Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time (18 page)

I depend on my friends to remind me that what started in the nineties isn’t all dead, and the struggles of those years are not all lost, and the future is unwritten. Astrogrrrl and I go see our favorite local bar band, the Hold Steady, every time they play. They always end with our favorite song, “Killer Parties,” and sometimes I think, man, all the people I get to hear this song with, we’re going to miss each other when we die. When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.

A lot of my music friends
don’t touch cassettes anymore; they stick to MP3s. I love my iPod, too—completely love it. I love my iPod carnally. I would rather have sex with my iPod than with Jennifer Lopez. (I wouldn’t have to hear the iPod whine about getting its hair rumpled.) But for me, if we’re talking about romance, cassettes wipe the floor with MP3s. This has nothing to do with superstition, or nostalgia. MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That’s part of what I love about them. But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it’s full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. Compared to the go-go-go rhythm of an MP3, mix tapes are hopelessly inefficient. You go back to a cassette the way a detective sits and pours drinks for the elderly motel clerk who tells stories about the old days—you know you might be somewhat bored, but there might be a clue in there somewhere. And if there isn’t, what the hell? It’s not a bad time. You know you will waste time. You plan on it.

All mixes have their mutations, whether it’s the
mmmmm
of the cassette or the
krrriiissshhh
of the MP3. There is no natural religion, as William Blake would say. No matter how hard you listen, you can’t get down to the pure sound, not as it gets heard by impure flesh-and-blood ears. So instead of listening to the pure sound, you listen to a mix. When you try to play a song in your memory, and you remember how it goes, you’re just making an imperfect mix of it in your mind. Human sound is mutant sound. You listen, and you mutate along with the sound.

Not long ago I was walking through my neighborhood and found a box of tapes on the sidewalk, set out for the trash. Of course I took them home. They were Polish disco mix tapes for the most part, as well as Ricky Martin and Shania Twain and Jennifer Paige cassingles. There was also an Ace of Base cassingle I’d never heard before—from 1998. What the hell were they doing still making Ace of Base cassingles in 1998? But my favorite of these tapes is called
Mega Disco
. It includes “Let It Whip,” “Groove Line,” “Shame, Shame, Shame,” and “You Sexy Thing.” I’ve heard this last song on so many mixes over the years. It’s a different song every time, but the same thing always happens. You hear something you like, and you press rewind to go back to it. But you can’t rewind the tape to the exact same place again. So you start fresh.

What is love?
Great minds have been grappling with this question through the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to the Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their Trans Ams in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare us little kids by blasting the Sweet hit “Love Is Like Oxygen”—you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you’re gonna die. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them.

But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.

acknowledgments

N
o man does it all by himself,
as the Village People once sang, and they should know. So! Thank you to everybody who helped with this book. My editor Carrie Thornton is a goddess and a true Virginia girl; I am grateful for her brilliance. My agent Daniel Greenberg rocks like Side Three of
Exile in Main Street
, contributing an infinite supply of insight and energy from the start. He also picked out a stray sentence from one of my early drafts, and said, “There’s your title.” Joe Levy has been exchanging mix tapes and arguments with me since the days of Tiffany and Big Daddy Kane, and nobody could be a more heroic presence in my life—he lived through this book with me twice, and neither time would have been possible without him. Thank you, Joe.

All love and worship to Ally Polak. None of this could have been written without her constant love and support and feline soul. Stay on my arm, you little charmer.

Thanks to my family: all Sheffields, Mackeys, Hanlons, Twomeys, Courtneys, Moriartys, O’Briens, Durfers, Govers, Crists, Hugharts, Smiths, Vieras, and Needhams. I owe everything to my mom and dad, Bob and Mary Sheffield. Thank you for your wisdom, for inspiration, and for still necking in the kitchen to the Del-Vikings. Thank you to my glorious sisters Ann, Tracey, and Caroline; Bryant, Charlie, Sarah, Allison, David, John, Sydney, and Jack; Donna, Joe, Sean, Jake, Tony, and Shirley; Jonathan, Kari-Ann, Ashley, Amber; Drema, Ruby, and Joe Gross. All my love and thanks to Buddy and Nadine Crist, for endless support and kindness.

Thank you everybody at Crown, especially Steve Ross, Brandi Bowles, Kristin Kiser, Meghan Wilson, Lauren Dong, Laura Duffy, Dan Rembert, Donna Passannante, and Jill Flaxman.

