A Reverend Horton Heat reference! Finally!!

I had a specific list I called “Killer Cuts”. It was mostly obscure cuts (to most people) such Rosebud by the Stems. I took particular joy in giving cd’s containing these cuts to my friends, but only under the premise they would tell me which songs they like and which ones they don’t. Always, interesting to hear back. Hope you are well.

Thanks for that. Evocative, as usual. My recollection…?

(Take a seat) We actually called them compilation tapes back then – I guess you probably did, too. Around 1977–78 there was a real shift happening. Stereo manufacturers began producing much higher-quality hi-fi, both for the home and for the car, and that made a huge difference in how music was experienced. For the first time, that level of sound quality became genuinely accessible to ordinary listeners like us. It became important to us.

At home, we were still listening to what we always called ‘record’ collections – no one said “vinyl” then. And you listened to albums properly, start to finish, flipping them over halfway through. That was simply the ritual of it. Plus, you separated the seeds from the weed on the inside of double albums, as an aside. But with the arrival of better cassette decks and especially the 90-minute chrome or metal tape, something changed: we could finally record an album straight through and not have to interrupt the experience. One full LP on one side of a tape, another on the other. That alone felt revolutionary.

And this is where compilation tapes really began to take shape. We made them mainly for two purposes: road trips and parties.

The road trip tape became its own art form. We were still very much influenced by that lingering late-’60s spirit – the Jack Kerouac sense of movement, escape, and open-road dreaming. So, the music had to match that feeling of space and journey. You’d build tapes around bands like The Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Marshall Tucker Band, The Outlaws, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Band, Little Feat, The Guess Who, The Who, Jorma, Genesis, Traffic, Joni Mitchell, Supertramp, Doobie Brothers, Les Dudek, etc. – those were the kinds of artists that defined the feel of it.

Radio was still a big influence, too. Around NYC at the time you had stations like WPLJ, WNEW and WLIR, which were hugely important because they actually played album tracks – sometimes long ones. It wasn’t unusual to hear long tracks you’d never expect on radio today, like Close To The Edge in its entirety! Radio was our live compilation tape. Finally, we could be our own DJ. Radio fed directly into how we thought about compiling tracks tapes.

Car stereos were evolving just as quickly. By the late ’70s, you could get cassette players built into dashboards, along with graphic equalizers, and proper speaker installations – front and rear, sometimes even tweeters in the dashboard. It wasn’t about giant bass systems like later decades; it was about clean, balanced hi-fi – bass, mid, and treble properly represented. Jeez, I can remember moving from AM to FM, momo to stereo!

Crucially, it sounded so good that your car effectively became a mobile listening room. George and Cubby made a good living installing car stereos during high school, calling their business Turbosound. Evan got his new Honda Prelude (manual) and then a new car stereo installed…with a Pioneer equaliser! Game changer. Life was good. Yes never sounded so good – I’ve Seen All Good People. And The Outlaws ‘Holiday’? Dave Mason ‘Takin’ The Time to Find’? ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’? ‘Spanish Moon’? ‘Ventura Highway’? We were in heaven. Windows rolled down, turkey, Russian and cole slaw wedge on the ready, an innocent bit of Mary Jane, on the way to Kensico Reservoir for some illegal skinny dipping, pumping out the tunicles, letting the world know…we made it. Oh, to be a teen again.

At home, the shift away from the old all-in-one units was just as important. Those earlier systems (turntable, radio, 8-track, all in one component) were convenient, yet rarely sounded great. Once separates became the norm, proper turntables (like the early Technics direct drives with those signature orange lights), the best stylus, amplifiers, cassette decks, and speakers…the whole listening experience changed.

In fact, in the similar vane, we used to go to The Listening Room in White Plains on Central Avenue, pretend to be potential customers, and ask to hear and experience the top speaker line (faux rich Scarsdalians that we were). We’d request they put on Steely Dan ‘Aja’ for best studio produced example and Little Feat’s ‘Fat Man In A Bathtub’ from Waiting for Columbus for best live album example. As the french doors closed and we sat on a couch centered in the room, you’d hear the little hiss of silence before the track played, then the song would come on and we’d be blissed out of our noodles (and were probably out of our noodles before we even walked in there, to be honest). Love of ‘stereo’ was embedding itself in our friend group.
And the social side of all this was just as important.

For road trips, tapes were often named—”Road Trip,” “Southern Rock Compilation,” “Dead Compilation,” and so on. For parties, it was a different energy entirely: dance tapes, mood tapes, tapes designed for a specific night or gathering. Slow tapes for the gals (Fogelberg, CSN, Bread, Chicago, etc). You’d design them obsessively – what opens, how one track flows into another, and what closes (for when only a little time was left, I found using Elvis Costello & The Attractions for short cuts always came in handy). The segue mattered almost as much as the song choice.

There’s also a funny detail people forget: the practical side of tapes. If they got tangled up, you’d literally fix them with a pencil, wind them back, repair them by hand. There was something physical and slightly fragile about the whole process that made it more engaging. And you always wrote the tracklists by hand, so the object itself carried memory in a very tangible way. You recognised a tape by your friend’s handwriting, too.
Then there was a different type of compilation tape, which was dance tapes or party tapes – made for hanging out, for birthdays, for whatever the occasion was. And I remember in ‘85, as a group of 20 Scarsdalians, we rented out the Presidential Suite at the Omni Hotel in Times Square for New Years Eve. We literally wheeled in a full stereo system in suitcases, speakers and all, along with a lot of booze, food and some Charlie.

And I had made a couple compilation dance tapes for that night, specifically. There was one song on one, ‘And She Was’ by Talking Heads, that was just such an incredible dance track for the time – it was new and fresh. It was so good that I actually put it on twice in a row (a first). I remember thinking, if this comes on and finishes, everyone is going to want to stay on the dance floor and hear it again immediately. So, I put it back-to-back on the tape. It was risky, but felt the right decision. And boy did it go over a storm on the night. Never forget it. Halcyon days (thanks a lot to the NYE compilation dance tapes).

Later on, compilation tapes took on an even deeper personal meaning. I’ve made them for major life moments – pregnancies, childbirth, songs for the kid’s first years. Music became a kind of timestamp for memory, and those tapes ended up being more than just playlists; they became emotional archives.
Now with Spotify and algorithmic recommendations, which are incredible in their own way, something is different. It’s almost too easy. The act of choosing, sequencing, writing it down – that physical investment and involvement mattered, and is missing. Effort equals value.

There was something about the unpredictability and manual aspect of it all. A slightly mangled tape, a handwritten label, cleaning the cassette deck head with alcohol and a Q-tip, a slightly imperfect recording – it all became part of the character of the thing. As I said, if the tape got caught in a player or came out for some reason, it was always important to have a no. 2 pencil handy to roll the tape back in until taught.
I suppose what it really shows is that we weren’t just listening to music – we were actively curating it, shaping it, and physically building experiences around it – an approach to organising our smorgasbord music influences, all mixed together to lift and inspire our hearts, our friends hearts, and the compilation tape was how we served the music-loving cause.

and……some people would get real creative making the cover/song lists for said tapes. Multiple colors and noodling and doodling and so forth.