Mix up

It's been one of those weekends...I roamed around despodently, thinking of undone tax returns, unfinished books, unstarted dissertations, unburned calories and unreturned phonecalls. Looking for something to cheer me up, I turned to music. More specifically, to my casette collection. Yes, I'm one of those people who still listens to tapes and casettes, especially ones recorded with so much effort all those years ago before the CD revolution. I recall the days of lying down in the dark after the rest of the family was asleep, listening to late night radio on a tinny walkman with one finger on the 'record' button and the other holding the headphone cable just-so in order to be able to hear from both sides...
I have had to throw away some really good compilations over the years due to damage to the tape or a move or some other undignified excuse. One tape that escaped such a fate is something I called cheesily enough "All-time (English) favourites: My 'first' album" :)
Recorded over a decade ago, it has such a variation of pieces as "Layla", "Take on me", "Love me do", "Annie's Song" and "Saturday Night" all in one compilation!!! It's really embarassing to me to think that I thought of "I swear" and "Actor" as some of my all-time favorites! But hey, cheesy or not, it brought back some great memories.
Another of my favorite compilations somehow got lost (I think it is in the casette deck of a certain Toyota Corolla in Chicago...Own up to it, You Who Dared To Steal A Mix Tape from me!). It had some of the standard favorites like "Jhuki jhuki si nazar", "Huzoor is kadar", "Do naina" and "Tujhse naaraaz nahin.." that I am sure feature in others' compilations too.
And then there's some I got more picky and savvy about: Like a "Fantastic Females" one, which had some lovely numbers by the women of the day (Sade and Joan Osborne come to mind), one for dance music, which progressed brilliantly from techno to jive music to slow dance music all designed for a party that I never ended up hosting!
If you count the hours I've spent creating compilations, I'm sure it'll fill a couple of weeks at least!
I have never been gifted a mix tape (unless you count my providing a list of requests and twisting arms till it gets done!), but have been the giver and compiler of a few. Each occasion (one real sad, the others good) is marked as deserving of the care and attention and time and effort of timing the songs, maximizing the space used, the meaningfulness of the collection, the sequence of songs, the aptness of the occasion...it's not a trivial exercise!
In my own fantasy world, a compilation of songs chosen and recorded specially for me ranks much much higher than flowers or dinner or Paris or expensive perfumes in the 'romantic stuff' list. It ranks just below words (poetry/letters/anything) written specially for me and just above holding my hair back while I puke.
Rob from "High Fidelity" had it right: "Now the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many dos and don'ts. First of all, you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing."
Indeed!