Da crazy things I found in my parents' attic

Memoir in a box

My parents have an attic crammed with all the crap I’ve amassed over the years and recently I helped myself to some of this booty. I think these four compositions illustrate four strange seasons of my life, each so different from the other.

EXHIBIT A: Queens, the 80s

This may me of interest to younger people. In the olden days, we used cassette tapes for many reasons. Firstly, we would pirate music from one another by copying cassettes. (Some stereos came with two cassette players/recorders enabling this maneuver). Then we would patiently type out (using a typewriter), all the songs on these tapes. In this instance, you are seeing an album by Weird Al Yankovic. I did a cover of Like a Surgeon with Soviet themes in my Upstate bungalow colony — it was titled Like a Sturgeon. Prince represents as well. Also, you can see that video games were uploaded by cassette player to our Commodore 64s, in this case a fantasy game called Telengard and a chess game, Sargon II.

Exhibit B: Oberlin, the early 90s.

Okay, now we’re talking. Sugar Cubes and Lou Reed are in the house (played over and over and over) but you can see that my first ever girlfriend has made me several tapes as well! We see some Portishead, some David Byrne and Duke Ellington, and that adorable songbird Ice Cube. I wish I had a cassette player to bring these all to life! Never mind, gonna hit the Spotify.

EXHIBIT C: Manhattan, The late 90s

Ah, here I am back in NYC, living on Clinton Street on the LES and now I have a CD player! And I am throwing parties with my hip new friends, and playing a wide variety of musical genres. RIP, Biggie. And I guess Esquivel.