Variety Tapes

This is a variety tape that dates back to the eighties–the height of the mixtape era. What a strange bunch of songs to put together. Very classic mixtape construction from me on the B-side, but the A side is very off-balance.  Hip Hop and very hard Industrial rock will do that to your mix. The easiest solution is to avoid these hard-to-mix songs entirely–which I usually did.  I made this in September of ‘88. I was working at Montgomery Ward and had very little money to blow on records. I don’t think I had taken the CD plunge at this point. I’m sure of it, in fact. The CD era came slightly after this. I was still living on Lincoln and Diversey in Chicago. Most of these records were purchased at WaxTrax which was a few blocks down the street.  I still like most of these songs. I used the classic ‘fade out trick’ at the end of this tape of picking an instrumental (from The Style Council’s underrated piano heavy album of the same year). It was a function of my desire to fill every inch of recordable material with music.