Listening To Mixed Tapes

The other day, a big chunk of ice fell off our neighbour's roof and landed in our driveway. On our car. Sigh. It could have been worse, of course. As it were, all that happened is a new dent on the passenger-side door and a nearly decapitated side mirror. We weren't able to get it into the garage to get it fixed, what with the New Year's holiday, so I had to borrow a car from my parents so I could drive back to Ottawa today.

All that to say, their car is old enough to have a tape deck. It also has a really crappy radio which hardly works, so this time I remembered to grab a handful of tapes to while away the hours between home and school.

Oh, the memories! Many of them were given to me by friends from my past, some of them still kicking around, some of them lost to time. It was a lot of fun listening to them again, and bringing back high school, leaving home, living, growing up and loving in Europe--and remembering a time when we still had tapes. (I recently had to explain to my nine-year-old niece what a cassette tape was. She has an iPod.)

There was "Punk As F*ck" (aka "[TCO]'s Happy Fun Tape") from Laura, my first friend from The City. Actually, it was Richmond Hill, which I would not now consider the city (I can be such a Toronto snob at times). Her hippie parents bought a farm outside of Midland and we met through a mutual friend, but soon decided we liked each other better. She introduced me to army pants, Lollapalloza, dandylion wine made my her hippie uncle Darce (I think), and music such as Dino Jr, NoFX, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Violent Femmes, Jane's Addiction and Propagandhi, and my boyfriend Sean. I lost track of her after Europe. Last I knew of her, she was on her third member of a punk (I guess that's what they were) band made up of guys she knew and working at the convenience store in Balm Beach. We grew apart.

Kary and Scott made me "[TCO]'s Frustration" for my trip to Europe, after I graduated from high school. Kary and I worked together in a photo store. She and Scott both graduated from Ryerson's photography program. That was back in the day when I wanted to be a photographer, so I thought they were pretty cool. It was called that because I was theoretically going to be frustrated in the love department. This did not really prove to be true, but it was a good tape. It has Sid Vicious's version of "My Way".

I have about three tapes from Andrea of music he wrote. He wasn't my first boyfriend, but he's the first one I regretted hurting (or behaving badly toward, whether he was actually hurt I guess I don't really know). Which is, I suppose, as close to my first love as any of my pre-AHC boyfriends can get. He wrote a really nice dedication to me in one of the covers, which ends with "PS Why are you LEAVING??" He gave it to me right before I left for France (pre-bad behaviour). There's another one he gave me the year that AHC came to Italy and proposed to me, and the dedication mentions him as well (back when AHC was still thinking about making films). We're still vaguely in touch and he's still a musician.

There are a couple of mixes made when I was in France, one of which is entitled "Hit Express. French Torture Experience". In case that title didn't give it away, France was a difficult and crazy time. But, some of the music was fun.

There's one called "Wonderful Spot", which I either "borrowed" (i.e. failed to give back) or was given by my Italian sister, Claudia. It's all music from European t.v. commercials. I think I could actually visualize some of those commercials when I heard the music. But it really reminded me of Italy.

And who can forget "Un'ora sola" from Giovanni, a tape he made for not one, not two, but three girls at the same time (but that's another story). We were all friends at the time, and we all remained friends in spite of his cheekiness. He did marry one of the three of us. We lost track of each other for a while but those friendships have recently been rekindled, a thing that pleases me greatly.

Anyway, these tapes remind me so much of my late teens! If anyone asks, generally I'd say that I hated being a teenager, but these reminded me that there was some pretty good stuff too, mixed in with all that angst (of which there was no shortage).

I closed out the last few New Year's parties of my adolescence in Italy. It's hard to believe that 10 years ago, AHC (long before he was AHC) visited me in Italy and proposed to me at a house party in Florence as we feted in 1999. I guess those were the good old days that lead to these good old days, as they will someday be.

Happy New Year everyone.