The Mixtape Era Part 2

A few days ago, I wrote about my love of the "mixtape era." I'm not huge on sharing my fiction on this page, but I thought I'd share a snippet of my 90s set YA coming of age novel, FRESH TRACKS (thanks to Aaron Starmer for the title), that's basically a novelization of my high school's "ski club." The frame work is going to be a mix tape. This is the omniscient opening to the novel. Enjoy and feel free to leave comments
Tape One: Blue Squares and Black Diamonds

Side A: Hart’s Way

1. Missed Opportunity-Hall And Oates

“Keep on missing each other

Our world's out of order”

The first time Ellie Brown and Jonah Cassatore met wasn’t supposed to be the first time they met. The first time was a bright, sunny afternoon in Blossom Meadows park in the summer of 1989. Ellie was trying her new Rollerblades out at the winding, asphalt trails at the park with her friend Cassie. They would’ve been hard to miss in the clunky boot-like skates and short shorts as they clumsily made their way around the park. Jonah and his friends were busy playing a complex, made-up sport involving tennis racquets, blue handballs and a rotating, often contradicting set of rules often made up on the spot by Jonah’s friend Chester that resembled a cross between baseball, cricket and tackle football. At one of his turns, Chester smacked the blue ball a mile. Jonah was supposed to misread it and bull into the brown haired girl just beginning to understand how to use a pair of Rollerblades. But that didn’t happen.

As if the Universe itself conspired against them, gravity seemed to lighten just in the spot where the large Jonah stood, making him far lighter on his feet than he ever had been so that instead of the ball bouncing over his head, he almost caught it. Almost. Instead he sent it careening in another direction, towards a sunbathing Rachel Michaelson, who Jonah instantly became smitten with when he saw her lying on a towel in her bathing suit.  

The second time was a cold, wet Friday night on the campus of Milstead High when Ellie’s’s high school, Giammatti High, was playing Jonah’s Milstead Titans. Ellie went to the game with her friends, piling into her beat up Bronco mostly to watch Cassie’s sort of boyfriend Johnny Camacho shred the Milstead defense and win the game. At halftime, they made their way to the Milstead side of the field for hot chocolate. The Milstead side was crowded and wet and on a slope. Somehow, the normally surefooted Ellie got turned around and disoriented, slipping on some mud and stumbling into a wet, muddy, sweaty mass of the uniformed Titans. She nearly fell when Number Seventy-Two plowed into her, nearly sending her sprawling except for a strong arm grabbing her and gently shoving her aside. Number Sixty-Seven, his painted face crammed into a white helmet, started to say something when one of his teammates barreled into him and said, “Come on, Braciole.” 

It was that close. In an abstract kind of way, they did meet. He was Sixty-Seven. She was Clumsy Girl. But really that’s not who they actually were. The rest of the night, after the game, Ellie wondered who the dark eyed Sixty-Seven was. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he had a game to play and all. And Jonah thought about the cute girl with the ski jacket. It almost made him forget about seeing Rachel Michaelson making out with a kid from another school at an after game party a week earlier. And just as Ellie was about to go to the ticket booth for a program, she heard someone call her name. She turned and her jaw dropped.. It was Roger, her sort of ex-boyfriend, in a crisp Marine’s uniform. Sixty-Seven was forgotten. 

The third time was one of those super cosmic things where it seemed like the Universe was really conspiring to get them together but couldn’t quite get its shit together. Over the course of four days of Christmas Break, there were dozens of times that they should have met. A waitress at Friendly’s smoked two cigarettes instead of one before delivering the check to Jonah and his friends, causing them to miss Ellie’s arrival. Ellie dropping a ten-dollar bill in line at the record store just as Jonah and his best friend Meechie walked by. Jonah spilled hot chocolate on his lap just as Ellie pulled up next to him at a stop light near the mall. The two of them, in the same bookstore, looking at books on the opposite side of the display shelf like in a really bad romcom.  Ellie and Jonah were literally ships in the night. Ships maybe, just maybe, not meant to meet until that cold, gray late morning on the Hart’s Way chairlift at Black Mountain. 

