Jasveer Singh Dangi

Anyone who grew up in the ’80s and early ’90s will find this deeply relatable.

I wrote this in late 2020, while Toronto remained quiet and still under the grip of the COVID-19 lockdown.

This morning, when Sweet Child O’ Mine started playing in the background, I couldn’t help but feel a rush of excitement. That one song opened a floodgate of memories. We suddenly found ourselves talking about mixtapes—and the joys (or the struggles) of rolling the cassette tape back in with a pencil.

That was our usual pastime in the basement house we shared in North York, Toronto. With malls and hangout spots shut during the lockdown, reminiscing about our childhood became one of our favorite ways to pass the time. And honestly, reliving those days was the highlight of many conversations.

Back in the ’80s and early ’90s, we had an old cassette player-radio combo that my dad absolutely loved. It was one of his most prized possessions. He never got rid of it, which meant we never upgraded—until my sister aced her higher secondary exams and received a brand-new double cassette player as a gift. That felt like hitting the jackpot.

“No more trips to the cassette shop to get mixtapes made!” my brothers beamed.

Back then, cassette shops were the epicenters of music culture. I still remember racing to the shop, list of favorite songs in hand, eagerly anticipating my custom tape. It usually cost us most of our pocket money, though. So, when that new player arrived, we were thrilled—finally, we could make mixtapes at home and save a few bucks.

Easier said than done.

My brother’s recording process was an art form. He’d carefully position both cassette players facing each other. Then came the ritual: fans off, windows and doors shut, and a stern warning to everyone in the house to stay absolutely silent. He’d play a song on one device and record it on the other, using one of Dad’s discarded tapes.

He’d sit there, drenched in sweat (because no fans, of course), barely breathing, praying for a perfect recording. But despite all the efforts, the final tape always had its own “remix”—dogs barking, cars honking, birds chirping, kids yelling. Our walls weren’t soundproof, after all.

Still, it was fun. Those flawed tapes, filled with environmental noise, were special in their own quirky way.

Mixtapes were the Direct TV of our time, while branded audio cassettes were more like cable TV. You’d get a whole collection of songs on one tape but love only a few—maybe just one. There was no “buy one song” option. If you didn’t like a track, you had to fast-forward (and good luck stopping exactly where the next one began). It wasn’t like CDs where you could skip tracks with a click. We’d often overshoot, rewind, overshoot again, until we landed just right.

Mixtapes gave us freedom—a playlist of only the songs we loved. Just like modern streaming lets us choose our channels, mixtapes gave us control over what we heard.

And then there was the humble pencil. A vital tool—not for writing, but for saving a cassette. If the tape came loose or got twisted, the pencil came to the rescue. Fixing tapes by spinning them back into place became second nature. In those days, the cassette and the pencil were a match made in heaven.