Big up to all at
Rolling Stone
past and present, especially the great Will Dana, James Kaminsky, Nathan Brackett, Elizabeth Goodman, Lauren Gitlin, Bob Love, David Swanson, Austin Scaggs, Jason Fine, David Fricke, Mark Binelli, Jancee Dunn. Tom Nawrocki has permanently changed my outlook on America (not the country) and Bread (not the food). I idolize Jenny Eliscu, but doesn’t everybody? Hell, I idolize myself just for knowing her.

Very special thanks and respect to Jann Wenner, man of wealth and taste, for always letting it bleed.

Gavin Edwards, you know you are the man—your help on this book doesn’t even make the Top Forty reasons why you rock (liking Belinda Carlisle’s “I Get Weak,” however, comes in at Number Thirty-Eight); Darcey Steinke, who was Renée’s hero, and is now mine, from whom I never stop learning; Chuck Klosterman (god of thunder); Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell (if music writers were farmers, Christgau would be the guy who invented the plow); Marc Spitz; Niki Kanodia; Jeffrey Stock; Marc Weidenbaum; Stephanie “MMMBop” Wells; Greil Marcus (as Renée said, “he’s the only Yankee I’ve ever met who knows how to pronounce ‘Appalachian’”); all Virginia friends around the world: Elizabeth Outka, Lia Rushton, La Contessa Susan Lentati, Erin Rodriguez, Merit Wolfe, Stephanie Bird, Jeanine Cassar O’Rourke, their families; Charles W. Taylor III and everybody at WTJU, the greatest radio station on the planet, as you can hear yourself at wtju.net; Tyler Magill (for redefining the Britpop haircut), Carey Price (the chicktator), Sarah Wyatt (she bangs the drums), Motel No-Tell UK, The Curious Digit, Plan 9 Records; Sarah Wilson; Jill Beifuss; Karl Precoda.

The musical ideas in this book got shaped in the insane fanzine world of the eighties and nineties, when zines had staples in the spine and no bandwidth at all. Thank you to my fanzine gurus, especially Phil “Frankie Five Angels” Dellio (
Radio On
), Frank Kogan (
Why Music Sucks
), Chuck Eddy (everywhere).

A passionate round of applause for: Nils Bernstein, Jennie Boddy, Caryn Ganz, Radha Metro, Melissa Eltringham, Heather Rosett, Katherine Profeta, Jen Sudul, Strummer Edwards, Asif Ahmed, Tracey Pepper, Pam Renner, Chris McDonnell, Ted Friedman, Flynn Monks, Graine Courtney, Laura Larson, Craig Marks, Rene Steinke, Sarah Lewitinn, John Leland, Neva Chonin, James Hannaham, Laura Sinagra, Jon Dolan, Walter T. Smith, Joshua Clover, Eric Weisbard, Ann Powers, Sasha Frere-Jones, Jon Bing, Paul Outka, Ivan Kreilkamp, Jen Fleissner, Erik Pedersen, Sister Pat, David Berman, Kembrew McLeod, Ed Pollard, The Nadine Crew, The Softies, The Secret Stars, The Hold Steady, and everyone else who has helped. Elizabeth Mitchell said the right thing at the right time. So did Mike Viola, and if you like this book, you will also probably like the Candy Butchers’ album
Hang On Mike
. Thank you Joey Ramone for being nice to Renée for a few minutes in 1993. Thank you to all famous people, everywhere, especially the rock stars, plus the BVM and all the angels and saints. Thank you St. Jude. God bless Mother Nature, she’s a single woman, too.

Always: David and Bridie Twomey; Ray and Peggy Sheffield.

Thanks to Dump for my favorite song, “International Airport,” and to everybody who’s ever listened to it on a mix tape from me. I don’t think it’s anybody else’s favorite song yet, but you never know.

about the author

R
OB
S
HEFFIELD
is a contributing editor at
Rolling Stone
, where he writes the “Pop Life” column. His work has appeared in the
Village Voice
,
Spin
,
Slate
,
Details
,
Radio On
,
The Literary Review
, and many other publications. He has also written for MTV and has appeared on various VH1 and MTV shows. He lives in Brooklyn.

Copyright © 2007 by Rob Sheffield

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007, and subsequently published in paperback in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2007.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Sheffield, Rob.
   Love is a mix tape/by Rob Sheffield.—1st ed.
   1. Sheffield, Rob. 2. Music critics—United States—Biography.
   3. Journalists—United States—Biography.
   4. Popular music—History and criticism. I. Title.
     ML423.S537A3 2007
     781.64092—dc22
     [B] 2006015248

ISBN 978-1-4000-8303-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-35157-9

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