Lost & Never Found Again: Mixtapes

I made a mix tape in 1990 that I loved and lost. I loved it because it was filled with odd songs and crazy stuff that I collected from different sources. All I can remember now is that it had Kid Frost’s “La Raza” on it, and that it had a heart painted on the case with nail polish.

I made it for myself, but I think I lent it to a friend’s girlfriend, and maybe that’s where I lost it. Come to think of it, she spilled nail polish on it, and that’s where the heart came from. So it couldn’t have been her that lost it, because the nail polish was after I got it back.

It’s been years now, so it has taken on a life of its own in my memory. I know logically that it’s one of those fading memories that increases in scope with time, but at this point I am pretty positive that the actual Ark of the Covenant was on that tape. I used to know more songs that were on it (maybe “Harley David” by the Bollock Brothers?), but now it’s just the “La Raza” tape.

Music is like treasure to me, and knowing (albeit sketchily) that there were rare songs that I was excited to have makes me crazy. The thing you can’t remember is always the greatest thing ever, of course. What makes it worse is that if I could just remember what songs were on it, I could at least find them somewhere else, but now that I have “La Raza,” all I can do is curse fate for letting the rest disappear on me.

I listened to that tape in the springtime in San Mateo, California, and it’s always going to sound like distant memories of warm afternoons in my mind.
—Christian Lipski

Pages: 1 2