Two years ago, when I was working on this column’s debut, I wrote about Bruce Springsteen’s “Book of Dreams” and what the song means to Julie and me. During the first month of our courtship I created my first mixtape for her, entitled HEY, HEY, JULIE! On that tape was the Springsteen song, one that’s grown to have profound meaning in our relationship.
We began dating in August of 1992, and soon thereafter, I threw this tape together in a flurry of inspiration, wanting to give Julie something that came from my heart. I don’t recall the actual minutes spent in my parents’ basement picking the songs or laying them down on a Maxell cassette (my brand of choice), but looking back on the list of songs, I’m happy to see they still add up to 90 quailty minutes of music.
Before Nick Hornby wonderfully wrote about what makes a good mixtape in High Fidelity, I assembled exactly the right combination of hip, well known and somewhat obscure songs from my small music collection. Combining big hits like “Learning to Fly,” “What I Am,” and “All This Time” with lesser-known songs by popular artists such as “Until the End of the World,” “Shining Star,” and “Getting to Know You,” while tossing in some hard to find (at the time) songs like “Baby Mine” and “Wild Night” made this tape eclectic, but still enjoyable to listen to and quite accessible. (more…)
The cassette Colvin sold at her gigs while she was still an unsigned artist – which she creatively titled Live Tape – had become something of a sensation, as soundboard recordings sold at folk clubs go. It showcased a fully formed artist with a trove of terrific songs, and it got passed around so much that its audience far surpassed the number of people who had actually seen her perform. (I obtained a copy of it from a friend a couple months before attending my first Colvin concert, an opening slot for k.d. lang at the Birchmere during the summer of ’88.) Her ascension to major-label status was clearly just a matter of time, and the folk community was understandably thrilled when reports surfaced that she had signed a contract and headed into the studio with her boyfriend, John Leventhal, producing.
