The Perfect Cassette

I sold my Explorer the other day and while cleaning it out found an old cassette tape I had made for a girlfriend something like 12 years ago (1994?).
Yes, for many years I was obsessed with creating the perfect mix tape, just like the guy in High Fidelity. It was an art that I took very seriously, perhaps a little too seriously.
Besides trying to manage recording levels, I'd be fixated on choosing just the right song order. The opening song was crucial, it had to be engaging but couldn't give away too much. From there, the songs had to progressively build until really letting loose around track 3 or 4. But, I had to be careful not to completely blow my whole wad so early. The tape still had to ebb and flow cohesively, involving just the right combination of bands that no one had ever heard before (to show how cool I was) along with more familiar songs (to show I wasn't a total music snob).
The cassette tape format, being two sided, provided additional options for creativity. Side one could consist primarily of quieter "singer/songwriter" or "emo" tracks, while side two would be chockablock full of "ear bleeders". Or, once the first side was completed, the challenge would be to mimic the same progression of music on the second side, repeating the rise and fall of the songs and creating the same changes in emotion, only doing it even better.
The final song on each side was arguably as important as the opening track. It had to be an epic, preferably one of those long songs that started very softly and passed through a series of peaks and valleys before finally blowing the speakers off your stereo. Either that, or it would be a long slow dirge that would dig down to your soul, leaving you hopelessly exposed by the time the tape machine clicked off.
So, I spent the other night listening to that tape for the first time in at least 10 years. What a treat, and what a walk down a musical memory lane! Ultra Vivid Scene, Pavement (Cut Your Hair), Sebadoh (Brand New Love), The Fluid (Tip Top Toy), Low Pop Suicide, The Big F, Blind Melon, The Pixies, New Order, firehose (Losers, Boozers and Heroes), etc, etc, etc. But even more so, it brought back a connection to that passion for pop music that drove so many of us back then, and still drives a few of us today.
Let's see now, I'm planning to attend four concerts in local clubs in the next two weeks. I'd say the passion's still there...