Press pause – reflecting on talking about mixtapes

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the experience of working on this website about mixtapes over the years– how the histories of these personal relics, combined with people’s personal histories, can make it difficult to reunite mixtape makers with mixtape receivers.

Mixtapes were often made in the first bursts of excitement for another person, when all you wanted to do was think about the other person, share music, and listen to music that they like so that you may know them better. The stereotypical mixtape story is of young love of course. That feeling fades. But the tapes live on, glowing with frozen moments of potential.

And people often exit. You might pick up a mixtape and be taken back to who you were, who the other person was, what was shared, for good and bad. And it might not always be pleasant. Not blog-worthy certainly.

An interesting part of this website project has been the number of people, especially women, who no longer have their old mixtapes. Some people have told me that partners felt uncomfortable about the old mixtapes being around. Other people didn’t think keeping the tapes were worth the physical space they occupied in their homes.

It has been challenging, too, to get two people from an old mixtape- giver and receiver- together. A lot of time has passed since most mixtapes were made. Friendships have ended. Most people are not in contact with their earliest romantic partners. People have lost touch with one another. Life has accumulated on bodies and minds.

Mixtape made with The Cure stationary? Tracklist included Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, and The Exploited

1989 boyfriend mixtape – made with The Cure stationery?

I never wanted this website to be about my romantic partners, but here is a novel exception. This is the first mixtape I received from a boyfriend. I was in grade 8, and it was 1989. The boy was one of my sister’s friends.

“Nothing warms young girls’ hearts like The Exploited singing Barmy Army,” I joked to myself when I dug out the tape. When I was 13, though, this tape was quite a gift! A cool older punk noticing my Cure t-shirt collection and spending time with me at the youth center? Yes please! (Could I have imagined even remotely that The Cure would be putting out new music 35 years later as I look at this again?)

This tape maker wrote “Really!” on the tape because it was something I said a lot in grade 8, some cringe-worthy affectation that I no doubt aped from a movie I liked. And I love this honesty: “I heart you! Well, at least I think I do!” Adults could use this level of candor.

Side 1 tracklist for The Cure mixtape

I heart you! Well, at least I think I do!

side 2 tracklist of mixtape - a lot of Uniform Choice, some Misfits, Bauhaus, Love and Rockets

Side 2 – So you think you’ve got a choice?

On June 25, 2023, I saw The Cure live for the first time with my husband, sister, and brother-in-law at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD. Through the grapevine, I learned that the person who made this tape for me was also there, watching from a blanket on the lawn. It would have been nice to say hello, but it’s okay that I missed him. Maybe I’ll high-five him next time around. Wherever people and memories live in your psyche is right where they should be, for now. Their positions will shift. You will change. There will be people who roll along with you in life and people who do not. And that’s all okay, too.

A rather poor photo of the The Cure live at

The Cure in Merriweather 2023

The lawn at Merriweather Post Pavilion after the Cure played

The lawn at Merriweather Post Pavilion after The Cure played – hopefully was not as grim when the old flame was sitting there

I recently read that memories change while we sleep. Involuntary transformations! Though mixtapes may have suspended happy times or important times, as if in amber, even the mixtapes may recede from our memories or our perceptions of them will change. Always change.

Do not fret. Someone once told me that old records never die. Cheers to all the romantics, musicians, fans, and young lovers.


picture of Sarah at Mojomala

Sarah, with thanks to Michael Abate of Mojomala Books, Records, & Cool Stuff for the photo

Enough about the author? Yes, I believe so.

Out Comes an Honest Word

Sometimes the musicians that we admire most are the least accessible to us, even after meeting them. And not because of who they are, but because of who we are. The depth of connection we feel is powerful, personal, and entirely our own—not even truly shareable with its subject. We love them, we follow their lives and careers, and when they pass, they leave a hole in us.

Upon recommendation from a friend who made me a Shellac tape (see sidebar), I spoke with my old friend Nat Fowler (Novo Line) of aughts Baltimore band The OXES, about Steve Albini, whom he admired, toured with, and grieves the loss of.

Nat heard about Steve Albini’s death from musician Marta de Pascalis, who works at the Berlin lathe cutting plant Lathesville, with whom he is working on his new record. He ran into electronic musician Beau Wanzer from Chicago a few days after Albini’s death and connected with him about the shared sense of loss. Soon, I contacted him out of the blue after at least a decade or two. He reminisced with me about a mixtape he made for his Maryland friend Krista that included Rapeman–how his friendship with her grew and strengthened over the years.

