Everything Old is New Again

With the purchase of a simple stereo-to-computer cable, I have ended a long audio drought. It has been years since I listened to my cassette tapes; now I am transferring them to my computer and a brand-new iPod.

For some time, I had been looking for my old favorites at the iTune store and the pay-per-song booths and regular stacks at music stores.... But some of them were nowhere to be found. Most of Erasure's songs are available - except the one I really wanted, "Perfect Stranger". And I couldn't find anything by groups such as Bruno Loves Danger (responsible for the lovely "It's My Heart") or Jon Astley (a world apart from his famous brother Rick).

Now, as I select and record them from cassette, I am rediscovering old loves. How could I have forgotten my passion for ska? The horn soaring over a propulsive beat ("like reggae on speed"), with often intriguing lyrics. My friend Becky and I used to seek out The Toasters' concerts whenever they were playing on the eastern seaboard.... Ah, memories of The Skunks and AWOL... Here are the Toasters outdoors (oddly, I think it was in Baltimore) back in the day:



And of course there are the mix tapes from ex boyfriends; usually a song or two captures the spirit of that time.

The unexpected treasure, however, is a tape of some friends reading "The Neverending Story" by Michael Ende in 1988. The five of us - Steph, Suzie, Becky, Jen, and I - went up into my parents' attic one night, armed with plenty of snacks, soft drinks, and a camera and tape recorder. We all took turns reading, and recorded the proceedings on at least five cassettes. (Afterward, I distributed the tapes among the group, snagging the first tape for myself.) On tape, there is plenty of laughing and joking and background noises: hints of the loyalties and rivalries in our little group, and the irrepressible personalities involved. Jen and I stayed up the whole night continuing the reading; the others dropped off at some point. (There was some teasing about that later, because Jen and I got hungry in the middle of the night and raided the refrigerator -- one of the items we discovered was some apple cider, which we finished up. My mom informed us in the morning that the cider had been around for quite a long time. So all the sleepyheads claimed that it was "hard cider" that fueled our endeavor.)

It's funny to think about this episode, and the natural human desire to memorialize events. Of course, the episodes that make the news (Abu Gahrib, snuff films, et al.) are twisted and sick, but the desire itself is innocent, as shown here: five high school kids reading an entire G-rated fantasy adventure novel out loud to each other all night, complete with commentary and reactions.

We had a great staged picture -- or rather, two staged pictures -- of our marathon reading event, which I unfortunately cannot find. In the first picture, we hold up a sign saying "11:59 p.m." and we're all smiling and alert. In the second picture, we hold up a sign saying "12:01 a.m." and we've all fallen asleep.