Yesterday was a long and tiring day with a boy who remained on the edge of tantrum from the time he (and therefore I) got up at 5:45 until the time we finally tossed him into bed a little before 8. I�d planned an evening of sloth and Cubs-avoidance (we are a White Sox household and, as my husband put it after Tuesday�s crushing loss, �They�re even annoying when they lose�) that involved the last of the blueberry pie and The West Wing. I was crushed to discover the West Wing was MIA. I was thus forced to find something more productive to do. Fortunately, the 1000 page book I bought in Miami that my friend M generously offered to mail to me arrived yesterday afternoon. So I was occupied, at least until I was too tired to hold the thing up.

Today I�ve been a whirlwind of activity. After stomping through leaves to preschool with AJ this morning, who proclaimed every few minutes, �It�s such a bootiful day!�, I�ve been slogging through more concert reviews and society pages in the L.A. times for the last hour and a half while listening to a music-I-liked-in-college retrospective on itunes. I think the recent notice of my upcoming college reunion may have set me off. Or perhaps it was the discovery last weekend, in a fit of fall cleaning, of a pile of reel-to-reel tapes I�d found in the attic of my dorm in college. They were party mix tapes from the 1970s and since I was the only one at the time who had access to a reel-to-reel player (I was an electronic music geek at the time and was spending time in the music department�s basement studio late at night playing with an ancient Moog), they fell to me. I taped over one of them. Studio tape was extremely expensive for my student budget and I needed something to practice on. But the playlists are fascinating.

The earliest one is dated April 25, 1977 and includes a whopping 62 songs:

Movin� Right Along

Stayin� Alive

Got to get you into my life

Rhiannon

One way or Another

Calypso Breakdown

March of the Gladiators

Revolution

Jumpin� Jack Flash

Love Me Tender

Back in the U.S.S.R.

All Shook Up

She Loves You

My Sharona

Bandstand Boogie

That�s the Way of the World/Shining Star

Dancing Bumble Bee

Black Cow

That�s No Way to Say goodbye

Only the Good Die Young

Salsation

Is She Really Goin� Out With Him?

Brown Sugar

Shoobie Doobie Doo Da Day

Take It Back

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?

Time Warp

Hahvah Nahgeelah

Zorba the Greek

King Tut

You Should be Dancing

Mother Freedom

Party Lights

Come in From the Rain

Hard Days Night

Hound Dog

Help

Ruby Tuesday

I Want to Hold Your Hand

Don�t Be Cruel

Air

Heartbreak Hotel

Crocodile Rock

�a Plane Pour Moi [sic]

Cookie Disco

Big Shot

Reasons

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Dancing in the Street

Swan Lager

Boogie Nights

Attitude Dancing

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Life in the Fast Lane

Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp de Bomp de Bomp

Moonlight Serenade

Song of India

String of Pearls

Superstition

Piano Man

Jump Shout Boogie

I am struck by the number of songs on this list that were still showing up at parties at the time I found these tapes, more than a decade later. I�m also struck by a similarly retrospective tendency in the tunes on this list at the time the tapes were made � several blocks of songs are carefully marked �The 60�s� on the playlist. And I really can�t imagine dancing to Billy Joel, who seems somewhat overrepresented here. Although probably I did in junior high. I also wonder if it would be possible to put together a full-length CD of songs including words like Movin�, Stayin�, Jumpin, and Goin�. More research is needed.

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