I cannot help but feel like all these connections between people are the penultimate tribute to an artist’s life led well. Albini inspired fans to commune (and conflict, too) around ideas and sounds. 

Never anything to do in this town. Live here my whole life.

It was Kerosene by Big Black that made me aware of Steve Albini. My sister’s boyfriend had purchased the Atomizer tape at the mall, decided he didn’t like it, and left it at our house. Those lyrics matched my rural rage perfectly.

Once I got to college in the mid-nineties, Steve Albini was a punk rock household name- if not for his acerbic comments then surely for his recording studio Electrical Audio or for Shellac. I didn’t listen closely to Shellac until my friend, Marc, kindly made me this tape.
A and B tracklist for Shellac mixtape
He doesn’t remember the tape. He doesn’t remember why or how he included excerpts of the San Antonio vs. Rodriguez court case, which eerily visited mid-century white supremacy to my listening ears. Nonetheless, this is still my favorite batch of Shellac songs, with custom interstitials.


What Marc does remember is when our friend Nat first played Shellac for him. Nat Fowler, one-third of aughts Baltimore band The OXES, played the first Shellac 7” to Chris Freeland and Marc Miller, the other two-thirds of the band. Nat’s interest in Albini ran deep.

Nat and Marc of OXES performing on WFMU

Nat and Marc of OXES performing on WFMU, image by Terre T at https://wfmu.org/tt/guests-ox.html. 

“I first heard about him from Thrasher Magazine, around the summer I was 12. May 1987,” Nat said. He later heard Big Black but didn’t like it. But he loved Rapeman. He had Two Nuns and a Pack Mule on cd when he first got his driver’s license.

Thrasher spread on Albini

https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/magazine/may-1987/

Nat was interning at a television station in high school, “already head to toe in equipment,” he said. And he and his friends were experimenting with recorders and audio equipment to record their basement band. He idolized Steve Albini, admired his recording style, and decided he wanted to do similar work.

After Albini’s death, while listening to a podcast about him, Nat recalled that in high school, he went to Radio Shack and bought a flat Pressure Zone Microphone (PZM) so he could record sound closer to Albini’s style. “It looks like an F-18 stealth fighter,” he tells me. “A surface becomes microphonic.” Inspired by Jesus Lizard and other Touch and Go bands, Nat was trying to get Albini’s kick drum sound.

A PZM, looking flat

A PZM, from https://tapeop.com/interviews/1/pzm/

“I would go to Reptilian Records and get every new Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go release,” Nat remembers.

Before returning to the Baltimore area to attend the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Nat spent a lonely first year of college at the University of Delaware. “I was stalking the local record store for the first Shellac 7 inch.”

He frequented Usenet newsgroup forums, early pre-World Wide Web computer network communication systems, looking for Albini-related content. The newsgroups allowed Nat to access Albini’s Forced Exposure tour diary from the final Big Black tour and other writings. “I liked how scathing it was,” Nat said, “I thought, ‘This guy’s fucking sharp.’ He would do references like Dennis Miller did in comedy, but for music. I thought it was funny. I thought it was insightful.”

In one part of the tour diary, Albini described going to see the movie Robocop:

Sunday August 2 — The Cavalier Motel, South San Francisco (The Industrial City)

We traveled by hovering fixed in space and let the earth rotate beneath us, so we landed in S.F. on the same hour and day we left Oz. If we kept going, we’d never age! Felt a need for an American “OD” so I went to see the most American movie I could find, “Robocop”. Sounded great: a violent cop- and-technology-worshipping shooting-spree w/stuff that blows up. I was disappointed in that it had strong authority/corporation/police-mistrust themes. I wanted it to be completely horseshit, and in its feeble little way, it tried to be profound. Bummer. The motel has the cable.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000818044126/http://petdance.com/actionpark/bigblack/tourdiary/

“He wanted to feel lobotomized while on tour and was disappointed that it wasn’t dumb,” Nat described. “I could relate to that.”

“I always liked Steve’s [recording] style,” Nat said. “He definitely colored recordings with his own aesthetics.”

“One thing I learned or at least remained faithful to of Steve’s ethos is that I always try to record everything live when possible, to capture the real performance energy.”

On May 6, 2000, Princeton University hosted a festival called The Last Show. The OXES played. Shellac headlined. Shellac then asked OXES to play with them on subsequent tour dates.

