Those of us old enough to remember cassette decks would relate the pivotal scene in High Fidelity when Cusack’s character details the importance of both selection and placement of songs on a mix tape. I sure did. I spent days compiling the most appropriate music track listings for tapes I would make for my girlfriends in high school. Feels dorky to admit, but I still have copies of many of them (they were too good, in my opinion, to not have backup copies for my own use, and doubtlessly, these copies received more play than the originals.)

I took a look through my old crate of tapes, most unplayed in nearly twenty years. Lotta surprises there, not the least of which is that I still think my taste was pretty good back then. Not so good was the overreaching heartache that I seemed to be compelled to document over and over. Teen angst, such overblown melodrama, but one careless word from the wrong girl was the end of the world and would merit obsessive compilations of the music of others whose tunes sang out what my heart could only feel. Oh, the humanity!

I think I may have single-handedly kept Bowie’s seminal work “Station to Station” alive throughout his deplorable ‘80s hair days; tracks off of that album kept reappearing on nearly every mix tape I ever made.

After the jump, a hodgepodge list of the type of stuff the ladies used to receive from your young and heartsick narrator.

“She’s In Parties” – Bauhaus
“Mohair Locker Room Pin-Up Boys” – Adam Ant
“I’ll Be your Mirror” – Nico and the Velvet Underground
”Word On A Wing” – David Bowie
“Mother Fist (and her Five Daughters)” – Marc Almond
“The Whole Of The Moon” – The Waterboys
“Jeepster” – T Rex
“Coming Up Close” – til tuesday
“Pagan Love Song” – Sex Gang Children
“Uncertain Smile” – The The
“Love Cats” – The Cure (a band I managed to completely burn out on in high school)
“Shiny Shiny” – Hazsee Fantayzee
“Love Removal Machine” – The Cult

…and so many more along those lines. Amazing how fresh some of those songs still sound to my mind’s ear, even if the tapes themselves have decayed to the point of being unplayable. Yet another reason to praise the digital age.

That list could go on far too long for this blog, but right about now I’m interested in hearing about some of the songs that you lot may have played into personal infamy.