There are lots of songs I could pick to emblematize the many hours I spent at an apartment at 136 East 64th Street around 1987-88, where a friend of mine lived who had lots and lots of room for us to hang out and parents who didn’t seem to care or hear what we did.

But this cassette definitely would have been de rigueur in an evening of drinking with the full complement of our friends on a weekend, after trips to Jimmy’s at MacDougal and Bleecker for drinks which were generally served without reference to IDs but were too expensive over the long haul.

Eventually this thing that we called “The crouton” would be unfolded and put on the floor and between the many couches in my friends’ living room and the Crouton we’d all have a place to pass out as the music played. We’d wake to the smell of eggs and bacon and her cheerful parents in the formal dining room, cooking for all of us, insisting.