You Got No Secrets To Conceal

By Wm. on August 30, 2026

I’ve noted many a time here that in the late 80s and early 90s my college roommate James was a regular recipient of mix tapes I stitched together from recent purchases. It was not completely a one-way street, however. Five years ago I wrote a couple of posts about one tape he shot my way around 1989, called The Good Stuff (‘Stuff’ was how I’d described the first tape I sent him, and that word got used in some form or fashion in naming subsequent cassettes for the better part of a decade). Maybe a year or so earlier, I’d been the recipient of two mixtapes from him, one humor-based (Comedy Schtuff) and the other consisting mostly of music from the 60s (Somewhat Elderly Stuff). Both James and I had begun adding to our album collections in earnest in 1984, at around the halfway point of our undergrad lives. Over time, perhaps after I left Lexington for the cornfields of central Illinois, I turned more to checking out new artists, particularly those with female vocalists. James did plenty of that sort of thing as well, but he also concentrated much more heavily on the past. I don’t know if James was an older soul than I, or if he was looking to make up for lost time (he didn’t grow up with pop/rock music as much as I had). Regardless, I could not have put anything together like Somewhat Elderly Stuff when I was 24.

In honor of what would have been James’s 62nd birthday, let’s take a look at SES, focusing on what this tape says about what his album collection might have looked like in 1988. The list is in order of appearance of album.

Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy. Cut: “Dancing Days”
I know James built up a Zeppelin collection over the years–he had become more of a fan than I ever was.

The Kinks, The Kink Kronikles. Cut: “Lola”
Okay, so I’m playing ‘guess the LP’ on quite a few of these. I’ll usually go with a compilation in such cases, as I have evidence from letters that James himself harbored such tendencies. We both bought 80s Kinks albums while in college, and I can imagine him going for something relatively comprehensive from their earlier years.

The Doors, Alive She Cried. Cut: “Love Me Two Times”
The version on this cassette is definitely not the one you here on AOR radio today–Manzarek’s keyboards are way up in the mix, Krieger’s guitar much less so. Instead, it seems to match what YouTube offers up from the ’83 release Alive She Cried. Kinda enjoyable trying to play detective.

Mind Garage, Mind Garage Again!–The Electric Liturgy. Cut: “Lucille”
This is a Little Richard cover, from an album that James, uh, ‘liberated’ from the WTLX library when we graduated.

Jethro Tull, Living in the Past. Cut: “Living in the Past”
Again, guessing at a compilation. Hadn’t occurred to me that this song was a single-only release at the time. Also note that it’s a hidden track, as James neglected to write it down on the J-card.

David Bowie, Changesonebowie. Cut: “Golden Years”
Fun to realize that being about a dozen years old already qualified as ‘elderly.’ I think the compilation is more likely than Station to Station being in his collection, but I’m ready to be wrong about that.

Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited. Cuts: “Highway 61 Revisited*,” “Like a Rolling Stone”
Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home. Cuts: “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
James was way ahead of me on this front–I wouldn’t have any 60s Dylan in my own collection until inheriting some from my father well into the 21st century.

Jefferson Airplane, 2400 Fulton Street. Cuts: “White Rabbit*,” “Somebody to Love,” “Volunteers”
It’s the inclusion of the third JA song here, a live recording that appears to be taken from their appearance at Woodstock, that pushes me to thinking he had gone for a greatest hits set.

Big Brother & the Holding Co., S/T. Cut: “Down on Me”
James put Janis’s name on the cassette’s J-card, but this is a studio recording that must be from Big Brother’s debut album.

The Beatles, Revolver. Cut: “She Said, She Said”
Another act on which James just plain outflanked me. It’s embarrassing it took so long to start bringing the Fab Four into my collection.

Derek and the Dominos, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Cut: “Layla”
WTLX added Clapton’s Timepieces to its library while we were there, but I’m going to take a position in this case that James did not go for a compilation.

The Ventures, More Golden Greats. Cut: “Green Onions”
A letter from the fall of ’86 includes a list of albums James bought at a college friend’s ‘yard sale.’ Included is ‘some album’ from the Ventures, so I now have to take a stab at what someone else had bought. The options that include their cover of “Green Onions” aren’t all that many.

The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks: 1964-1971. Cut: “Gimme Shelter*”
It’s possible he found a cheap used copy of Let It Bleed instead. I don’t know that we ever talked about our favorite Stones song, but this is mine.

The Mamas and the Papas, Farewell to the First Golden Era. Cut: “Twelve Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)*”
I am 100% certain about the album this time, as it received prominent mention in a letter from August ’85 that I wrote about four years ago.

Simon & Garfunkel, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Cut: “Homeward Bound”
Another 60s act I know James went heavy on as the 80s proceeded.

The Association, Greatest Hits. Cut: “Along Comes Mary”
Perhaps selected because it’s the Association’s most rockin’ tune, but I suspect this is an inside joke of sorts, as “Along Comes Mary” is the opening song included in the Circle Jerk’s song cycle “Golden Shower of Hits,” a long-standing favorite of ours.

James Taylor, Sweet Baby James. Cut: “Fire and Rain”
That fall ’86 letter also mentions ‘a James Taylor album,’ but since he goes out of his way to note greatest hits LPs from Andy Williams, the Association, and Carly Simon in said list, I’m going with a non-compilation this time.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, So Far. Cut: “Woodstock”
I bought So Far on CD at some point, so I’ll claim that makes it more likely James chose it over Déjà Vu.

The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour. Cut: “Flying”
The Beatles, S/T. Cut: “Mother Nature’s Son”
The Beatles, Abbey Road. Cut: “Oh! Darling”
My roomie was just showing off the expanse of his collection at this point. I will say that I’m eternally grateful to him for introducing me to Abbey Road on one of the many times I crashed at his apartment in the late 80s.

You may have noticed that four songs are asterisked. I played those on the two-hour radio show I assembled in tribute to James and our bonding over music shortly after his passing in the spring of 2022. His deep affection for tunes from our first decade of life on this earth hadn’t passed unnoticed.