Mixology: On the Radio

Mixology is a recurring feature in which I take a look at one of the many mix tapes I made over the years. Some are better than others, but all of them are fun to revisit.

Now it's time to check in with one of the first mix tapes I ever made. I believe this was the second or third. It was recorded in 1981, I think in June; I never actually wrote the date down. Tonight's the first time I've listened to it in probably 28 years. The case is long gone, if I even had one. It's recorded on a cheap-ass Cycles 60-minute cassette, the kind that you used to be able to get at a K-Mart-type stores in a package of four for $4. I'm amazed that it's still playable after all these years. The sound quality's pretty shitty, but it was fine for 13-year-old me. The transitions are pretty rough at times, too.

The tape doesn't even have an official name because at that point, I was just using my clock radio with a built-in cassette deck to record songs I dug off the Toronto FM rock stations CHUM-FM and Q107. At the time, both were pretty cool AOR (album-oriented rock) stations. They hadn't become overly formatted by then; when a new record came out like Rush's Moving Pictures, they would play a whole side or even the whole album. Now, both stations are still around but very different--CHUM plays Top 40 and Q107 is a classic rock station.

These were the years when I was really becoming a rock fan. Listening to these stations was like going to school. I actually first began listening to CHUM-AM, which was a Top 40 station, in the mid- to late-'70s. Eventually I got into rock more and moved over to the FM dial.

The tape is a combination of rock radio hits of the day and "classic" tracks (although the phrase "classic rock" had yet to be coined; hell, the guys in the Stones, Beatles and Zep were still in their 30s). There's a fair amount of prog rock in the form of Yes, Supertramp, Queen and the Moody Blues. The Yes song is actually from 1980's Drama, the only album without Jon Anderson on vocals. He and keyboardist Rick Wakeman left the band and were replaced by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, who were known as the Buggles (whose sole claim to fame was recording "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first song played on MTV in August 1981). Horn went on to be a big-time record producer and Downes was one of the founding members of Asia.

Another song is from a one-hit wonder band called Diesel. The Dutch band actually hit #25 on the U.S. singles chart with the song, "Sausalito Summernight," but the song was HUGE in Canada, making it all the way to #1. The song had a decent guitar solo, which I guess is why I liked it. There was a thunderstorm happening when I recorded the song; you can hear the static periodically throughout the recording.

The tape's also heavy on the Zeppelin and Queen, with three songs each. Surprisingly, there was little Canadian content; just the April Wine song "Wanna Rock." There was an actual Canadian Content rule that required stations in the Great White North to play a set amount of music by Canuckian artists; the figure was at 30% in the '80s. Which meant plenty of Rush, Triumph, April Wine and lesser-known (to U.S. listeners, anyhoo) artists like Max Webster, Trooper and the Ian Hunter Band.

This tape got a lot of play after we moved from Toronto to Richland, Washington, where the one rock station sucked out loud. At the time I lived there, there was no DJ and the station would just run pre-set playlists of Top 40 songs over and over. Stuff like Michael Jackson, Hall and Oates, Steve Miller Band; man, "Abracadabra" was on all the time back then. Occasionally, you'd hear a deep cut like Cheap Trick's "Gonna Raise Hell," but there was never anyone telling you who it was or what album it was on. So I just listened to my three or four cassettes a lot, as well as my growing record collection. In '82, I got my first Sony Walkman (which seemed amazingly portable at the time but was frickin' HUGE by today's standards) and then I started taping a lot of my records, admittedly in a low-fi way; you could hear my dog barking on a few of those tapes.

So this particular mix tape ends with Billy Squier's "The Stroke," which was probably THE rock song of the summer of '81 to my mind. Just enormous. And then I'm letting the tape run out while I type and I hear a dorky teenage voice that I recognize as...well, me: "Ah, the sweet sound of silence. After a long tape, you'll finally hear silence. So...take it away, silence." A few more seconds pass and then I start doing some comedy. I start making a remark about Bo Derek's rack and then in another voice say, "Kumar, you're still on the air!" And then begin another joke with the same result. Then the tape finally ends. Totally forgot about that nerdtastic little bit. But perhaps that's the beginning of my podcasting career in a small, goofy way.

On the Radio (6/81)

Side A
Heartbreaker - Led Zeppelin
Tempus Fugit - Yes
It's Only Rock n' Roll - The Rolling Stones
Bloody Well Right - Supertramp
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Stevie Nicks
Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
Flash - Queen
The Voice - The Moody Blues

Side B
Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne
Sausalito Summernight - Diesel
Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
Wanna Rock - April Wine
Rock It (Prime Jive) - Queen
Need Your Loving Tonight - Queen
The Stroke - Billy Squier
Classic comedy from 13-year-old Jay Kumar

Jon Anderson-free Yes:



Bloody Well Right: