The Secret Life of a Mix Tape

He made the mix tapes. We supplied the chaos.

The Basement Studio

My dad had a secret.

He was turning recipe holders and wall sconces into stereo equipment.

Not literally, of course. Although, knowing Dad, he probably would have tried.

I grew up in the seventies, one of seven kids, which meant our house was not exactly a peaceful environment. There was always somebody coming, somebody going, somebody fighting, somebody laughing, and somebody yelling, “Dad!”

I think that may have been why Dad had a little corner of the basement that was just his.

It was his music room.

Tape decks. Receiver. Speakers. Cassettes. Wires. Knobs. Buttons. Enough equipment to make the whole thing look like the control room at NASA.

Dad knew what everything did.

The rest of us knew which buttons we weren’t supposed to touch.

Dad loved making mix tapes.

And he didn’t just make them for himself. He made them for everybody.

Friends. Relatives. Anyone who happened to mention that they liked a particular song or artist.

“Here. I made this for you.”

That was Dad.

Before There Was Spotify

Today, you can make a playlist in thirty seconds. Pick some songs, give it a name, hit send.

Dad had to work for it.

He had to find the songs. Wait for them on the radio. Get the tape ready. Hit record at exactly the right moment. And if the DJ started talking over the first three seconds of the song, well, congratulations.

You had just ruined Side A.

Start over.

Dad was the algorithm.

And Dad took his job seriously.

There was only one problem.

Good audio equipment cost money.

The Secret Stereo Fund

Dad’s solution was simple: make some money.

Woodworking was one of his hobbies, so he would disappear into the basement and start producing things.

Recipe holders.

Wall sconces.

Various wooden crafts.

And Dad didn’t make one.

He made an inventory.

He’d create an assembly line and turn out enough stuff to make you think we’d accidentally opened a small manufacturing plant.

Once a month, he’d load everything into the car and head to the Sassy Cat consignment shop in Chagrin Falls.

He’d drop off the latest batch, pick up a check for whatever had sold, and come home.

Well…

He came home with the money.

The money just didn’t necessarily make it all the way into the family budget.

Dad had a secret stereo fund.

And Mom knew nothing about it.

This was a remarkably sophisticated financial operation for a man running a woodworking shop in his basement.

He made things.

He sold things.

He saved the money.

Then he bought stereo equipment.

And when Dad was ready to spend that money, there was one place in Cleveland he wanted to go.

Audio Craft.

For people who cared about stereo equipment in Cleveland back then, Audio Craft wasn’t just another store. It was the place. The company had been around since the 1950s and became known for high-end audio equipment and brands serious music people cared about.

Dad loved that place.

I can still picture him coming home with another piece of equipment that, to the rest of us, looked suspiciously similar to the piece he already owned.

A receiver.

A speaker.

A tape deck.

Something with more buttons than the previous piece.

Dad would explain the improvement.

“Listen to that.”

I’d listen.

“It has better separation.”

I’d nod.

“Yeah. I hear it.”

I did not hear it.

But I knew better than to criticize a man who had just spent three weeks making wall sconces.

Enter the JVC

Then came the JVC tape deck.

This wasn’t just another piece of equipment.

This was a splurge.

Dad had saved for it, and he was pretty excited.

There was, however, one small problem.

Mom.

A brand-new JVC tape deck appearing in the house was going to raise questions.

So Dad developed a plan.

He would keep Mom occupied upstairs while my younger brother Eddie carried the new tape deck down to the basement.

Simple.

Quiet.

What could possibly go wrong?

There were only two things standing between Dad and his new stereo equipment.

Eddie.

And stairs.

Eddie picked up the box and started down.

Somewhere along the way, he tripped.

The JVC went airborne.

And down the basement steps it went.

The Silent Profanity

I don’t remember every detail of the impact.

I don’t need to.

I remember Dad.

Dad didn’t yell.

He couldn’t.

Mom was upstairs.

So instead, he became a human cartoon.

His hands were flying.

His eyes were enormous.

His mouth was moving.

No sound was coming out.

He was silently mouthing words that, had they been spoken aloud, would have required several apologies and possibly a priest.

He was doing everything a man could possibly do to express the catastrophic destruction of a brand-new JVC tape deck without making a sound.

It was like watching a mime have a nervous breakdown.

Eddie just stood there.

And Dad stood at the bottom of those stairs, flailing his arms and silently exploding.

Seven kids in the house, and somehow this was the one moment when everybody understood the importance of keeping their mouth shut.

I don’t remember whether the JVC survived.

Knowing Dad, he probably fixed it.

What the Tapes Meant

What I remember now is what that little corner of the basement meant.

Dad had seven kids.

He had a house full of noise.

He had responsibilities.

And downstairs, he had music.

He could sit there, put on a record or a cassette, work on his latest project, and disappear for a while.

Maybe the mix tapes were his hobby. Maybe they were his escape. With seven kids, I’m guessing they were probably both.

And now that I’m older, I think there’s something else about those tapes that I appreciate.

They took time.

You couldn’t just type in a few artists and let an algorithm do the work.

Dad listened.

He chose.

He waited.

He recorded.

He made mistakes.

He started over.

And then he handed the finished tape to somebody.

“Here. I made this for you.”

That’s what I remember.

Not the technology.

The effort.

Because a mix tape wasn’t just a collection of songs. It was a little piece of somebody’s time.

Dad didn’t have Spotify.

He had a basement.

He didn’t have an algorithm.

He had an ear.

And he didn’t have a button that said Share Playlist.

He had a cassette tape he’d spent an evening making for you.

Then he’d hand it over.

I don’t remember what happened to most of those tapes.

I don’t remember the song lists.

I don’t know what happened to Dad’s equipment.

But I remember the basement.

I remember the woodworking assembly line.

I remember the Sassy Cat.

I remember Audio Craft.

I remember Dad’s secret stereo fund.

And I remember Eddie standing at the bottom of those stairs while Dad performed what may have been the greatest silent profanity exhibition in Lake County history.

Maybe that’s why I still like the idea of a mix tape.

Not because I want to go back to the seventies.

I just miss a time when making something for somebody took a little longer.

Dad understood that.

If you’re going to secretly buy a JVC tape deck, there is one other important rule: never let Eddie carry it down the stairs.