{"id":5476,"date":"2026-01-26T20:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5476"},"modified":"2026-01-26T20:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:09:32","slug":"our-mixtapes-ourselves-by-david-grady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5476","title":{"rendered":"Our Mixtapes, Ourselves by David Grady"},"content":{"rendered":"

A funny, engaging memoir of music and nostalgia<\/strong><\/h3>\n

At one point in Our Mixtapes, Ourselves: The Happy-Sad Story and Soundtrack of Generation X<\/em>, David Grady writes that mixtapes in the 1980s were \u201cthe perfect mechanism for saying everything you couldn\u2019t say yourself.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> He lists examples: \u201cthe \u2018sad breakup\u2019 tape, the \u2018angry breakup\u2019 tape, the \u2018I think you\u2019re cool and want you to think I am, too\u2019 tape.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Grady\u2019s musical memoir is structured around groups of songs, tracing a chronology through Grady\u2019s memories and personal history: the classic rock of the 1970s and several iterations of new wave, punk, and post-punk across the eighties and nineties. If the book is a sprawling mixtape, what is the message represented by this mechanism? <\/p>\n

Grady approaches his memories of the history and evolution of new wave with great fidelity (high fidelity?) and attention to detail. He invites the reader into a tribute to the experience of music as something physical, geographical, and communal. Even more so than to the music itself, the book is a love letter to Boston and to Grady\u2019s own musical community. He approaches the story of his developing relationship with these songs with the same care and delicacy that he describes putting into \u201cemergency mixtape surgery\u201d<\/em><\/strong> in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The question that emerges ultimately is one of our relationship to nostalgia. Grady asks at one point, \u201cIs nostalgia a warm, comfortable blanket that offers us shelter from a hostile and overwhelming world? Or is it the cold kitchen floor we slipped on while dancing to \u2018The Safety Dance\u2019?\u201d <\/em><\/strong>The nostalgia Grady characterizes in Our Mixtapes, Ourselves<\/em> never feels quite so hostile as a cold floor. At times there is something bracing about it, and it does evoke pain and loss, particularly as the narrator attempts to navigate a future without some of the people who were integral to his relationship to music: a close lifelong friend as well as Grady\u2019s older brother, who introduced him to so much of this world. Grady writes that \u201cin the new wave-saturated 1980s, new album releases were like postcards from the future;<\/em>\u201c<\/strong> this version of the future feels exciting and fantastical, but there are other times throughout the memoir when the future feels more weighted and troubled. Now that some of the future has arrived, what can be found in revisiting those albums, which now feel like capsules of the past?<\/p>\n

Moving chronologically through the past, but always with one eye on the present, Grady maneuvers with humor, feeling, and self-awareness. He situates his examination of music within broader contexts, including developing technologies, misogyny in 1980s music, circles and the AIDS crisis. Our Mixtapes, Ourselves<\/em> is a work of love on behalf of Generation X and a lived-in compendium of songs, which Grady aptly compares to heirlooms: \u201cmusical artifacts that bring generations together, like campfire stories told to a backbeat of drum machines and synthesizers.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Our Mixtapes, Ourselves by David Grady<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A funny, engaging memoir of music and nostalgia At one point in Our Mixtapes, Ourselves: The Happy-Sad Story and Soundtrack of Generation X, David Grady writes that mixtapes in the 1980s were \u201cthe perfect mechanism for saying everything you couldn\u2019t say yourself.\u201d He lists examples: \u201cthe \u2018sad breakup\u2019 tape, the \u2018angry breakup\u2019 tape, the \u2018I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}