retro video: She Blinded Me With Science

I found this cassette, one of the only ones I bought, in a box on the shelf. It still has a Cheap Thrills sticker with the date on it, in case you tried to bring it back after 10 days, or whatever their lame return policy was. I doubt there's much left on it except tape hiss, I must have played it 40,000 times.

Cassettes were too fragile to believe in. I bought LPs and taped my own, avoiding a fit of rage when my Walkman inevitably devoured them. Also, making a mix tape from other tapes smacked of depravity and black magic, a grotesque audio cannibalism.

Leafing through mom's records, I see some of my old ones that are probably worth something. The original Blade Runner soundtrack, from when Vangelis wouldn't let them use his score and they re-recorded it with the New American Orchestra. I didn't read the small print and was bitterly disappointed when I returned home not with the eerie dystopian soundscape of a future LA drowning in its own tears, but a bunch of LA session musicians cheerily banging out a paycheck.

Albums have a visual force and a physical presence that doesn't exist in the modern age, when both music and graphics are often as not an invisible binary jumble on a hard drive. The iconic symbol of today's landscape is the iPod, not the album cover.

The sleeves of a bunch of my mom's records still live down in the tangled roots of my memory.

Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, which she would put on to rouse the troops when I had a slumber party. How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away and I Scare Myself (which, I just realized, was covered by Thomas Dolby).
It always baffled Zim- the music was so relaxed an casual, and he expected something more strident.

Black Man's Burdon, Eric Burdon and War.
Notable for a gatefold featuring naked ladies. Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, the Andy Warhol cover with the zipper. Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent, the first record I ever bought, with Ted looking like one of her boyfriends at the time. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band from the Beatles, and Hotel California from the Eagles- two covers I poured over by the hour when I was young, looking for signs and portents.

These days, I don't really notice CD covers. With their hard plastic shells they're utilitarian and informational, not artistic. And once they're on the machine, I don't really look at them again.

I'm lucky if I know the titles of the songs anymore, everything is numbers.

I asked Jamesy once what was his favorite song of the year, and he answered "Wolf Parade number nine!"

And I knew exactly which one he meant.