The Mix Tapes
The Mix Tapes
By Beth Morait
When I was a youngster, I thought nostalgia was something that old people had, because the modern world was too busy for them to focus on too hard. Little did I know at the time that 30 years later I’d also be sitting here feeling, more often than not, nostalgic for the good old days of my childhood. When someone says, ‘back in the 80s’ I still think, “oh so like a decade ago?” and then realise to my horror that the mid-80s was 40 years ago, and I’m on the wrong side of 40, crashing headlong towards my half-century of being alive. It makes me feel so old, and question where the hell the last 30 years have gone?
I was born at the very end of 1979, so I just snuck into ‘Gen X’. And those of us in Gen X, and Gen Y (apparently that’s a thing) grew up in simpler times, with no mobiles or iPads, first-generation games consoles, and only 4 channels on the TV that went off for the day at midnight and switched to Ceefax or Teletext. But the one thing we did have throughout our childhood, and our formative years, was music. And more specifically, the ability to take our music with us everywhere we went, thanks to the super, space-age tech of the Walkman.
For those youngsters who may never have heard of this magical box, it was a compact portable cassette player, with headphones – so like what you can do with your phone now, but you also had to carry the cassettes with you. Obviously, carrying more than one cassette was a bit of an issue, especially if you only had one pocket, which the Walkman was taking up. So, to counteract this problem, we used to make ourselves mix tapes, containing all our favourite tracks of the time. And here’s a nostalgic look back at one of my most played mix tapes from back then (somewhere around 1996/97), track-by-track.
SIDE A:
1. Carmina Burana – Carl Orff: This track opened my mixtape for one very simple reason. It was the track they played at the beginning of every Saturday Rock Night, at The Tivoli, Buckley, which was about 8 miles from my home. If you were into Rock and Metal back then, this was THE place to be. And every Saturday, a busload of unruly youths from Wrexham, and one from Chester, would be shipped to the Tiv to have a great time. Rock night started promptly at 9pm, and as soon as you heard the opening timpani and vocal chorus of ‘Carmina Burana’ it was your cue to head to the dancefloor and let 3 hours of insanity commence!
2. Twist – Korn: This song was next for the simple reason that it always followed Carmina Burana at the Tiv, and all of us who’d collected on the dancefloor would lose our proverbial shit to it! I remember losing my glasses once in the slam, after getting punched in the face. I scrambled through flailing limbs to the edge of the dancefloor where they’d become wedged under the stage, retrieved them (they were slightly wonkier than they had been) then got straight back into steamrolling through everyone manically!!
3. Everybody Hurts – REM: This one wasn’t a Tiv banger, but it was a song that spoke to me and got me through some really tough times. I could listen to it when I was happy, to remind myself that things do get better. Or I could listen to it when I was sad and just needed to cry. It was also one of the first songs I learnt to play on guitar.
4. Runaway Train – Soul Asylum: During my childhood, Metal and Rock was strictly off-limits in my very staunch Presbyterian household. We grew up on a diet of Classical and Jazz music, as my mum was a Classical nut, and my dad a Jazz musician. I was a loner in primary school, throwing myself into schoolwork, and practicing my musical instruments, so I missed out on Pop culture and Rock until the age of about 11(when I went to high school and discovered Take That and Queen), and missed out on Metal until I was 16, and had my second epiphany moment. But I didn’t discover this song until my great college friend, Street, introduced me to it in 1996.
5. Always – Bon Jovi: I started listening to Bon Jovi during my first musical epiphany in high school, and as a teenage girl, Jon Bon Jovi was absolutely my crush. This song was the soundtrack to my teenage dreams. Need I say more…!
6. One Final Graven Kiss – Cradle Of Filth: Ok, it’s a bit of a leap from Soft Rock, but that was the beauty of a mixtape – genre didn’t matter, it was what you liked that counted. While I wasn’t a huge CoF fan, as I preferred clean singing, I was, by the point of discovering it, a Goth! And, this song spoke to me because it married my love of piano with the prospect of Metal, despite it being very much a symphonic classical piece. The suggestions to my Metal innocence that Classical and Metal music could be combined was utterly mind-blowing!
