Mixtape Memories

About a year ago, I decided to create something unique in my home and it starts with a wall to display and use my old 80's Bang & Olufsen boom box. I mounted it on the wall, complete with 16 cassette tapes symmetrically mount 4 up and 4 down. These tapes are curated by me and may be switched in and out. The idea started out as a way to have others listen to music from my heyday. I wanted it to be an art piece with a heartbeat that others could hear.

What I didn’t expect was the project that would come with it. (I am still not done) Over the years, the cases for those tapes got displaced, scattered around, and some went missing altogether. What what was found we threw them all into one giant box. So, I began cataloguing and archiving what was on the tapes, slowly figuring out which cases belonged to which tapes. It is a tedious process—kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle—but the real surprise came when I started listening to them again.

I hadn’t realized how deeply listening to these old tapes would move me. It’s not just about hearing the music or people; it’s like being transported back to a different time and place, where each tape holds memories that are tied to moments I hadn’t thought about in years.

Each time I rediscover a tape and match it with its case, it’s like reviving a little part of my past that I didn’t know I missed so much. Some of these tapes were soundtracks to important chapters of my life, and others just bring back memories of long drives or late nights. It’s been an unexpectedly emotional journey—one that I thought would just be about organization and art but turned out to be so much more.

Among the tapes I’ve been sorting through, one stood out—an old mixtape from a girlfriend back in the '80s during college. That was a thing back then: people would give each other tapes, not just to share music but to express thoughts and feelings that maybe they couldn’t say out loud. I didn’t give it much thought at the time; I just appreciated the gesture and the music.

Fast forward to me sitting at the kitchen table, doing bills while my daughters were in the family room watching TV. I had this tape playing in the background, a bit of nostalgia to accompany the mundane. Then, out of nowhere, my daughters piped up, “What the hell did you do to her?” I laughed, but then I realized they were picking up on something I’d completely missed for decades.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never really been a lyrics guy. For me, the human voice is just another instrument in the mix. I’ll get caught up in the melody, the timbre, the sound of the voice, but the words? They usually fly right by. So when my daughters pointed out how intense the lyrics were, it hit me—this old girlfriend had probably been trying to tell me something, and I completely missed it. Whatever message was hidden in those songs back then went right over my head.

It’s funny to think about now, listening to those same songs with fresh ears and realizing how blind I was to what she might have been feeling. But it’s also a reminder of how music—and the way we hear it—changes with time and context. What I bypassed back then, I’m picking up now, though maybe a little too late. It’s just one more layer to this whole experience of revisiting these tapes—a mix of nostalgia, humor, and a bit of self-reflection.

I’ve also uncovered more than just music—there are memories preserved in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until now. Some of the tapes go back to my grade school days when my parents recorded my brother and me playing solos on our instruments. There are even recordings from when I was part of a middle school jazz band that won state. Listening to those has been surreal, almost like stepping into a time machine and hearing a younger version of myself trying to find rhythm and harmony, not just in music, but in life.

But what really got me were the tapes with my parents’ voices on them. There’s one of us putting up the Christmas tree, with me talking about the ornaments and my dad repeatedly saying, “I’m having trouble hearing you.” I had no idea at the time, but he was actually recording the whole thing to send to my grandmother in North Carolina. He wanted her to feel like she was there with us, even though she couldn’t be. Listening to that now, knowing what he was trying to do, is incredibly moving.

These tapes are more than just relics of old music—they’re snapshots of family moments that I didn’t realize were being captured. Hearing my parents' voices again, especially in such casual, intimate moments, has been unexpectedly emotional. What started as a fun project to get these tapes organized has turned into something much deeper. Each tape is like a window into a different time, filled with moments I didn’t know I missed so much.

I stumbled across something that really took me back—an old answering machine tape from when I first got married. It’s filled with calls from people I had long forgotten, but one message stood out, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

It was from a close friend of mine who was a groomsman, who’s still a close friend today. He left this message that went on for a solid 10 minutes, joking about how I’d become “No Fun John” now that I was married and wouldn’t go out with him anymore. He had this whole bit about calling up a girl for a date but lamented that I wasn’t home to talk him through it. Then he goes on to say, in all sorts of funny ways, that I’d told him I was sick, but he knew I was either out or just avoiding him. The timing couldn’t have been better—because the very next message was from my mom, asking how I was feeling with my cold.

Amid all these tapes—these little time capsules of my life—there’s one that holds something incredibly special. It’s the tape I made after my wife and I had our first date. She came by my apartment after we went out for pizza, and I remember putting songs together that she had not heard. Crazy as it sounds, I’ve still got it as she added it to our collection when we got married. And right there on the tape is "Promises" by When in Rome, a song that somehow carried the weight of that moment, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

What’s even crazier is that a few months ago, I found myself at a bar dancing with my daughters to that very song. The same track that played when I first started falling for my wife, now part of a night where I was laughing and dancing with the kids we’ve raised together. This was a very meaningful experience.

Looking back through all these tapes, I realize they’re not just pieces of music or random recordings. They’re a record of the life I’ve lived—the relationships, the humor, the milestones, and the moments I never thought would matter as much as they do now. It’s wild to think that something as simple as pressing "record" all those years ago would create such a powerful connection between then and now. In some ways, these tapes tell the story better than I ever could.