I loved this old boombox. Dual cassette decks with high-speed dubbing. I’d stay up late into the night recording songs I liked off the radio. (Back when they played more than a handful of songs each day.) I still have a big box of those old mix tapes in my music room. I need to dub a few of them over to MP3, because I really did have some great stuff.
The mix tape is a dying, and subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all, you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing … There are a lot of rules.
I searched around for a video that I love which explains this, but I couldn’t find it on the old YouTubes. This is as close as I could get:
Anyway, back to the picture. There are a few other little nostalgic nuggets worth pointing out.
- Notice the rollerskating bear in Santa garb. Classic late 80s kitsch.
- That Auburn Tigers cap was a mainstay in my collection well into high school when it was no longer close to white and probably supported an ecosystem of its own under the brim. I now occasionally wear a similar “Cotton Bowl Champs” variant. But it’s much cleaner.
- Those golf balls were likely all lost by March.
- The most sure-fire way to date this photo is probably the “fiber optic” tree sitting on top of the cable box.