(Couldn’t find footage of the OXES from the Last Show, but here they are in the upstairs of the old Ottobar, just two months prior…)

“I was very nervous, star struck. Never meet your idols,” Nat said. “Always, Marc and Chris were wisecracking with Steve, but I couldn’t even get over it.”

In OXES, Nat’s guitar work was very influenced by Albini. Nat was trying to get a similar guitar sound. “A little bit polyrhythmic,” he says. But moreso, Albini influenced Nat by inspiring him to “make up my own way to play, and if it sounds good to me it sounds good.”


Autobahn Zwei tape cover art

Nat liked the fact that Shellac made 1,000 copies of a record only for friends. Each recipient’s name was included in the cover art. The joke was that if the record were sold, Shellac would know the culprit! Nat made a triple cassette called Autobahn Zwei with the same premise, shown here. Each recipient’s personalized copy included their initials, birthdate, and abbreviation of street name  on the sleeve of the character in the left, as shown in Marta De Pascalis’s tape. The second two images, by Nat Fowler, are of Andrea Dama’s tapes.

Currently, Nat is working on a 200-copy record release. “Nobody’s ever delivered a lacquer before,” someone at the record pressing plant said to Nat as he approached, holding it like a pizza box. Personally working on all the steps to bring the record to creation is important to him. He oversaw mastering, the cutting of the lacquer, proofing the test pressings, and running the plotter press over silk screened covers for the artwork.

“That’s 90% [because of] Albini and the rest because of other reasons that other people got from Steve Albini,” Nat joked. Nat chose an inscription for the run out groove of the record, the space between the grooves of the recorded music and where the label starts: “RIP The Hated Chinee.”

Nat in 2024

Nat

Nat Fowler lives in Berlin Germany with his wife and son. He is the mastermind behind Novo Line, misusing archaic tech and ancient frequencies.


 

   

 

Juxtapositions in Chevy Chase, Washington, DC

“I didn’t make tapes for other people much,“ PJ Brownlee told me as he hooked up the tape deck in Art Sound Language, his record shop in Washington, DC. PJ brought some old mixtapes in. Some he had received. Some he had made for himself. Instead of spinning records at the turntables, as he usually does when the shop is open, he popped cassette tapes in and out of the tape decks and told stories about old friends, about getting interested in punk rock and skateboarding and then new wave, growing up in Tallahassee, FL.

PJ at tape deck at Art Sound Language

PJ at tape deck (and turntables) at Art Sound Language

He played a tape that his friend Craig Stinson made him in 1988 or ’89. It once contained a song list meticulously written onto graph paper, but, at least today, the insert was not accompanying the tape. As customers meandered in and out of Art Sound Language, PJ listened to tracks on the tape and bubbled up with band names. The Silos! The Pressure Boys!

side AAAAAAA of Craig Stinson mix tape for PJ

“How do you remember what all these songs are without the list?” I asked.

“That’s the power of a mix tape,” PJ said. “When you only had ten tapes, this is what you would listen to over and over again, hot as anything.”

side BBBBB of Craig Stinson tape for PJ

 

 

 

 

Craig Stinson had moved from Florida to Wilmington, NC. He and PJ reconnected when Craig was back in Florida visiting. Both PJ and Craig were drawn to Let’s Active, the North Carolina-based trio of Mitch Easter, Faye Hunter, and Sara Romweber. This tape was a collection of similarly poppy bands, many with local NC flavor and connections to Dolphin Records.

Don Dixon!

“Here’s that UV Prom song!”

Both Craig and PJ played guitar. Sometimes, they would put their own songs at the end of a mix tape for the other. They might even cover the other person’s song.

PJ listened with focus while fast forwarding from track to track, identifying additional bands on the tape: Fetchin’ Bones, The Connells, and The Graphic.


Lynn Stinson, PJ Brownlee, and Craig Stinson September 22, 2024

Exciting update! I ran into Craig and Lynn Stinson visiting Art Sound Language from NC today, on September 22, 2024. “I still have all my mixtapes!” Lynn exclaimed. PJ and Craig exchanged fond memories of exchanging tapes and of their friendship over the years. PJ still had the tape on hand for this photo opportunity. It was a serendipitous pleasure to meet Craig and Lynn! 


PJ brought some other tapes to the store today. These were more autobiographical—from the early punk rock tapes PJ made for himself to later Polvo-heavy compilations.

J-card for Black Flag, TSOL, Agent Orange tape JP made as a kid

PJ used to go to his grandmother’s house to use her stereo to make tapes of records. Later, he became interested in classic rock, and taped over lots of the punk and new wave tapes. “Your identity at this one moment is written over and written over.”

