Society for Aesthetic Deletions

Way back in my early days on what would become the Internet, back before going to meet strangers you only knew online wasn't quite as strange and dangerous as it is today, I drove from my home in Rhode Island to the New Jersey home of a man I met online, who went by the handle of Magic Man. There was a purpose for this gathering: someone else I knew online was going to be in town for a wedding, and a bunch of us decided to head down and meet up.

We had so much fun we decided to do it the next weekend as well, this time at one of the other people's houses, a woman who went by the handle of Silverwolf.

Of course, two weekends in a row was killer on my sleep habits, so we decided we'd start doing it once a month. And the minicons of Compuserve were born!

At both of these first gatherings, there was a man there nicknamed PT, a nickname derived from his last name. When we were at Silvy's (the shortened form of Silverwolf's nickname) house, we listed to a mix CD that PT had made for her, called Radio Free Mordor. It had some good music that I knew, some strange music that I didn't, and some really strange stuff that I wasn't sure I'd want within ten feet of me. But when PT offered to make me a mix tape, I said sure.

The resultant tape was called "Razzle Dazzle," a play on my online handle at the time (which most of you should remember/know by now - Dazzler). I've listened to this tape over and over, many times when we'd go on long trips. The songs are an eclectic mix, and there was no track listing, so I had no idea who sang what, or what even the names of some of the songs were! Over time, I have figured most of them out, and some times even sought out more songs by the artist based on the songs on the mix.

Well, this tape was made for me back in 1989. It's stood the test of time VERY well, but it's a 90 minute tape, very full of songs, and I worried each time I put it into my tape player. I wanted to make electronic copies of the songs therein, so I could listen to them on my iPod without fear of breaking the tape and losing them forever.

Thanks to a co-worker, I now have in my possession two very large .wav files, consisting of each side of the tape. I'm using the trial version of Peak to cut up the file into individual tracks, choosing not to import the songs I already have electronically from my own CDs (besides, that skip in his album always messes me up when I try to sing "Black Coffee In Bed" along with the tape).

I took the CDs home yesterday, forgetting that I'd only copied one of them to my hard drive for editing. Tomorrow or Thursday or Friday, I'll be cutting and saving more tracks. For now, I have the tracks of the "B" side of the tape for your viewing pleasure.

Many thanks to the internet for having many lyric repositories and fan websites that enabled me to figure out just who was singing what!