Mix Tapes are the soundtrack of my life

Much like Sesame Street, today's post is brought to you by two things. Not the Brand New song I've tagged on, though - that's just gratuitous.One, I'm reading Rob Sheffield's Love Is A Mix Tape, and it's awesome. I'm only three chapters in and I love it. Almost makes me want to trade my iPod for a Lloyd Dobler-esque boom box. I can't recommend it highly enough.Two, I turned 29 on Monday. I'm a sucker for premature nostalgia anyway, but birthdays really bring that out in me. Even more than New Year's Eve. Anyway, over the weekend I was going through a box of stuff that I hadn't look in for a while and I found three cassettes - labelled Summer 1995, Summer 1996 (Part I) and Summer 1996 (Part II). And I couldn't have been happier.Sadly, the inlay cards with carefully calligraphed track listings were missing, but my memory has these down as the greatest mix tapes of all time. I was 17 and 18 in the summers of 1995 and 1996 respectively. In 1995 I left school, in 1996 I took a trip through France with my best friend. The songs on them I know didn't necessarily come out in either year (I'd say there's probably a lot of 80s stuff on the 1995 one and a lot of 60s on the 1996 tapes) but I can't wait to get back to my parents attic (where I know there's an old tape player of mine) and listen. My big plan is to get back whatever songs are on there that I've lost, and make iPod playlists. It's not impressive ('dorky' is probably the most apt word), but I'm dying to do it.In a similar vein, my Dad just started digitising the household vinyl collection - mostly his, but some mine and my brother's - which is something else I'm looking forward to reliving. I used to buy at least a record a week - more often than not it was just a single, because I was broke - but I'm sure my formative years are there in their black plastic glory. A lot of it I can probably do without - I haven't exactly been missing my copy of Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em but on the other hand almost all of the collection does explain how I got here, musically speaking. For example, the week after I heard Hammer's version of Have You Seen Her? I bought a classic soul compilation album, to hear the original.Dad's vinyl collection, and the family's frequent weekend road trips meant that he, too, was the master of the mixtape. Because of one of his tapes - at least I remember it as one, it was probably in fact three or four - I can't hear Queen's Under Pressure without immediately wanting Walk On The Wild Side, Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard or even Here I Go Again right after it. Play those songs in the right order and I'm eight years old, in the back of a Nissan Bluebird, on the way to a beach on one of those hot Sundays we just don't get anymore.