REM bootleg records on tape

PJ holding REM bootleg

PJ holding REM bootleg

REM tape tracklist close-up

 

Radio station tracks

Radio station tracks from Florida State – 1992

College radio libraries provided free source material for mixtapes.

“These are nice snapshots of moments,” PJ said.

blank Sony tape upon which is written Dinosaur Jr full album

Sometimes the college radio station would play full albums

After mixtapes, PJ made cdrs. Now, he fills his iPhone with music and uses the Shuffle feature. There is a curatorial aspect of mixtape making that lends itself well to owning a record and book shop.

PJ, do you see a through-line between mixtape making and your work at Art Sound Language? 

Definitely, though it was a very looong through-line, the act of putting one thing next to another and taking a look or listen has always been critical for me, going back to the way I played with my Matchbox cars and Star Wars action figures to arranging my tapes, records, cds, and books on shelves, publishing zines and books, and curating art exhibitions. Sometimes, as on mixtapes, those juxtapositions get stuck in place, fixed—like when you drive the nail into the wall, that’s where the painting hangs. In the iPod / iPhone era, juxtapositions became inherently multiple, fleeting. Now, at ASL, arrangements of records and books can be made and remade ad infinitum. It’s still a very big part of what I do, both in the store and on social media.

Autumn 1999 and Spring 2000 mixtapes for the car

Sarah holding old mix tape

Sarah with c. 2000-ish mixtape for car

Getting your favorite records onto tape for the car made for very enjoyable driving!

Seen here are PJ with two cassettes of vinyl that he made for himself for the car in 1999 and 2000, respectively, and me with a cassette from around the same time for the car.

I’ll be dee jaying selections from this tape TOMORROW, APRIL 20, RECORD STORE DAY, at Art Sound Language at 5520 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC at 2 pm. Join us!


Gotta Get Unbottled Up

“We possess ideas, but we are possessed by feelings. They lie too deep for understanding, astir with their own secret life and carrying us with them.”

– Thomas Flanagan, as quoted in The Divided Mind by John Sarno

 

Sort of a cardinal rule—don’t disturb the mixtape artwork. Would you draw on a piece of art that someone gave you for your wall? No. Then don’t mess with the J-card. Hence my ambivalence about writing on the J-card I received from an acquaintance one summer in the mid-1990s. I wrote the track’s artists at the bottom. This is because they had not been provided. Withheld, in fact!

Image of J-card with songs

 

Inside J-card with artists written in

I did, indeed, request Other Artists. I scribbled them at the bottom.

Some of my friends in college lived in Old Ellicott City, MD in a set of small rowhomes on the back side of the fairy-winged, patchouli-laden marketplace running through Main Street.

rowhomes where Spider lived in Old Ellicott City

The rowhomes where Spider lived in Old Ellicott City, as seen today on Google Maps

They were part of a larger group that traveled in a pack. They prided themselves on being rowdy. They drove scooters. They loved mod fashion. They played football. Or was it football as in soccer? In any case, I did not fit in there. I would wall-flower my way around, wearing Dead Kennedys t-shirts, hoping to be able to talk about music with someone, eyes wide at the cacophony of energy.

Enter Spider. He showed up there for a brief period from out of town. He was shy, which I liked. He liked to talk about music. His favorite band was Devo. He was a kindred spirit.

I never used his real name and cannot remember it. But I do remember this. Even though he wrote in the J-card that there was insufficient room to write the names of the artists, he gave me a different reason when he handed me the tape. Instead, he told me he did not write down the artists because he didn’t want me to have negative impressions about any of the songs before I listened. No pre-conceived biases. I was surprised. I wondered if he thought I seemed close-minded. But I was excited about the tape.

My favorite song on this tape, which ignited a lifelong love of John Cale, was his cover of Memphis:

I left Maryland to move home from college for the summer not long after meeting Spider, and this tape was my parting gift. It was a mainstay that summer. Spider and I exchanged some letters and phone calls. That’s how I have this photograph he sent me. “That’s you?” I remember asking him. Even his photograph was obfuscating.

 

Black and white, stylized photograph of Spider, stuck in a mini photo album

Spider. Unfortunately, his photo is stuck in this photo album because of tape I left on the back.

I ran across this photo album a few months ago. Spider’s photo reminded me to dig out the tape. The tape makes me happy! Sweet memories of carefree summer days took the edge off the pressures and emotional weight of the holidays this year.

