Kerry is a babe #

This past weekend my wife and I went to a market event where I picked up a great mixtape.

The tape required fixing a previous repair job that kept the tape from rewinding or playing past the massive hunk of tape.

The quality is shit, but A for effort #

The recording is very tinny and in several places almost difficult to listen to at normal volumes. The songs lack dynamic range, but I don’t think it’s from the tape itself. This specific model and manufacturing year of Maxell is highly regarded by modern tape scholars (tapeheads, as they cleverly call themselves). Since the sound is fairly consistently thin for each of the songs, I imagine Scott recorded this tape using a handheld recorder in front of his stereo speakers.

Scott worked hard to make a great cassette. You can hear the recording head start and stop between each of the songs. The list of songs was carefully curated. A few times you can hear a different song pop through in the gap between songs. This might have been from Scott recording over a previously used cassette. The inner jacket says “Iron Maiden, Live After Death.”

I’ll hand it to Scott, he did a great job planning out the length of the songs for the tape. There’s less than a minute of tape left at the end of each side, with only a few seconds between each song (save for a 10 second gap before the last song on side B).

Some of the song choices left me wondering if he’d actually listened to the lyrics. Maybe the songs had significance to Kerry. Or maybe it was just the feeling of the songs Scott wanted to convey.

Okay, but what about the tape itself? #

Maxell XLII 90 Position IEC Type II - CrO2

None of the songs on the tape are newer than 1989. If we’re assuming the songs were all current at the time of the recording (with a few throwbacks), then this specific tape was most likely manufactured between 1988 and 1989, with the tape being recorded shortly after that, maybe 1990 or 1991.

Several forums mention this specific manufacturing run of Maxell XLII 90 being one of the best consumer grade tapes produced before the gradual decline of manufacturing quality and rise of the compact disk.

Without further ado #

I present to you, “Scott <3’s Kerry. Kerry is a babe! I <3 U!” by Scott Somebody

Side A - Scott -n- Kerry
Love Song, Tesla (1988)
It Must Have Been Love, Roxette (1987)
The End of Innocence, Don Henley (1989)
Open Arms, Journey (1982)
Can't Fight This Feeling, REO Speedwagon (1985)
Desperado, Eagles (1973)
Can'tcha Say, Boston (1987)
Heaven In Your Eyes, Loverboy (1989)
Sweet Child o' Mine, Guns N' Roses (1987)
Saving All My Love for You, Whitney Houston (1985)
(Blaine's tape repair job at 41m58s)

scott-lessthanthrees-kerry_side-a.mp3

Side B - Forever
Pour Some Sugar On Me, Def Leppard (1987)
With or Without You, U2 (1987)
More Than A Feeling, Boston (1976)
Great Balls of Fire, Jerry Lee Lewis (1957)
Feel Like Makin' Love, Bad Company (1975)
(ending with a very short clip of what sounds like a DJ saying "count em down", presumably from the station Scott recorded the tape from)
When It's Love, Van Halen (1988)
Run To You, Bryan Adams (1984)
(side note about Run To You, this was marked explicit back in 84.  oh how times have changed)
Don't Stop Believin', Journey (1981)
No Surrender, Bruce Springsteen (1984)
Remember the Feeling, Chicago (1984)
Surfin' U.S.A, The Beach Boys (1963)

scott-lessthanthrees-kerry_side-b.mp3

Enjoy.