If You Look at Half Breed in a New Light, You Will See That It Is a Punk Song

Went to the Lancaster Pennsylvania for Christmas to see my parents.

Two things happened over my holiday break. First, on New Year's Eve John and I watched the Marx Brothers' movie marathon on TMC (saving Night at the Operafor a few days ago). John loves the Marx Brothers and watching TMC reminded me how fun it would be to see Cher host late night movies there.

Secondly, on the flight to and from Baltimore, I read a book my friend Coolia gave me for Christmas, Cassettes From My Ex, Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves edited by Jason Bitner.

I guess my generation (X) was the unfortunate cassette generation. I never bought cassette albums myself. My older brothers adamantly taught me that vinyl albums had a far superior audio quality. But blank cassettes I bought in mass amounts to do what my cassette generation did best: make mix tapes for ourselves and all our friends. I made a ton of them and received many in return, all of which I have treasured and saved.

And these days there are many books about our tendencies to make these personal eclectic mix tapes. This latest anthology of mix-tape-stories focuses on cassettes we received from our lost lovers and the love stories steal the show, both bittersweet and fond memories of lost teen-age and young-adult love affairs. I enjoyed every one. The mix tapes themselves were 99% alternative, indie and punk mix compilations.

So imagine my surpirse to find Cher represented twice on mix tapes memorialized in the book. "Half Breed" appears on the 1990 mix Vinnie Angel’s received from an old flame. And "A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done" appears on a mix tape Gretchen Phillips received in 1982 from her girlfriend Teresa.