It’s clear that friendship and love or even simple thoughtfulness were important aspects of mix tapes that made them so special. To know the music that someone loves is to know that person better. “We are closer now. We share this, and it is in our hearts.”

But there’s another reason mix tapes make for a good listen. The artists who touch us form some integral kernel of our experience with the world. And they in turn were influenced by other artists. Are you hearing a song or a scene?

In one song, you may hear the product of a burgeoning late 1970s San Francisco glam-turned-punk scene. In the next, you may hear the mid-eighties Athens, GA party scene. And next, the output of a Senegalese woman raised in West London who listened to soul and rap records growing up. A landscape of culture and creation shifts for you from track to track– each song a reminder of very different people from very different places united by the commonality that they decided to make something. It’s a reminder that there are pockets of beauty in every corner of the globe, from every era.

There always was and always will be people who get up in the morning and decide to do something brave and wonderful by creating something new. The ripple effects are unknowable and overwhelming. These makers may germinate a local music and art community. They may help someone through a difficult time. They may inspire someone many decades later, many miles away to also create something.

So to listen to a mix tape is to hear one person’s personal take on the high notes of music history–the actors and events that impacted her. She is the author of her own personal history lesson, and you are the lucky pupil. I’m not sure that there is a better way of learning about the world than this.

For more about Sarah, see  If We Keep In Touch

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How often have you let multiple hours pass by submerged in the Internet? One more successful search and you might uncover something revelatory, something that amazes or transforms, something that unlocks a new meaning in your life, something that shines a new light on the unknowable. All of those, “I always wondered…” thoughts now seem answerable. Verifiable. There is a promise that is unfulfilled, and this boundless Internet expanse might just deliver, if you can only get that search term just right.

A few years ago, I dove deep into the Internet one afternoon on a mission. I had the house to myself; the family was away. I started thinking about what happened to the person who made me this tape. It was about 1996 when I received it. I wondered about his family. I never met them but I studied for a sociology exam with him once at their house. He told me about how they never lock their doors and I wondered if almost twenty years later they had the same habit.

I’ll call this person Shane. I went to college with him. And even though I thought that every sociology class should be packed with fellow punk rock-influenced kids learning how to subvert the system along with me, there was only one kid like that, and he was it. He was quiet and kind, despite a loud appearance punctuated by a hairdo that looked like a troll doll’s, black framed glasses, and a thick silver ring in his nose. He was in a band which I avoided going to see because they had a terrible name and I was pretty sure they sounded terrible and I just didn’t want to have to think about what to say to him about it. And ostensibly, we had an academic-only relationship, so it didn’t matter if I supported his band anyway. We studied together. We sometimes palled around campus together. He talked about his girlfriend. I talked about my boyfriend.  And that was it.

In high school and early college, I listened mostly to what are considered by some to be the duds in The Replacements catalog- Don’t Tell a Soul and All Shook Down. That must have been what inspired him to make sure I had a copy of Pleased To Meet Me. The Rolling Stones debut album was his favorite album of all time, which opened my Clash-obsessed mind, because, you know, “No Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones.” And he often told me about his love of rockabilly, about which I knew nothing.

By the time I received this tape from him, I was probably brewing at least a mild crush. I remember talking to him on the telephone while sitting on my parents’ bed one summer afternoon. I was marooned back home between college semesters with nothing much happening but work in a plastics factory. He was considering driving to visit me. He had found out that a local store sold drugs out of the back room. He really thought I should give that Rolling Stones record a try.

I thought about how to warn my parents about Shane’s appearance before his visit. I listened to this tape and daydreamed about how much fun I would have showing him around where I grew up and talking about music. But he never showed up. And we didn’t talk much after that either. We weren’t in any classes together anymore. I didn’t see him around campus much. Our paths just didn’t cross. I bought that first Rolling Stones album a few years later after graduating from college. He was right; it was good.

 

That afternoon a few years ago, the minutes melted away as I tried every possible search engine combination to find out where he was now. It felt like a puzzle to put together. No one is so absent from the Internet that you can’t find some trace of them, I thought. I was not making much headway. I found some old webpages for that band he was in. Nothing remotely current. I had expended over an hour before I remembered that his older brother had been an athlete in that suburban neighborhood with the unlocked doors. Searching for his brother’s name along with his name is how I found him. He had died of a drug overdose shortly after his brother’s wedding. His girlfriend recounted the night of his passing in a blog post in which she clearly just needed to get. it. all. out. All the gory details were laid bare.

I wished I could tell his family and his girlfriend how sorry I was, but I was a small blip in the story of Shane’s life. Without the Internet, I would have never known what happened to him. I should have never known what happened to him. To reach out to them now just would not make sense.

In the last few years, I have bought rockabilly records now and then, always with a silent salute to Shane. The Internet may seem like a place of permanence, where obscure decades-old factoids are retrievable, but it lacks the endurance of our perfectly imperfect moments together. The music that we love and the way we feel about the people with whom we share it transcend temporal boundaries. Even when we can’t be with friends anymore, the songs they shared with us will still ignite our hearts. Permanence defines those feelings, which sure as hell can’t be googled. I am grateful to have a few artifacts to help me keep the tune alive.

And so, this one’s for Shane—one of my favorite songs on the tape he made me, performed by someone who also left this earth too early, Eddie Cochran- C’mon Everybody. Cheers, man, wherever you are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qadw2rFiaJc

Sarah Grady is a statistician in the Washington, DC area. She makes this website in her spare time. Twitter: @1976_sarah

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