The Mixtape Era

It's been a while. You would think that the midst of a massive quarantine would be the prefect time to write. Turns out that's not entirely true. I've been writing, but nothing consistent or cohesive. And definitely nothing worth sharing with anyone. A little while back, I had a very brief Twitter conversation about my unadulterated love of the "Mixtape Era" of the 80s and 90s. We live in a day and age that enthusiastically embraces nostalgia, it makes sense to take some time to talk about mixtapes.

I loved making mixtapes. Those slender plastic cases and toothed wheels were the very fabric of our teenage years and where we put our stories. We listened to them in stereo systems, boom boxes, Walkmen and, if you were lucky, car stereos. It was a glorious time where you waited with breathless anticipation for your or that special somebody's favorite song to come on the radio so you could record it. If you were good (I was), you could get it without recording the DJ introducing the song. (This was a serious faux pas.) Honestly, who could afford to buy all those tapes? Unless you joined Columbia House (I did) and gathered up those seven free cassettes/CDs for a penny.

I didn't half-ass my mix tapes. I was persnickety about the actual cassettes I used. I liked the funky, multicolored Memorex cassettes, usually 90 minutes in length. If you were tight, you could get 8-10 songs on a side. I actually preferred the longer 120 minute cassettes and eventually switched to the "chrome" cassettes, in the name of better quality. There was a plan, sketched out in my mind of what to put on that tape. If someone handed me a cheap tape, I'd scoff and buy one of the ones I preferred. It was a sign that this mattered, this was important and that I put effort in it for you, the listener. I like to think that they knew all of this.

I had a reputation for assembling mixtapes. I did't think of them as collections of music but epic stories. I'd create thematic "chapters" in my mixtapes with the occasional interlude of movie dialogue or scenes thanks to a stereo system and my mother's vast collection of pirated VHS tapes (Thanks Video Joan!) Side A might have one with songs like Johnny Gill's "Rub You The Right Way" and "If It Isn't Love" with an interlude of the "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" scene from Top Gun. The next section might continue the upbeat fun with "Brown Eyed Girl," Bon Jovi or "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf. It was assembling a story and hunting through cassettes and CDs to find the right song in the right place on the mix.

I'd carefully write on the labels with my creative titles for each side. On the cardboard insert, I'd painstakingly write out each song and artist. I'd label "sections" if there were sections. I'd make sure the cassette was rewound and ready for play. Then I'd walk away, hoping they were happy with the result. I like to think that they were.

I know that vinyl is all the rage, but I miss cassettes. They were MP3 players before there were MP3s. With vinyl you don't have much in the way of choice while a home made mixtape gives you a procured collection of what you want to listen to. It's these ideas that continue today and may be why there is no cassette revival they way that vinyl does. And now mixtapes are playlists and easy as a drag and drop. But there's something missing, something impersonal about playlists. So, I made you guys a mixtape to enjoy.

I Had To Wait For It, But Man, It's Non Stop

Have you guys ever heard of this little musical called HAMILTON? It's pretty good.

Okay, that was a little more James Madison as opposed to Hercules Mulligan, but after several years of being completely obsessed with the cast album for the musical, thanks to Disney Plus, I was able to not just hear but see HAMILTON and it did not disappoint. It's been a week since watching it with my entire family and I'm still thinking about it. For two hours I was able to escape into one of the most important and well crafted pieces of art in my lifetime. So, let's discuss.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Writing: Having listened to the cast album countless times, I already knew how tight the writing was, but watching it on screen, there isn't a wasted word, movement, action or note. It really is a study in economy in words and something all writers should watch to see how and, more importantly, why it's so important.

Weakness: This is the closest thing to a "hot take" that I have about the musical. LMM (as he'll be known from here out) is terrific, but he's by far the weakest part of the show. He's still a light years better lead than a lot of other musicals I've watched and, to be honest, I think he knows that. He gets the "I want" song and nails it, but anytime he shares the stage with Leslie Odom, Jr or Renee Elise Goldsberry, he's exposed. The bonus is that he's ALL CHARISMA and is comfortable in the role since he wrote it.

