When I was eighteen and living in Latvia, one of my favorite pen pals was my friend Aaron, who loved sending mail as much as I loved receiving it. He was also an avid mixtape maker. A few weekends ago I came across one of the mixes he made and sent me while I was living there, with its pasted-together cover and high school boy chicken scratch track listing.
Today I brought the mix into work with me, where I have a working cassette player. The carefully curated mix includes some of Aaron’s favorite punk bands Pennywise, Rancid, and Green Day; southwestern Ohio favorites The Tigerlilies, Brainiac, and Over The Rhine; the latest alternative radio hit in 1994, “Mrs. Washington” by the Gigolo Aunts (goodness, remember all those videos of men with long hair playing guitar and swaying back and forth in front of the camera?); and bands I went on to play on my college radio show (Kitchens of Distinction and Man…or Astroman?). All of it was mashed together with Lite FM radio snippets, Indiana Jones read-along records clips, and recordings of Aaron and his friends playing electric guitars on sofas. And then there were two songs I’d completely forgotten about:
Nothing Special - Candyass
Will You Run - Devils Wielding Scimitars
I just tried to find a trace of them on the internet, but according to Google, the band Candyass never existed, and Devils Wielding Scimitars are a barely remembered digital archive afterthought. In some ways, it makes me a little bit happy that there are still a few things in this world that exist outside these 1s and 0s. My own secret mixtape songs.
In other ways, I really wish you could hear these songs.
I wonder if someone will eventually release a “Nuggets”-type collection of all of the obscure indie/punk seven inches that were released in the early-to-mid-90s?
Just over a year ago, I reconnected with Aaron after a long period of lost contact, and the first thing he asked me for was a mailing address. A few days later I received a package filled with stickers (see above) and - of course - a mix.