I asked one of my old college pals what happened to him: “I never really knew Spider- I have no idea…” Although Spider was adept at protecting himself with mystery, revisiting the conditions attached to receipt of this tape has, ironically, reminded me to be free, to embrace mystery. I’ve been thinking about the tabula rasa that Spider wanted me to have about the music—how my most profound moments in life are those with complete openness. It’s a faith that whatever you feel and think and like are all going to be okay. It requires patience, trust, and self-confidence, all of which can be thorny.

It has reminded me of the value of not getting pulled down into the mire of emotional baggage, of preconceived ideas, of unfounded fears that often preface experiences. They sour the milk. They prevent me from getting lost in the joys of life. Or in this case, a Henry Badowski song. May your new year bring happy surprises.

Sarah

Sarah (photo by @grady182)

Sarah makes this website for fun, volunteers at Dischord Records helping on Ian MacKaye’s archive of letters for fun, listens to music, reads, and writes for fun, and spends time with family, friends, and dog for fun. Work is for the U.S. government in energy statistics. If you are reading this, I am honored for your time! Thank you!


The stolen Memorex tape

Stolen Tape

In the mid-’90s I took a year to study abroad in Ireland. If I’m being honest I chose Ireland because I wanted an adventure and I was too lazy to learn a foreign language, so it was either the UK or Ireland for me. Trying to pack for an entire year within the airline’s luggage weight limit was challenging. I made carefully reasoned decisions of luxuries vs necessities.

Ireland’s 220V standard electrical outlets and the limited space in my duffel convinced me to leave my CDs behind and bring only a Walkman and a handful of mix tapes. This was literally the equivalent of Desert Island Discs. The songs I carried would have to last for an academic year.

Drawing of Mark with a walkman

Artwork by Ursula Renner

A lot of the stereotypes of Ireland are well… true. It rains a lot, especially in the West where I was studying at the University of Limerick (UL). I once experienced every form of precipitation in a 30 minute wait at a bus stop – rain, freezing rain, hail, rain, and back to sun.

The drinking culture there is also hard to overstate. All social life revolves around the pub and pretty much everything starts, happens, or ends with a round of drinks. The people are tremendous though. Wit and sarcasm are a national sport, and you will never want for good conversation.

My plan to survive the year with a few mix tapes fell apart in a few weeks. It didn’t take long for me to tire of the tapes and the specific order in which the tracks were laid out.

I was living in a student housing village that was built primarily to house foreign exchange students. There were a few Americans, but the majority were Europeans who were at UL through the Erasmus student exchange program. I got along fine with the flatmates in my apartment, but all my friends lived in flat 42 a few doors down. I lived mostly there and only went back to my flat to sleep.

Most importantly, my Austrian friend Marion who lived at 42 had a small boom box. Music was back! There was a stack of communal CDs next to the box and we would argue about who got to go next and what we wanted to listen to. There were random mix tapes of various Euro bands in different languages. If you’re familiar with the “Now That’s What I Call Music” series, that’s mostly what was playing in 42. I still have a soft spot in my heart for those Euro-pop club tracks from Alice DJ and Robbie Williams to this day.

Drawing of boombox with cds

Artwork by Ursula Renner

I was warming up to EDM and club music, but I still listened mostly to Alt Rock and that scene was pretty good in Ireland. It was different from what we were listening to in the US at the time and I loved the novelty. Therapy?, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Suede, Blur were just some of the bands that were popular at the time on campus. While I was there, The Stone Roses had just released The Second Coming after a five year wait, and it was the album everyone was talking about. A nearly perfect album in every way.

Ironically everyone liked to poke fun of Dolores O’Riordan from the Cranberries since they were the local Limerick hometown band. No one I met knew her directly, but everyone had a friend of a friend story about her. Who knows if any of it was true. In light of her recent passing, it all seems a bit cruel now so I don’t want to repeat any of those rumors here.

My friends in flat 42 were throwing a house party one weekend. It started off small as all parties do, and then got crowded and out of hand, all sorts of people I’d never seen before. I think it was a good party, it’s hard to recall any particular party, and nothing memorable happened. I fell asleep on the couch in the early morning. I woke up the next day to the smell of stale cigarettes and spilled beer. I put the kettle on and made a cup of tea while trying to shake the hangover off.

