An interesting nostalgia trip through mix tapes...

...and what's going to end up being a quasi Anvil thread actually. Fair warning though, I'm going to ramble a bit. Anyway, whether you know or not (I'm sure most of you here do) I recently moved back home to NJ and while getting rid of a lot of the shit I had dumped at my mom's house over the years made some pretty cool finds. Among which, as the title suggests, was a GIGANTIC plastic tub of cassette tapes I was completely unaware of.

Aside from the obvious studio releases and demos in there, I discovered a literal shitton of dubbed ones made by yours truly. When I was about 12 or so, my parents finally caved and bought me a stereo. The coolest thing about it to me (aside from headphones) was that I could make tapes of albums to play in the car. Naturally, I dubbed the ever loving fuck out of whatever I could. Aside from the car, I really loved making compilations and trading them so I spent a hell of a lot of time making tapes. So, where is this long ass intro leading you may ask? Right to what I figure are my gems out of all of it, my infamous (to me anyway) "ENOUGH ALREADY!" series. The name actually comes from my mother who would inevitably say "Oh, enough already" and turn off whatever I was jamming in her car. The different volumes pretty much run the gambit of whatever I listened to from jazz, r&b, metal, etc. The tracklistings for most of them are actually pretty bad ass but anyway there was one in particular that caught my attention:

Vol. 8: STRAIGHT BETWEEN THE THIGHS! (witty little fucker wasn't I?) which is an all Anvil tape. Most of you know my opinion of Anvil, which was pretty much "Meh, a few good songs". Naturally, it surprised the hell out of me because I just didn't remember being that into them. So I figured what the fuck and popped it in, and started with side two. "Straight Between The Eyes" leads off that particular side, and as soon as it started, holy shit it was like getting punched in the gut with a memory. It's actually the song that got me real into them thanks to a little slasher flick called Sleepaway Camp II. It played during the end credits, and I remember partially fucking up the Beta to listen to it over and over . Apparently, I have from Hard 'n Heavy to Strength of Steel on cassette so you get a nice little representation of their first few years on this comp. After jamming it I still stand by why they never made it big, but hey they were pretty fucking good at one point. It's also cool to hear their sound and playing evolve on the albums. Not to mention all the fond memories I have of getting baked in shop class listening to Forged In Fire on my Walkman, or the lighting of various objects and tossing a hatchet at them that this mix served as a soundtrack for.

Welllll, after that long winded story, anyone else get into making mix tapes back then?

Oh and for anyone who's interested, I'll add the tracklist later.

That's a great read and I used to make 'Best Of' comps all the time and oddly enough once I made a comp of a certain band they'd either break up (only to reform later) or have changes in personnel.