For Diana's Listening Pleasure

I found out pretty early on in our relationship that Aaron was a big music fan. We went to Ann Arbor for our third date, a triple-date with Mary/Drew and Heather/Garza. Aaron definitely tended to gravitate toward the record stores while we were there, and was bummed that he didn't have more money to spend on records (especially since I was jobless and had made him pay for my lunch at Amer's). So, naturally, I was curious about the music he was listening to, as I had never heard of ANY of it.

Before Spring Break, he made me a mixtape. The spine of the insert read: "For Diana's Listening Pleasure: selections from Aaron's CD collection." On the tape were the following songs:

Side A:

1. Wally Pleasant - Stupid Day Job
2. Sugar - Your Favorite Thing
3. Frank Black - Fazer Eyes
4. Catherine Wheel - I Want To Touch You
5. Pure - Lemonade
6. Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Someday I Suppose
7. Ash - Jack Names The Planets
8. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Blue X Man
9. Pixies - All Over The World
10. Man or Astro-Man? - Sferic Waves
11. Sebadoh - Magnet's Coil

Side B:

1. Dirty Three - Better Go Home Now
2. Folk Implosion - Lo-Fi Suicide
3. Pavement - Give It A Day
4. Clutch - Big News I
5. Henry Rollins - Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
6. Rollins Band - Right Here Too Much
7. The Amps - Tipp City
8. Afghan Whigs - Debonair
9. Sentridoh - Perfect Excuse
10. 24 Gone - Girl Of Colours
11. Sugar - Explode And Make Up

I listened to this tape nonstop during my week of Spring Break in Parma, so much so that my step-Gary would often get up without saying a word and just hit the stop button on my boom box, then quietly sit back down again.

Over the years, I continued to listen to this tape. This tape was so much a staple of my listening repertoire that I frantically performed cassette tape surgery with scotch tape when it got caught in my aging boom box. After that, I hesitated to play it very often, just in case the Afghan Whigs would get caught in the heads of my tape player again. I eventually stored the tape away with my other tapes, listening instead to the follow-up tapes of Rollins spoken word and Sugar and 24 Gone and Afghan Whigs and Catherine Wheel.

A few weeks ago, I unearthed the tape from a box in the bottom of a closet, and spent a couple of days hunting down digital versions of the mixtape songs. And now, I'm sharing all 100MB of 90's goodness with you:

[music_sampler.zip - 103MB]

I didn't include the Rollins spoken word, but everything else is there, in the exact version I have on tape. (Note: Three files are in iTunes .m4a format; the rest are mp3s.)

I now have this set up as a playlist on my iPod. Funny how things change. Funny how all things old are new again.