Nostalgia | tape the night

We have a fairly strict rule in the house for my five-year-old: no screens during the week. This includes TV, the iPad, my phone and the toddler-tablet that Santa brought at Christmas. I have a very solid 2-3-2 custody schedule that works for all three of us, my daughter, my ex and myself, which means my daughter is with me every other weekend. And when the weekend hits, so do the requests for screen time.

My daughter is an active child who likes to build things, so screen time is still not that abundant. She thinks she wants screen time throughout the weekend but when I suggest we build a marble track or a crazy fort instead, she’ll often choose the latter. Still, on Saturday mornings, screen time is often the best choice for the both of us. I feel that I’ve lost that excited little-kid approach to the first morning free from schedules and responsibility and I’m starting to see things from the other side. From that parent’s point of view I can understand why Saturday Morning cartoon watching is still a thing.

Come Saturday morning, I am tired. This morning she woke up at 6:18 bright eyed and ready to go. Forget that every day during the week when I try to wake her at 6:15 she shirks from any form of light like some sort of mini-Dracula. So while part of me feels guilty that I shuffle into the kitchen, get her cereal and put on the TV for cartoons while I lay there in a half daze on the couch snuggling her when she’s done eating, there’s the other part of me that loves it and is comforted by the idea that this is how early Saturday mornings in childhood should be spent.

She’s napping now, tired out from swimming lessons, and I’ve pulled out an old tape that I used to play over and over again.

Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits

Saturday Morning Cassette

I’ve just spent the better part of the last half hour searching out videos for some of these classics and I’ve honestly got my head spinning in a sort of two-tiered nostalgia. Dos-talgia, as the Spanish might say. I’ve gone down the YouTube rabbit-hole remembering a tape I listened to 20 years ago that covered songs from cartoons I watched on TV 30 years ago.

I also just discovered that there is a video for the entire cassette that strings together videos for all the songs and features Drew Barrymore (coincidentally published to YouTube on my birthday last year). At only 711 views, I think this is quite the find for any fans of this compilation.

Individual songs from the overall video are published on their own and I’ve chosen a few of my favourites below. Whether you’re nostalgic on one or two levels for these covers, I hope you enjoy them.

Josie and the Pussycats – Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly

When you talk to me about the mid-90’s, Juliana Hatfield’s name rises very close to the top of most-listened to artists. And long before Rachael Leigh Cook and Trainwreck Reid tried (and failed) to make the show cool again, Juliana Hatfield’s soprano blends just the right amount of alternative guitar and bubblegum pop to make this one of the highlights on an already stacked album.

Butthole Surfers – Underdog

How have I never seen this video before today? The song is by far the most out-there track on the album and the video doesn’t disappoint. If watching this was your first-ever introduction to the character, you’d have a hard time believing how fairly simple the cartoon concept is. Watch the video below then come back up and click through to this link to see the original cartoon opening. Taking the propaganda approach works and is a fantastic way to flip the original on its head.

The Ramones – Spiderman

I don’t think I need to say anything else.

Honestly, I could post the videos for almost every song on here, but nap time is almost over and we have a playdate to get ready for this afternoon. The three above are the standouts for me, but check the Further Listening for a few more recommendations.

After spending part of the afternoon walking down this particular memory lane, I can’t tell if I want to be 6 or 16 again…

Further Listening – More Tracks from Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits

Helemt - Gigantor

Helmet – Gigantor. Singing it like they wrote it.

RHH Stop That Pigeon

Reverend Horton Heat cover Johnny Quest and Stop That Pigeon. While Johnny Quest was never a staple growing up, there are few things that take me back to pyjamas and cereal more than Dastardly and Muttley… adding this cover to the album legitimized my childhood fascination with the show which, when I was a kid watching it, simply wasn’t as popular as some of the other cartoons being watched by everyone else.

Matthew Sweet Scooby Doo

Matthew Sweet – Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Like Juliana Hatfield, Matthew Sweet can do bubblegum and make it cool, a perfect fit for one of the simplest themes on the album. The song is very simple but they take it up a notch for a terrific ending. And honestly, does it get any more Saturday morning than Scooby Doo?

I bought my five-year-old a tablet this past Christmas or, rather, Santa bought it for her. Or made it. Or had his elven slave labour force make it. Whatever you choose to believe in… I’m not here to judge you…

Point being, because this was a gift from Santa, it was unwrapped under the tree in all of its rubberized, toddler-proofed, hot pink glory. Her eyes grew wide upon seeing it – “for me???” – and as I sat there watching her hold it, just holding it, not believing it was actually hers, I had one of those sepia-toned memories I get all too often push itself to the forefront of my brain…

I’m nine and I’m rushing downstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought us. It is our first Christmas in this new house and my first Christmas where I have taken up the belief that Santa does not exist, but still keeping up the pretense for the benefit of my younger sister.

Santa always wrapped presents in our house. He always had his own special paper that was different from every other paper under the tree. His presents were always the best wrapped as well, with wrapping that resembled my father’s style…

So when I see it there, front and centre, unwrapped save for a bow on the top (my mother loved bows, often using them to cover for her own poor wrapping job) I am taken aback. It’s just… there. Sitting out. No tag, no note, no wrapping.

The Barbie camper van sitting next to it, also unwrapped (save for that bow), is clearly not meant for me, so by process of elimination, I am looking at my gift from Santa.

A Sony CFS-W301 Stereo with AM/FM Radio, dual cassette recording and the most advanced technology I had ever seen in all my nine Christmases: Hi-Speed Dubbing.

Dual Cassette

I run to it. If I’m being honest and not giving a damn about highlighting my masculinity, I probably squeal a little. I hold it. I can’t believe it is mine.

My parents shuffle into the basement and…

… a tear came to my eye as I looked at her and saw how happy she was holding her gift from Santa, her very own tablet. Her eyes were small when she finally looked up at me, pushed closed by her cheeks and the size of her grin.

The holidays have now come and gone but that brief flashback to my own Christmas morning magical moment has stuck with me for the past few weeks. To this day – and not including any saccharine, sentimental schmap such as the birth of my child or my good health – that dual cassette recorder, with Hi-Speed Dubbing, just may be the best gift I’ve ever been given in my entire life.

I spent hours with it. Making mix tapes. Making copies of those mix tapes for friends and family. In Hi-Speed. Recording songs off the radio and adding them to my mix tapes.

I had owned stereos and cassette recorders before and had made mix tapes from songs taped off the radio prior to this, but this machine brought my tape mixing to a whole new level. When you are dealing with a single cassette, you have to be perfect in your attempts at taping the radio. The margin for error is very slim. How many mix-tapes in the eighties had songs that ended with the DJ coming on, or a commercial for a car dealership or, worse, cut too short, the result of an itchy finger jumping the gun on the stop button trying to anticipate the end of the song.

The beauty of the dual cassette recorder is that you can have the one cassette just continue taping from the radio without needing to worry about when to stop it. You then had a copy of the whole broadcast to edit as you needed over to a second cassette, making your song endings and transitions on your tapes that much smoother.

I remember getting out of bed – long after I was supposed to be asleep, while my parents were downstairs watching TV – and setting my stereo up on my desk.

I’d get the volume to just that right level – that perfect mix of loud enough to record but not too loud to alert my parents to what I was doing – and I would quietly sort through my stack of cassettes looking for a blank one to pop in.

After hitting the REC button on the stereo I’d scramble back into bed, putting my pillow at the foot of the bed so I could hear the radio better.

My eyes would close and I would lay there, falling asleep as my Sony CFS-W301 dual cassette recorder with Hi-Speed Dubbing would simply work its magic and quietly, perfectly, tape the night.