love is a mix tape by Rob Sheffield

Release Date: 2007 / 219 pages

First Line: The playback: late night, Brooklyn, a pot of coffee, and a chair by the window.

Synopsis: In the 1990s, when “alternative” was suddenly mainstream, bands like Pearl Jam and Pavement, Nirvana and R.E.M. — bands that a year before would have been too weird for MTV — were MTV…It was also when a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renee, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway…They had nothing in common except that they both loved music.  Music brought them together and kept them together.  And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss.

Review:  Please find a way to get past the terrible title and give this a try!  Each chapter starts with a drawing of a tape insert, listing the songs on a mix-tape.  When I saw this, my initial thoughts were two-fold. 

First, I have always been a casual fan of music at best — never a true aficianado.  My brother, on the other hand, was so crazyobsessed with music, his friends even had an “intervention” regarding his CD buying habits.  Thanks to his passion and fabulous mix tapes, he introduced me to many excellent bands throughout the ’90s.  When he died in 2001, I literally could not listen to any music he remotely liked for years — the pain was too sharp — so I first spent 2 years only listening to Minnesota Public Radio and Bach, before I discovered country.  No memories, great narratives, and I’ve been hooked ever since…

So, when I realized just how much music was a part of this memoir, I assumed I would give it 50 pages, if I could bear it, and then move on.  Well, 219 pages later…  I loved it.  And I must thank Sheffield for reminding me of some wonderful times and songs I enjoyed in the ’90s.  He reminded me of when I first moved to the Twin Cities in 1991 and spent much of this decade making friends, listening to Liz Phair, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., The Meat Puppets, etc., and simply loving being young and carefree. 

However, I recommend this memoir beyond the happy memories and personal connections I made – due to its strong, funny, thoughtful writing — and really commend Sheffield for writing a testament to his love and loss without becoming maudlin or wallowing in self-pity.  As a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, Sheffield has found a way to share his love of music and weave all genres of music into his life story.  He respects great pop, rap, and country songs as well as the more popular or accepted bands of the era.  He appreciates music the way I appreciate writing or sports — if it’s done well, the subject, genre, or team really doesn’t matter.

Here are a few examples of Sheffield’s sense of humor and perspective on his life:

The only reason I ran for student council was so I’d get to be on the social activities committee, which meant planning the only part of the social activities I really cared about: the music.  We got three dances that year, and I got the plum job of making the dance tapes… It went without saying that I had to include ‘Free Bird’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven’… As you can see… I knew school dances about as well as I knew tantric sex…  Why was I not tarred and feathered by my classmates by the time the third J. Geils Band song came on?

Sheffield also articulates why he believes the ’90s were an exceptional time:

There’s a lot I miss about the nineties.  It was an open, free time of possibilities, changes we thought were permanent.  It seemed inconceivable that things would ever go back to the way they were in the eighties, when monsters were running the country and women were only allowed to play bass in indie-rock bands.  The nineties moment has been stomped over so completely, it’s hard to imagine it ever happened, much less that it lasted five, six, seven years.  Remember Brittany Murphy, the funny, frizzy-haired, Mentos-loving dork in Clueless?  By 2002, she was the hood ornament in 8 Mile, just another skinny starlet, an index of everything we’ve lost in that time.

Sheffield uses his passion for music as a commentary on not only his life, but on our country and the changes he that worry him.  But the above paragraph is about as political as he gets.  Most of the memoir is a fast-paced, funny, bittersweet narrative that is a delight to read.

So, regardless of your taste in music…  and if you can handle living through another’s grief…  I strongly recommend love is a mix tape (despite the title… ).

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