It’s easy to forget there was a time when “music on demand” meant saving up some actual cash and taking a bus to an actual record store, hoping to find our favorite new song in one of the alphabetized album bins.  Even better for our meager 1980s budgets if that special song was available on 45. 

Nobody knew anyone named “Alexa” back in the 80s, so we couldn’t just conjure up a song from the Cloud with our voice, like we can today.  (“Alexa, play The Cure and tell those kids to get off my lawn!”)  That means there were certain songs that we really liked — and still really like today — that we failed to acquire during our spend-a-whole-afternoon-in-the-record-store days.  And when those songs come on today via some streaming service or on the PA system in the hipster grocery store, we smile, nod meaningfully, and say to ourselves – “oh man, I loved this song!”

Some of those songs were “rare” and actually hard to find. Others were just out of reach for that week’s disposable income. Some were performed by — and I hate the term — “one hit wonders,” and we just couldn’t justify spending our lunch money on the whole album. Sometimes we didn’t even know the name of the song or the artist with whom we’d just fallen in love; despite trying to hum the song from memory in the record store, the clerk usually had no idea what we were talking about.

Sound familiar?

Sure, today we can point and click and build a Spotify stereogram in a matter of seconds, but where’s the fun in that? Half the joy (and pain) of making someone special (a.k.a. a potential lover) a mixtape back in the day was the immersive, real-time emotional experience of just making the thing.

Some of us developed a tried-and-true mixtape formula: start fast and loud with a little New Wave; move into some the more mellow Roxy-like tunes,; throw in a pretentious-but-nonetheless-wonderful oldie like Sinatra or Glen Miller (or even a classical track from some recent art movie) to signal our sophistication; pick up the pace again with some accessible punk; and end the tape with a lovely Billy Bragg, ABC or OMD ballad declaring our endless love. Or maybe we went full mixtape-improv and simply followed our feelings, choosing songs from our album shelves that seemed to fit together in that moment — the New Wave/Post Punk equivalent of (pardon the word) Jazz.

If you sincerely meant what you were trying to say through the 90 minute mixtape you were making, you needed at least 180 minutes to make it. How else could you choose and time the order of the tracks to fit perfectly on a 45-minute side? And how else could you, yourself, feel what you hoped the tape’s intended recipient would feel when they listened?

Here is Side 1 of the playlist for the mixtape I was never ever to make, because I never owned the physical media:

Eyes of a Stranger, The Payolas

Cuts You Up, Peter Murphy

Praying Mantis, Don Dixon

Drive That Fast, Kitchens of Distinction

Obscurity Knocks, Trashcan Sinatras

Smoke Rings, Winter Hours

World Destruction, Time Zone (featuring John Lydon & Africa Bambaataa)

Salisbury Hill, Peter Gabriel

Indigo Eyes, Peter Murphy

Everywhere That I’m Not, Translator

I Go Crazy, Flesh for Lulu

What would be on your “mixtape I was never able to make because I never owned the physical media?”

Share your “love it/wish I’d bought it” playlist here.

DENISE WRITES, ON 6/20: “Peter Godwin, Images of Heaven. One of my favorite tracks.”

LISA WRITES, ON 6/21: “‘A Celebration’ by U2. ‘Just Got Lucky,’ Joe Boxers. ‘Genius of Love,’ Tom Tom Club.”

MIKE WRITES, ON 6/22: “Add it Up, by Violent Femmes.”