7. Hazard – Richard Marx: Back to the Soft Rock I went, with a bit of Richard Marx. My best friend in school, Gayle, introduced me to this track at the same time she introduced me to Bon Jovi, and it was another of those songs that just struck me straight away for its storyline. So, it got planted on my list.
SIDE B:
1. Shoots and Ladders – Korn: This was another Tiv regular, that I loved getting messed up to, and singing along with, so it was always going to make the cut. I remember one fateful evening at the Tiv, when I was slightly worse for wear, after drinking my own body weight in Newcastle Brown Ale, and I decided to mosh to this on one of the tall octagonal tables that surrounded the dancefloor. I didn’t notice that, with every forward motion, I was getting slightly closer to the edge of the table… until there was no more table, and I ended up tumbling off. I could never understand why I was in so much pain on a Sunday, until I got the inevitable beer fear flashbacks from the night before!!
2. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen: Queen was the breakthrough band that started my Rock and Metal epiphany. And this was the first Queen song I heard, at my friend Katy’s house, on vinyl, on her mum’s record player. Hearing Bo Rap, as an innocent 11 year old, with big dreams, and music in my soul did something to me that I can only describe as a religious experience. I felt cleansed of the world and touched more deeply than anything has ever managed since. This. This was my new religion. This had shown me the light as I wandered in the darkness. This was absolute beauty. Absolute clarity. Absolute perfection, and I yearned for more, and more, like a drug. I became an avid queen fan, and Bo Rap was overtaken many times by a lot of their other, lesser-known tracks, as I listened deeper. But this track was the start of a love affair that never ended. I heard Queen for the first time, in the spring of 1991. Little did I know at the time that my new Messiah would leave this life before the year was out…
3. Ratamahatta – Sepultura: Ok, you’ve guessed it, this was yet another Tiv favourite. At this point, I was still a Metal baby, so all my song recommendations either came from The Tiv, or our college gang, known lovingly as “The Phreax”. We lived on a diet of Korn, Sepultura, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Coal Chamber, and Nirvana. Although at the time, I didn’t have much appreciation for Nirvana, or any of the Grunge Movement, as my classical, religious roots were still gnawing at the ankles of my soul, telling me that, despite my Gothic exterior, I was a good girl and couldn’t like Grunge because it was dirty and bad, and I would go to hell for liking it! Mad how the traumatised brain works isn’t it!
4. The Number Of The Beast – Iron Maiden: We had a great little record shop in Wrexham, called Moonlight Records, which is still there today. I used to go there to buy my Queen tapes, and it was there that I first heard this Iron Maiden Classic. And I instantly bought the album to binge on some more of this Classic Heavy Metal sound. I especially loved it, because I could sing along with it, and Bruce’s diction was always perfect, which pleased my inner English Teacher brain! And this title track was always my favourite to sing with, so it made it onto the mixtape!
5. Could It Be Magic – Take that: Ok, ok I know you’re all now screaming WTAF?!!!! But remember, this is a mix tape! Genre doesn’t matter. And alongside my new passion for Rock and Metal, I still had my old love of the boy band who’d lilted me through high school, and whose posters still adorned my bedroom walls, despite them having split up. While I didn’t get to the level of needing to phone the helpline when the split was announced, I couldn’t bring myself to take their posters down from my walls. ‘Could It Be Magic’ was a song that I’d loved, learnt all the words to, and even learnt the dance to from step-by-step instructions in ‘Smash Hits’ Magazine (we didn’t have instructional dance-thru videos in those days, because YouTube hadn’t been invented!). So, this track was an obvious choice for my mix tape at the time, to make me feel good.
6. I’m A Believer – Vic & Bob with EMF: In the same way as Carmina Burana opened the tape, because of Rock Night in the Tiv, Vic and Bob’s version of ‘I’m A Believer’ closed it, as this was a regular final tune in the Tiv, when everyone was incredibly drunk, high, danced out, and just wanted to sing out of tune while hugging everyone who was still left standing. It always reminded me of the good times and always made me smile.
And there you have it. That was my teenage mixtape, and a nostalgic trip through some of the moments of my youth. It’s been a blast for me writing this. The memories, both happy and sad, made it into more of a personal journey. So, now you know my mixtape, what was on yours?
In case you want to listen to it, here’s my Mix Tape as a Spotify playlist:
Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Beth Morait and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this article, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
