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.

John Waters, Divine, Lux Interior, and Phil Spector sitting at a table in a 24 hour diner doing uppers and downers in the tiny bathroom one by one. Speed, cocaine, opium and grass. They don’t order any food, they just guzzle bottomless cups of black coffee, chain-smoke cheap cigarettes and tell epic tales of the past. They’re speaking so loud they are almost screaming. A relentless flow of perverse one-liners and zingers. The beauty of these minds is blinding. Pure fucking poetry. Total fucking madness. Before you know it, two hours of your life have vanished and all you have is this tape to serve as a document from what feels like a dream, too surreal to have ever been a reality.

Since this will be the last post for a while, I wanted to end on a positive note. This is a tape that someone made for me in April of 2007. She has made me many tapes since, but I felt this was an apt tape to share today.

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!