Fast and Loose History: Let's address the historical aspects. The play is based on a dense, massive 800 page plus tome and LMM obviously had to truncate, condense and pare what he didn't need to tell his story. (I'm only about half way through it.) He moves things around, cuts things and remolds history in order to fit the narrative and lyrical structure as he sees fit. This is actually is addressed in the second video here, where librettist John Weidman told LMM to "just write the parts you think are a musical." It's solid advice and good advice to any writer. Just write the parts you think you need to write. I've been told that there's more history in the play than you'd think, but I'm an English teacher and writer (or am a writer that's an English teacher), not a history teacher.

Aaron Burr, Sir: Leslie Odom Jr is a goddamned powerhouse. Every time he's on screen he's riveting and even though he's the play's antagonist (not villain), you're rooting for him. He gets not one, but two showstoppers: "Wait for It" and "The Room Where It Happens", and nails them both. His narration through the show grows in intensity and the sheer power of Odom's performance makes you want more from him. (It reminds me of Indina Menzel in WICKED.)

The Just Bros Hypothesis: A few years back, during the WINTER SOLDIER craze, I sort of became obsessed with the controversy of Cap/Bucky being in love was being "erased" from the canon or something like that. I felt that, while that would be an interesting idea, can't they just be bros? I'm all for representation in our media, but I feel that we need more non-toxic male bonding and need to show that two dudes can love one another and not be in love. It's not a well formed hypothesis but there it is. LMM's pretty heavy handed about the Hamilton/Laurens attraction (it's hinted at in the Chernow book too) and while I was on board with it for a while, I'll be honest. I prefer them to be "just bros." (This is a concept I need to flesh out, because I think there's something to this.)

Love Triangle: The love triangle between Alex, Eliza and Angelica is so much better when seen as opposed to listened to. It's a perfect example of how a performance can elevate writing. Angelica is heartbreaking to watch. She's desperately in love with him, but also reads Alex like a book. She sees his ambition that factors into his romantic intentions but that still can't stop her from falling for him. Eliza, played by Philippa Soo, is a stunning balance of strength and vulnerability. Angelica gets all the attention (Goldsberry's performance is part of that) but Soo's Eliza does all the heavy lifting. It's her that makes Alexander seem like a decent man and adds depth to the story. "Burn" is so much better on stage than on the cast album.

A Bunch of Baked Hams: Do you know what a "ham" is? Click here. I'll wait.

Sidebar for those of you that know what a "ham" is: You get the feeling that LMM had a browser tab opened to TV Tropes and just checked off all his favorites to use. Musicals by their very nature are troperiffic, but LMM is enough of a nerd of many levels that he clearly lampshaded enough tropes to fill a warehouse for the "top...men" to uncover and discuss. I am not one of those men.

Oh, you're done good. Back to it then:

LMM has basically created a "world of ham." And it makes the play even better. Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan, Thomas Jefferson and don't forget the King. Jonathan Groff destroys every time he's on stage. My daughter, a burgeoning theater junkie, has already stated that if they ever do HAMILTON at school, she's auditioning to play the king. Granted, they were probably turning it "up to eleven" for the film performance, but the way they are written encourages hammage.

And Finally, Let's Talk About The Stage: The first time my daughter and I saw the stage we both squealed. To see it in action was incredible and the "rewind" was just an incredible piece of story telling that isn't captured by the cast album. Watching it filled me with awe and inspiration.

A few random comments to wrap up:

• I've said it from the first time I heard about the musical: it proves that an epic fantasy musical could work and I might be the damn fool to write it.
• The sheer number of nods, winks and homages in this play is blurrying. Musicals, hip-hop, history, fantasy, etc. I could do three entries on these alone.
• Okieriete Onaodowan, who played Hercules Mulligan & James Madison, has become the model for the leader of my "black Rohirrim" in the "Epic Fantasy I'm Not Going To Write."
• The "ensemble" is just amazing and the elevated members that filled smaller roles was just brilliant.

If you didn't like this play  I weep for you. If you don't see it's value, then you just don't understand. 

I'm inspired again. As "Non-Stop" said, I'm writing day and night like I'm running out of time.