy in 4th Grade. For me, all this meant was that he had asked me if I wanted to go out, I said yes, and we stopped talking. With the exception that he called me once on the phone. Most importantly, he also gave me the first gifts I ever received from a "boyfriend" - CDs. Tyler gave me my favorite: Mariah Carey. These were really my first CDs, I had one Vanessa Williams album, and got the Aladdin soundtrack for Christmas soon after. From then on out, most of my boyfriends (or semblances of them) can be characterized by music tastes - and many in CD form. I received Nirvana, then Simon and Garfunkel, then a whole series of mix CDs with underlying messages, then CDs that I picked out, and finally a 2 CD mixed set. From guesses, to overt (and subversive) romantic gestures through music, I've gone from the high-tech future (when CDs were just becomming common) to the low tech present (regressing to another two-sided mix - but this time on two CDs), and I think -- minus my 92 taste in music, my early love for the custom mix wasn't far off the mark.