What Once Was Innocence: What's on Those Tapes Under the Bed?

Sunday afternoon, I made a great and sad mistake. I was bored and had a few in me, so on a whim I went under the bed, dragged out the old box filled to overflowing with audio cassette tapes, chose an unmarked one just for the hell of it and popped it into a machine to hear what was on it, and try to figure out why. I have hundreds of old cassette tapes there under the bed, and about half of them are unmarked?or marked in such a way that I have no fucking idea what's on them. On one tape, I scrawled the question, "How did Casper the Friendly Ghost Die?" then left it at that. That one I think I'll avoid.

I usually make a point of avoiding the unmarked tapes, for fear that they might be filled with episodes of those "shows" I recorded in my room when I was nine. Even if not that in particular, I'm always afraid to discover what these things might reveal about me. Things, I'm sure, I'd just as soon not remember. Nevertheless, I thought I'd give it a listen. There was no one around to embarrass but myself.

I hit the play button, and as the leader hissed through the machine, I went into the kitchen, opened a new beer and sat down at the kitchen table. There were three sharp drum beats before the lap steel kicked in?and I knew immediately what I was hearing. John Goodman, the actor, singing a sad fake-country ballad called "People Like Us." And singing it mighty well, too, I always thought.

I remembered that record. It was the B-side to a single, though I forgot what was on the A-side. I could hear the needle skip and bounce across the final chorus, just when he was hitting that high note.

I was doing okay so far, but had no idea what else would follow it. I took another swallow and waited, growing tense.

An hour later, the tape clicking back to the beginning of side one, I was cringing, and cringing bad. What had followed the Great John Goodman had been selections from Hüsker Dü's two Warner Bros. studio albums, the Boomtown Rats doing "Diamond Smiles," "The Bed" from Lou Reed's Berlin, a couple things from Tom Waits' second album, Sarah Vaughan singing Rodgers & Hart, Mike + the Mechanics (I don't understand that at all), a bunch of stuff from King Crimson's Three of a Perfect Pair, perhaps too much from Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Pink Floyd's "Hey You" and all the songs Nico sings on the first Velvets record.

There were lots of pops and skips and crackles on the recordings. It wouldn't be until shortly before I moved to New York that I would deign to buy a CD player?and I never was the sort of person who dumped great deals of money and effort into trying to piece together the world's most perfect stereophonic system.

I thought at first, as the songs droned on, that I was listening to one of those unholy maudlin suicide soundtracks I used to throw together in the days before I tried to off myself?and that would've been grim, but no big deal?at least I could explain to anyone else who might hear it that I simply wasn't in my right mind when I put it together.

But I was wrong. Given the preponderance of cuts (three) from Hüsker Dü's dreadful Warehouse album (an album I only listened to twice?one of those times being, apparently, to make this tape), that would place the birth of the compilation no earlier than the summer of 1987, when I bought the album. That being the case, it might've been an official suicide soundtrack at a stretch, and I could argue?again?to strangers that it was?but I knew it wasn't.

This was nothing more than a snapshot of what I was listening to in the late summer of 1987?in those weeks just prior to my move from Wisconsin to Minneapolis. And I can't tell you how depressing that is. Taken individually, no single track would be all that bad, but somehow, when you cram them all together onto an hour-long tape, it becomes really retarded.

Thinking back on those particular few weeks, I can't say as I remember much. I worked the counter at the porn shop a few nights a week until about 10. If Grinch and I weren't doing anything afterward, I'd come home and drink until about 2 or so. It's all kind of a blur, really.

Still, I've romanticized those days. They were good times, filled with noise and violence and fire and raucous laughter and cruel, large-scale pranks. I remember listening to a lot of Mentors and GG Allin and Meatmen.

Maybe those were just the things I listened to publicly and at high volumes, the bands I talked about.

And maybe the things on this tape were things I listened to quietly, late at night, when I was alone. Maybe these were the things I listened to with no small sense of shame.

I had no idea?Lord knows I didn't?that I had been such a putz.

But I guess the proof is right there?right there on that stupid, unlabeled cassette tape. I think I've learned my lesson.