I Should Have Been a Rock Star- The Stuff Tapes

The Stuff Tapes
In 1986, I began courting Ashley Peck. I was teaching at Sapulpa Junior High and she was a student at the University of Oklahoma.
Ash had been a student of mine years before. After her graduation, she went to University of Oklahoma in Norman. That summer I ran into her as she worked at the fireworks stand belonging to her boyfriend’s family. We gossiped. I found out she was going to Tulsa junior College for some summer courses and I was driving back and forth to Stillwater working on some Master’s degree stuff. I asked her to look for a source for me at the TJC library.
That year at OU, Ash and her boyfriend broke up. She dated several other guys after that, but when she returned for the next summer, she started working at the Elk’s Lodge as a lifeguard. The lodge was just 3 blocks away from the duplex I shared with another coach, Wade Mosley. Ash started coming over during her breaks to drink my lemonade. At least that’s what I first thought.
It wasn’t until July that I worked up the nerve, with the incredible urging and massive insults form my buddy Mo, to kiss her for the first time.
Weird thing for me. I wasn’t the world’s biggest dater and spent a lot of my time with my brothers, a cousin, a couple buddies from college and the coaches I worked with.
We started to see each other. She brought over pizza. She actually asked me out to a movie and dinner. I said I was a little slow in the dating department.
But, football season rolled around and school started at OU. I went back into coaching all day long and Ash left for OU and her sorority.

Her mom and dad were not my best supporters in this romance. Dad didn’t want her dating her ex-teacher, even though she was out of school, in college and I wasn’t exactly an old fart. Meanwhile, I was thinking that the long distance romance was probably going to be tough. I knew from previous experience with long distance romance, that football season is a very unforgiving thing. It takes all of your time, weekends and evenings, and drains you to a point of exhaustion. And, that’s in a good year!

I started sending Ashley mix tapes. They were filled with romantic songs from almost every era of music. I couldn’t think of a better way than to keep me in her mind than by providing the background music of her fall semester.

I called the tapes “Stuff Tapes.” It was a reference to a comment one of us made, and now I can’t quite remember the context, about love and all that stuff. I flooded the US mail with cassette tapes bearing my musical courting. Sometimes, I would leave a little whispered message at the end of the tape.
Now, here’s the tough part. A Mix tape is not just a collection of music. It must be carefully put together, flowing form one song to the next. You can’t just follow a tender, heart breaking song like Cocker’s version of “You Are So Beautiful” with something filled with wailing guitars and screaming voices.

It’s like the movie, “High Fidelity.” In fact, years later, my wife bought me that novel because the guy, his perchance for making mix tapes and his obsession with lists seemed to mirror my reason for existence. John Cusak’s role talks about the importance of the well designed mix.
You also have to be careful that you actually know the lyrics to the song. Just because the Police made the seemingly romantic song, “Every Breath You Take,” doesn’t mean it is romantic. The song is actually sort of a stalker song about the woman who broke his heart. Not good to send to a potential sweetheart.

A mix tape, and especially one with romantic intent, shouldn’t be an overt hump soundtrack…like AC/DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long,” or even a soft song, with soaring vocals like the Air Supply version of the Jim Steinman song “Making Love Out of Nothing At All.” AC/DC is what you sing to the local streetwalker. The Air Supply tune, like a lot of Steinman tunes, has a twist in it. Sounds romantic, but has that little dark side in it. Like Asia’s “Heat of the Moment.” Turns out to be about the girl who squandered it all and ended up lonely.
Now, the best romantic song ever, according to old crooner Frank Sinatra, was George Harrison’s Beatles tune “Something.” Simple, but powerful lyrics… whew…

“Something in the way she moves,
Attracts me like no other lover.”

For your romantic mix, I have a few suggestions. Some are well known. A few others a less popular, but no less right for that perfect mix tape, or CD, or play list in the modern IUPOD.

“Something” by the Beatles
“Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney
I Loved You Before I Knew You” by Savage Garden
“Love Reign Over Me” by the Who
“Heaven” by Yusuf Islam , the old Cat Stevens
“A Certain Girl” by Warren Zevon
“Eternal Love” by Utopia featuring Todd Rundgren
“A Dream Goes On Forever” by Todd Rundgren
“Hot Summer Night” by Meat Loaf
“Tattoo” by Novo Combo
and many more….
Funny, when the Beatles broke up, one of the caustic things that Lennon said about McCartney was that he wrote “silly Love Songs.” So, McCartney wrote one of that name and made a million seller of it. And, it’s true, he did write a lot of happy love songs. Maybe the nearly 30 years he was married to Linda was some indication of that.
Of course, Lennon had his love songs too. “Dear Yoko,” “Oh My Love”, “(Just Like) Staring Over,” and “Grow Old Along With Me” would fit on anyone’s love mix.

Well, apparently, the “Stuff” tapes did their job, and we were married in Jan. of ’87. We have two great sons. We are headed toward our 23rd anniversary soon. Music is still a big part of every day for us. We still make pal lists for each other…for encouragement, for love, for hope.

Ashley recently made me one titled “The Bottom of The Box.” It refers to the bottom of Pandora’s box after she had let the evil escape. In the bottom, there was still Hope. Things had been kind of rough for me, and that music was to give me some hope, help and inspiration. It included songs like U2’s “Sometimes You Can’t Make IT on Your Own.”
Music… what is it to us?
Why do we listen to it when we are happy? Why do we listen when we are sad? Why do we listen to it when we use it to psych us up for competition? Why do we use it to set the mood?

Ever see a movie without a musical background? It seems deathly quiet and gray. Ever jog without music when you’ve been using it to run to for a while? Try working out with and without. Which is better?

Our music is hardwired into us. It begins in the womb with the heartbeat of our mother and continues with the throb of our own pulses. There is a rhythm to everyday life; clicking, pounding, whirring, blaring and croaking. The sounds are all around us, and they blend into our daily life, only evident in their absence.
I read an article once, in Discover magazine, about a musician who had a brain injury. He had been a composer, but after the injury, when he heard music, to him it sounded like jangling racket. His rhythm and music was hardwired into his very brain. It is more than an emotional part of us. It is us.

AUM, Harmony OF The Spheres, etc… whatever you call it, people have recognized that for millennia. When it comes from an IPOD or cell phone, is it no less a connection to the universal?

It is still that innate thing in us.

The Stuff tapes were just that. As I tried to send to her in song the feelings I had, it touched, in both of us, something universal. Something cosmic.

Who would have thought that a small Memorex tape could bear something of cosmic importance?
It did.
Music, Love, and the seeds of our present family all traveled across the state of Oklahoma, borne by Eros in the guise of the US Postal service.

And, what did it contain? Love and all that Stuff.