I'm Going to Degoba (or to Detroit)

<special note> A couple of years ago, we moved my library from the third floor to the first.  Obviously, part of that move was the items in my desk.  I didn't really remember actually taking these three tapes to work with me, but recently I've been shifting things again to a new desk, and I came across the track listings.  As you can see, there's been some water damage... more accurately some tea damage, that I knocked over my tea while packing, and thought "who the hell would ever listen to these tapes again," threw the wet tapes away, but sentimentally kept the liners.  </note>

The first of these three "tapeless tapes" came about over a holiday break during our junior year of college.  Old enough that we all felt we had outgrown our small town, but still young enough to be stuck at home.  I distinctly remember sitting in Michael's car, on a street not that far from our high school, trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do that night.  Four of us, Michael, Good Eric, Yvette and myself.  I remember being in the back with Eric, I remember that it was Mike's mom's new car, one of the first with a digital speedometer, allowing us to make warp drive jokes.  I remember one of us asking where we should go, and Eric pulling the road atlas out and declaring that we'd set off for whatever city he opened it to.  Detroit!  he declared, Degoba! Michael countered.  We all laughed at what super cool nerds we were, and I'm fairly certain that though we were dreaming of different places in the universe, we ended up at Eat & Park for spaghetti.

Side A (Detroit):
kids in america (Kim Wilde - 1994 remix)
where the water's deep (Bonepony - 1995)
only wanna be with you (Hootie & the Blowfish - 1995)
shit towne (Live - 1994)
run around (Blues Traveler - 1994)
ants marching (Dave Matthews - 1994)
breakfast at tiffany's (Deep Blue Something - 1995)
send me on my way (Rusted Root - 1994)
madness (is all in the mind) (Madness - 1983)
circus envy (R.E.M. - 1994)
material girl (Madonna - 1984)

Side B (Degoba):
midnight train to georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips - 1973)
cigarette (The Clarks -1994)
up on cripple creek (The Band - 1969)
vampires, mummies & the holy ghost (Jimmy Buffett - 1994)
dixie chicken (Little Feat - 1973)
train of love (The Clarks - 1991)
the weight (The Band - 1968)
fruitcakes (Jimmy Buffett - 1994)
but it's alright (Huey Lewis & The News - 1994)
squeeze box (The Who - 1974)

Much of this tape is stamped firmly in the "current hits of the mid-90s" but I can still see other influences floating around - Madness was definitely for Yvette, and I've always sworn that Material Girl was Madonna at her "singing along in the car like an idiot" finest.  Gladys Knight makes an appearance, as that song often does for me, and then the latter part of that tape really starts to show the influences of Matt's southern classic rock loving fraternity. I admit that I had to look up who sang Where the Water's Deep (Bonepony?  Bonepony.) and that I still have Deep Blue Something on my iPod (to Matt's mocking chagrin).  But more importantly than any one song, I think the large part of the reason that I kept this was sentiment.  The music isn't important - none of these songs have a single memory firmly tied to it - but it is as a whole the moment in time when I realized how lucky I was to have that group of friends.  High school was something we all struggled through, and college too, but to turn back to our little town and have kinship, that meant more than anything.