The Song Hunters

Listening to Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" recently reminded me of the early 90s, when my best friend Debra launched a summerlong quest to record the song off the radio. She kept her radio on all the time (we always did anyway), with a blank tape in the cassette recorder. The play-record buttons were pressed, and the pause button was on. As soon as she heard the song, she'd fly over to her player and unpause the tape.

I think she managed to get it in batches: first we'd listen to part of "Total Eclipse," then Vanilla Ice, and then there would be a Wilson Phillips, and then MC Hammer, and then another snatch of Bonnie Tyler, and that's how that summer's soundtrack ran when we were at her house. At my house, we listened to a different mix, depending on what I'd recorded off the radio on my own tape. (Of what I remember, that included "The Final Countdown," which I thought sounded SO COOL, "Forever Your Girl" by Paula Abdul, for which my older sister is still laughing at me, and "Squaredance Rap.")

Remembering those tapes, it suddenly struck me as funny. We lived in a small town with no access to a music store. Back then the library didn't even lend out tapes. The idea of downloading any song you wanted to from a world wide computer database was just science fiction. If you wanted a song you heard on the radio, the easiest thing to do was set up your blank tape in your recorder -- stuffing the little holes on top of the tape with notebook paper to make sure it was recordable -- and set it to Record-Pause. Then you lay in wait, hoping the DJ would play the song you wanted. Then when it did come on, you tried to catch it within the first few bars, silently fuming as the DJ talked throughout the entire intro. Once the song was safely captured and recording, you desperately hoped nobody came into your room in the next five minutes.

*Tape silence*
*click of pause button*
DJ/Righteous Brothers: "...third caller to win two tickets to see Bon Jovi in concert May 24! Oh, my love/my darling/I've hungered for your touch/a long..."
Sister: "Sara, Mom says you have to put away dishes --"
Sara: "SHHHH! I finally got this song and you just ruined it!!"
Righteous Brothers: "...and time can do so much/are you/still mine?"
*click*

Just this week I downloaded three new songs and added them to a playlist. Then I rearranged the playlist and downloaded it onto my MP3 player. It's my own customized music mix, without clicks or interruptions. Pretty cool. Pretty scifi. That's what Deb needed the summer she was stalking "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Still, there's something to be said for the thrill of the chase. Those tapes were our equivalent of deer heads mounted on the wall. We hunted, we captured, we were victors. And we created our own summer soundtracks, clicks and all.

-- SJ

And the Righteous Brother's song excerpted above, which was the ultimate in soul-stirring to my fourteen-year-old self, is titled...?