I'm Italy Mom, and this is The Slowdown.

I grew up on mixed tapes, first recording songs off the radio, then sometimes recording

songs from my father's great record collection, and then from tape to tape when we got fancy

with our boomboxes.

I loved mixed tapes.

Each song took you on a journey and each transition somehow told you something intimately

about the other person.

When dating in the 90s and early 2000s, the mixed tape which became the mix CD was a language

of courtship steeped in the senses.

For my 15th birthday, my very first boyfriend made me a mixed tape with a white cover, because

yes, you had to make your own cover and write the songs out, a mixed tape was work, a labor

of love.

The mixed tape he made me was called Ada, the white album.

I always loved that.

It had a lot of lead Zeppelin on it.

R-E-M, and I wish I could find it now.

There was also a time when every guy who made me a mixed tape put the song Superman by

R-E-M in the mix.

I guess they wanted me to think they were Superman?

What I once loved about mixed tapes and what I still love about mixed tapes is that the

songs are forever linked to old flames or old friends.

Last the other day, I heard Stevie Wonder's Ebony Eyes, and I texted my friend Jennia

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