This is the end of the line my friends. “The End”. I felt this was a fitting tape to use as the final passage of this project.

I made this tape for a special group of friends during the summer of 2015. It was created to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of a very special night in 2005 where we all got blacked out drunk and saw Thor perform at a small movie theater here in Boston. In a lot of ways, that night represented the pinnacle of our camaraderie, and as with many bonds of youth that burn too bright, you never anticipate the crash and fallout that inevitably follows these moments of god-like feelings.

At a running time of 30 minutes (15 minutes per side), this tape is a short, sharp, sonic journey through an era long passed. Every song has specific meaning in the context of our friendship, a soggy memory attached to each one. I’m confident the secret messages coded here on this tape can still be deciphered by all the original recipients to this current day.

I realize the human concept of “The End” is really just another mental trap we set for ourselves. I am the King of Nostalgia, hanging on to the past and refusing to let go. I set these traps for myself every day of my life. Maybe that is why I still have all these tapes piled up at my house along with all the other countless memento mori that I have acquired over the past 36 years. But the boundaries of “The End” and its finality reach only as far as we allow them to set. Life goes on. New things bloom and others pass. Memories live on, both good and bad. We all know this yet we still struggle to fully operate accordingly. Such is the human condition.

If there is one message I would like people to take away from this project is that there is absolutely no substitute for the analog world. Every moment we spend here in our digital torpor is a moment less we have in the tangible existence.

Get off your phone, get off your computer, and go make a fucking tape for your friends.

THE END.

There’s a storm coming, but you aren’t afraid. Your body is a fortress of flesh, and while it may leak water from the ceilings, the physical world cannot touch your spiritual temple. Corrupt souls surround us, poisoned by their pride and confined by their cowardice. But we feel content in knowing that this outcome is unavoidable, that we deserve whatever comes next be it good or bad. So we sip our drinks and calmly await the violent clouds approaching. Acceptance. Rest easy knowing the seeds of hope we planted deep in the earth are safe, preserving the promise of reconstruction once this all has passed.

Get in touch with your inner child. Play in the dirt and giggle at clowns. Throw a tantrum and scream at your parents. Revel in angst and jive in pop appeal. All the colors of the rainbow taste delicious as shit and if you are too fussy to appreciate a single flavor on our Earth’s eclectic platter you are only cheating yourself. Open your damn mind by any means necessary and you will realize the answers to all of life’s biggest questions are right in front of you.

While on the surface this may seem like a tape containing nauseating romantic schlock you would hear at a dentist office in the late 80s, it is in fact a banging mixtape jam packed with heavy hitters, full of fury and contempt. A sleeper cell of crusty classics contained within a repurposed thrift store cassette shell. The tracklisting is scrawled on stolen USPS property and slapped on the inner sleeve. Utilitarian, straight to the point and enjoyable from start to finish. A celebration of truly not giving a single fuck! A celebration of Caandaxe!

A day with nothing to do, so you go to a vacant lot to watch grass grow through cracks in the asphalt. You get that feeling of wondering about all the cool or uncool stuff that maybe went on or still goes on in this little-visited, crumbling ruin. People sleeping rough, or doing drugs, maybe teenagers partying. No one's here now, but it feels like just maybe life could be as cool and mysterious as the movies.

Wimps and posers leave the hall. Go back to your faux-tastemakers’ playlists on Youtube. But for all you true people who are down to fuck: we welcome you to the freak party with open arms.

It’s a warm summer evening, you pop this tape in the boombox and set out for a night of wandering around the neighborhood with your mates. After several warm cans of Colt 45 and a toot of Adderall, you ascend a stone cliff overlooking a vacant lot. It is littered with trash. Smashed televisions and broken beer bottles glisten in the yellow hue illuminating from the street lights. Shattered trophies from nights of lore. You feel on top of the fucking world, so confident in all you do. So blind to see that this youthful arrogance will soon come crashing down on your head. Until then, kick it into high gear and don’t look back. Full speed ahead motherfucker we’re the MHP and we don’t care!

Remember that scene in Repo Man where Otto and his friends are all hanging out in a parking lot, drinking BEER and thrashing about themselves while blasting the Circle Jerks’ “Coup D'Etat” on a boombox? Well, very few people know this, but after that song finishes this fucker was the next tape on deck for the evening. Boneheaded to the bone with a dash of Dad’s ‘NamRock for sophistication.