The sock hop tape

Playlist of the sock hop tape, dated 12/87 on side A and 2/88 on side B.

Side A

1. Shake Your Love -- Debbie Gibson
2. I Think We're Alone Now -- Tiffany
3. You Give Love a Bad Name -- Bon Jovi
4. Living on a Prayer -- Bon Jovi
5. You Give Good Love -- Whitney Houston
6. Always -- Atlantic Starr
7. You Be Illin' -- Run DMC
8. I Want Your Sex -- George Michael
9. Fight For Your Right (To Party) -- Beastie Boys
10. Secret Lovers -- Atlantic Starr
11. Pour Some Sugar On Me -- Def Leppard
12. Armageddon It -- Def Leppard

Side B

1. Jam On It -- Newcleus
2. Pop Goes the World -- Men Without Hats
3. It Should've Been Me -- Tiffany
4. The Lion Sleeps Tonight -- The Tokens
5. With You All the Way -- New Edition
6. Anything For You -- Gloria Estefan
7. Make It Real -- The Jets
8. Rush Hour -- Jane Wiedlin
9. Hands to Heaven -- Breathe
10. Let It Be -- The Beatles
11. The Promise -- When In Rome

Songs on the Abba tape

Abba Arrival, Abba the Album, 2/1/81

Side A

1. When I Kissed the Teacher
2. Dancing Queen
3. My Love, My Life
4. Dum Dum Diddle
5. Knowing Me, Knowing You
6. Money, Money, Money
7. That's Me
8. Why Did It Have to Be Me?
9. Tiger
10. Arrival
11. Eagle
12. Take a Chance on Me
13. People Need Love

The Album cont'd, Abba Greatest Hits

Side B

1. The Name of the Game
2. Move On
3. Hole In Your Soul
4. Thank You for the Music
5. I Wonder
6. I'm a Marionette
7. SOS
8. Honey, Honey
9. I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
10. Waterloo
11. Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)
12. Fernando
13. Bang-a-Boomerang

The Abba tape

A few weeks ago, we were going through some stuff, and I found something I'd misplaced several years ago: the Abba tape. My dad made the tape from some of his Abba records back in the early days of cassettes (it's dated 2/1/81), and we listened to it often. I used to put it on the stereo and roller skate to it in the hallway -- I had those skates that went over your shoes. The tape also accompanied us on almost every vacation, and we'd listen to it in the car. This, to me, was the definitive Abba, so some of the songs on Abba Gold and More Abba Gold (their greatest hits discs from the 90s) were new to me. Now I have quite a bit of Abba music on CD and MP3, but I know I'm missing a few songs that were on this tape, including one about an ocean that I haven't heard in years and never knew the actual title of. It sounds better than I expected it to after 26 years -- not great, of course, but not bad for a very old and heavily used tape.

I've been planning to recreate it as a playlist in iTunes, and this morning I rewound it, stuck it in the tape player, and started to write down the song titles as they played. (I also located a blank tape to make a copy of it at the same time.) I'll post it when the tape finishes.

In the same drawer as the Abba tape was the sock hop tape, which is a topic for another post. I promise to post that playlist too so you can make fun of the questionable musical taste I had in high school.

Music?

If you recognize the music behind the EV1 commercial I just posted, please let me know. It'd be fun to skate to.