I have a green backpack that I seem to port around whenever I leave town. Actually, I use the same backpack when I go to meet clients about work stuff. Yeah, sure, it makes me look like a college kid, but I can't stand briefcases. And, honestly, most of my meetings are over the phone, so I don't really need one. (For real meetings, I ditch the backpack and just use the leather corporate folder-thingy that's usually in the backpack.)

Typically, I've had some kind of Walkman in my backpack to listen to on those trips. Until a couple of years ago, it was usually an old cassette Walkman. But, for whatever reason, I never really kept tapes in my backpack. They usually stayed in my car until I went somewhere, and I'd just grab a small tape case from there before a trip.

For the longest time, the only tapes that stayed long-term in my backpack were a couple of leftover practice tapes from my period in Hartford with the Little Dipper. (See also: Getting One More Chance.) When I first got there, I taped several practices in order to help me learn the songs, then threw the tapes in my backpack to listen to while we were touring. When I got home, most of the tapes ended up in my pile of "Little Dipper" tapes. But one or two of those practice tapes just ended up staying in the backpack.

Flash forward to Summer 2002. I started compiling all of the Little Dipper recordings I had in order to make a compilation for the other guys. I went through the bag of tapes of all of our shows, and grabbed every practice tape I could find. One of those practice tapes revealed a song that we'd forgotten, that I wrote lyrics and recorded vocals for. (It became "Now It's Over".) And that was it, no more Little Dipper anything.

During Thanksgiving, Reuben came to Atlanta to visit. At some point during the weekend, while porting around my green backpack, I noted to him the aforementioned statement of: "for the longest time, the only tapes I had in my backpack were Little Dipper practice tapes".

This past weekend, I decided to do a stationary bike workout. (See also: Getting Creative at Christmas.) I don't usually listen to music while working out. When I run, it's just too cumbersome for me to tote a Walkman. But staying in one place (indoors) gives me the chance to crank up the tunes.

All that was near the bike was an old portable cassette boom box, so I figured I'd run through the stash of tapes on hand. During one client visit, I remembered putting my November 1997 mix tape (one of my faves) in my backpack to listen to, and it had somehow not ended up back in the usual tape case. I knew there was a tape in the front pouch of my backpack, and just assumed that was it. So I grabbed it and dropped it into the player.

And heard the Little Dipper.

I immediately started laughing. Seriously - it's the same blasted tape that I put in my backpack after the third practice in Hartford in March of 1999. It never left. Somehow, and I don't know how, I overlooked it while tracking down all of the Little Dipper tapes, even though it was in the most obvious possible place.

I take this backpack with me everywhere I travel, which means that this particular tape has been with me for every trip I've made since then. That includes numerous trips all over the Southeast, trips to visit family and friends, client meetings, and the week-long trip to Montreal this summer. That also means it's been through the scanners at the airport several times.

So, what's on the tape? The first half of Side A is part of the first full-band practice when I got to Hartford. I hadn't been in a band in years at that point, and, at one point, I note being nervous about "screwing up the vocals". The rest of Side A sounds like the next practice, and includes part of a random jam with Reuben on guitar and myself on drums. Side B sounds like the same practice, and actually includes us trying to run through the song that became "Now It's Over", with me sounding completely lost and playing a guitar part that has no business being there.

Okay, at this point, if you haven't stopped reading, you're wondering why the heck I'm mentioning all of this. So what, I found another friggin' Little Dipper practice tape.

Here's the noteworthy part: the first song on the tape is a song I don't remember ever hearing. It's another almost-completed Little Dipper song. And, as with "Now It's Over", it's a complete take that's solidly played. And it's seriously good.

It's the weirdest case of deja vu. Back in the Summer of 2002, I stuck in one of the Little Dipper practice tapes, and the first song on the tape was an unfinished Little Dipper song. Here I am a year and a half later, exactly the same thing.

And, exactly like before, I copied the song to my computer and listened to it on repeat for two or three hours.

The weird part is that I'm modestly conflicted. When I finished "Now It's Over", it was more or less my way of closing the door on the period. One more good song for the compilation. Compilation done, finished.

There really is no good reason to finish this one. But the song itself is so oddly good (it's slightly more intricate and varied than "Now It's Over"), I don't know that I can just walk away from it.

The main conflict is that I don't know how the other guys would feel about it. Am I a loser for finishing songs from a band that's been gone for four years? I was only in the band for two months, for crying out loud. None of us are writing songs like this anymore. On the other hand, maybe that's the appeal. We were an emo band, it sounds like an emo song. But it's old-school emo, not the modern-day whiny crap that's being handed the "emo" label.

I didn't get much feedback from the guys about "Now It's Over", other than Reuben telling me that he liked it when I first played it for him. But, for me, the real gauge of how much someone likes a song is how often they listen to it, and, since they don't live here, there's no good way to find out if it was anything other than a curiosity to them.

I may just have to finish this one for me.

This whole thing makes me chuckle, though. One of my biggest complaints during the last week of my term with the Dipper was that the new song we were working on sucked. It sounded just like one of the other songs in our repertoire. (I was so aggrivated that Reuben kept wanting to work on it that I left the practice and screwed around on the piano in the adjacent practice room.) Yet here were these two gems that were completely forgotten.

But this is it. The end of the Dipper. There are no more tapes. There are no more songs. None. Seriously.

I mean it. Seriously.

Seriously.

And, yes, I know I said that a year and a half ago.

Postscript: So this tape's been in my backpack for almost five years. Should I put it back in there, and just keep porting it around?