Drawing of party scene

Artwork by Ursula Renner

It seemed only fair to help clean up since I adopted 42 as my second home. I started collecting empty cans and half empty glasses of Carlsberg with cigarette butts floating in them like bath toys. Tunes, definitely needed some music to get me going. I went over to Marion’s boom box and popped open the tape well. There was a mix tape in it. No description, no label. I took a chance and pressed play.

Drawing of Mark discovering mix tape by boombox

Artwork by Ursula Renner

It was good. Real good. Some of it I recognized, like The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, and Green Day. But most of it I never heard before or vaguely recognized. Most importantly it was something I hadn’t listened to a thousand times before. I finished straightening up, put the tape in my pocket, and went back to my flat to shower and go back to sleep.

Later that day I went back to 42, because where else would I be? On the way there I ran into Ciaran, an Irish acquaintance of mine. I was dating a friend of his at the time, and that’s really the only way I knew him. We were both headed to 42.

“Say Mark, did you happen to come across a mix tape at the party? I think I left it there.”

Drawing of conversation between Ciaran and Mark

Artwork by Ursula Renner

I could feel the color drain from my face. I panicked. I have no idea why. It seemed unbearable to part with my new treasure. It was like giving up Gollum’s ring. And so I did the only thing I could do. I lied. I lied straight to his face.

“No we didn’t find anything, I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

“Ach. All right, please try to find it. I can make another one, but some of the songs come from my brother’s collection, and a few of the tracks I recorded off of vinyl and that’s a pain.”

I secretly think he knew I was lying. I think he always had me pegged as a scoundrel. Maybe it’s because I broke up with his friend shortly thereafter. I avoided him afterwards. Ciaran was always friendly to me, but he always had that look in his eyes of, “I know who you are. You’re a no good tape-stealing child who doesn’t have the decency to ask me to make a copy of the tape which I’d gladly do if you’d just ask me.” Maybe that’s not actually a look someone can give. Maybe that’s the guilt talking.

What made it worse is that since it had no handwritten jacket, I had no idea what half the songs and artists were. If I had just asked Ciaran to make me a copy, I could have had just asked him who the artists were. Who knows, it might have even led to another friendship.

I still have the tape. It took years to uncover many of the artists on the tape. I’d play it for various people over the years and occasionally someone would recognize an artist, “Yeah I’m pretty sure that’s World Party.” It wasn’t until the advent of Shazam that I was able to discover all of the songs on the tape.

It’s a classic mix tape. Most of it dubbed from cassette to cassette and a few from vinyl to cassette. The unevenness of the sound levels, the hiss and pop from hitting record and stop. There’s even a great record skip in the middle of The Wedding Present when someone must have bumped the table during recording.

As far as Irish treasures go, who cares about the Book of Kells. I have a rare and singular artifact meticulously handcrafted by an Irishman of what seminal sounds of the mid-1990s were. It’s wabi-sabi at it’s finest. It almost felt like it was crafted specifically for me.

In my mind, a great mix tape comes from someone who knows you well, and then cares enough about you to spend an entire evening composing the right sequence of tracks. They select songs they know you like, songs they think you’ll like, and songs that mean something to them personally and they want to share with you. This tape has all those elements and so I feel like it was destined for me.

Wherever you are Ciaran, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stolen your tape, and I do regret it–kind of… But take it as a compliment, you make a mean tape. I wish you the best. Sorry and thanks.

Side A
“There is a Light That Never Goes Out” – The Smiths

“Interlude” – Siouxsie & Morrissey

“Lenny Valentino” – The Auteurs

“Your Ghost” – Kristin Hersh Michael Stipe

“Love Spreads” – The Stone Roses

“Debonair” – Afghan Whigs

“Mall Monarchy” – Compulsion

“Pearl” – Chapterhouse

“Brave New World” – New Model Army

Side B

“Pretty In Pink” – Psychedelic Furs

“End of a Century” – Blur

“Hit Song” – Peter Murphy

“Is It Like Today?” World Party

“Shall We Take A Trip” – Northside

“Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm” – The Wedding Present

“Welcome To Paradise” – Green Day

“Basket Case” – Green Day

Mark before his trip to Ireland

Mark – then

recent photo of Mark standing at the beach

Mark – now

Mark has given up his life of crime and now lives in Lancaster, PA where he lives with his wife, son, and two cats. He hasn’t been back to Ireland since the 90s, but would love to return if the statute of limitations will allow him to. He is down to one working Sony cassette player. His current interests include backpacking, K Drama, and hammocking. If you make him a tape, please include a few tracks from the Mountain Goats’ Bleed Out, Boy Genius, DJ Shadow, or Massive Attack.