The Depression Tape: Twenty-Two Tracks of Beautiful, Pitiful, Self-Indulgence

Creating mix tapes is a time-honored tradition. Some people, in fact, view it as an indispensable rite of courtship--no act of romance can surpass selecting those 10-12 special songs that convey the unfathomable, other-dimensional connection between two souls. Although many of my friends spent quite a few evenings working through their record collections in search of the right songs, I confess that I never engaged in this particular romantic endeavor myself. (I was once, however, the recipient of such a tape from someone who can only be described as a stalker.) But this is not the only reason to create a mix tape. Beyond their value in establishing a relationship, they can also be found hovering around the end days as well.

Rewind, if you will, to the mid-eighties and picture a bunch of guys transitioning to college life, enduring excruciatingly long break-ups with high school girlfriends and suffering through attempts to establish new relationships. One of these guys, who I’ll call “Mike” developed the practice of scheduling time for himself--for himself to get depressed, that is. Mike would on occasion refuse to go out with the gang on a Saturday night, and we’d come back to find him sitting alone, in the dark, listening to gloomy, depressing country music. It turns out that this was a planned behavior--something he did to “get it out of his system.”

This curious behavior developed into a ritual. Several of us gathered once in a while to sit around in the dark, playing sickeningly depressing romantic music. At the end of each song, someone else would get up and try to play a song even more depressing than the one that just finished. Each round of this bizarre game of one-upsmanship (one-downsmanship? No, one-downERsmanship), began with the initial strains of a real tear-jerker, follow by a collective pang upon recognizing the song, a unison groan of emotional agony, and then an exclamation, “Oh God, you’re killing me!”

Rather than continue with this ad hoc approach, I decided to systematize things. So one Saturday night when I stayed in to work on a paper, I also entertained myself by selecting the “worst” hits and making the mix tape to end all mix tapes (and all hope). Its legend lives on in all our minds as “The Depression Tape,” its remains (pictured above) entombed in a box in my basement.* For your entertainment, here is the set list.**

Side One:

Desperado, Eagles
Purple Rain, Prince
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, James Taylor
She’s Always a Woman, Billy Joel
Heaven, Bryan Adams
Honesty, Billy Joel
Faithfully, Journey
I Won’t Hold You Back, Toto
Send Her My Love, Journey
Straight From the Heart, Bryan Adams
Best of My Love, Eagles

Side Two:

All Out of Love, Air Supply
Fire and Rain, James Taylor
Hard Habit to Break, Chicago
I Can’t Tell You Why, Eagles
Almost Paradise, Ann Wilson and Mike Reno
She’s Got a Way, Billy Joel
Price You Pay, Bruce Springsteen
She’s Always a Woman, Billy Joel
Lost in Love, Air Supply
The River, Bruce Springsteen
You’re the Inspiration, Chicago

Not a single power ballad among them!

* For those who share our iTunes network in Flanner Hall, it has been reincarnated as a Blue Monster Playlist called “The Depression Tape.”
** Note the accidental inclusion of Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman” on both sides 1 & 2. That IS depressing!