Friday, May 28, 2010

Favorite Things Friday - old cassettes


I'm doing a major purge of 'stuff' this month in my house. With a little kiddo and all of her toys, plus two parents who have lots of toys of their own, it's getting crowed in here. And frankly - we get all edgy with so much crap around. I was cleaning out a box of old tapes, and decided it was time to get rid of my stack of most treasured preteen music. * sigh * You can see I didn't branch too much (besides my strange and serious 5th grade obsession with surf music). Every one of these tapes holds a story for me. But, the tape I'm going to have the hardest time parting with is my dogeared copy of New Edition.
Christmas, 1984 - I was in fourth grade. My then 20s something, adventuresome aunt, who was living all the way across the country in Maine had come home for Christmas. To me it was like she had been to the moon. I couldn't even comprehend how far away Maine was, as I'd only ever been to California and Oregon. Before coming home she'd gone on a Christmas shopping trip to New York City and brought home exotic trinkets for all of us from the Big Apple.

My gift from her was this tape. My aunt told me that she'd never heard of this "New Edition" group, but this was what the kids in New York City were listening to (she'd asked a clerk in a record shop for their advice). I was thrilled - and felt so special. I was pretty sure I was the only kid with a New Edition tape on the West Coast and I am pretty sure I was the only person with one in my small hometown. I busted that thing open, and within minutes my cousin and I were dancing around to it in grandma's pink guest room. It was so different than anything I had ever heard; being raised on a steady diet of classical music and 60s rock. And I think it was this tape that somehow let me know it was ok to listen to music other that what my parents were listening to.

Here's a little compilation of my favorite tunes from this stack just incase any of you need a dose of 80s nostalgia of your own! Bye-bye stack of old tapes, thanks for all the memories!


Get a playlist! Standalone player Get Ringtones

2 comments:

Librarian Girl said...

Yay New Edition! 6th grade was all about those boys.

Anonymous said...

We still have two BOXES of our old tapes. And right now our cd player in the car is broken, due to a certain 2 yr old putting quarters into it, so we've been going old school and actually listening to them. I think my mixed tapes are the best, but the kids prefer the Top Gun soundtrack.