The "Art" of the Mix Tape



As a former mix-tape-turned-CD-mix artist myself, I found this article on Thruston Moore's new book to be very amusing. Moore, of Sonic Youth, has collected stories from various people about making mix tapes.

"Mix tapes are like matchmaker forms," Moore writes. For budding couples they can test compatibility. Welcome to my world, the mix tape says. If you end up sleeping over on a regular basis, this is the music you'll have to listen to. Why don't you make me a tape, too, so I know you're not into Simply Red? Phrased negatively, making a mix tape for someone other than your girlfriend is a form of cheating. In the film version of Nick Hornby's book "High Fidelity," probably the mix tape's cultural zenith, John Cusack's character, Rob Gordon, nearly wrecks a relationship by making a mix for another girl. He might as well have been caught with panties in his messenger bag. It doesn't matter that he never gets further than flirting. Making a mix tape for another girl is only a notch below actual infidelity.

Ah, those were the days. Pulling tracks in from records and other tapes; listening to each song to grab the peak level so I could normalize the tape manually; trying to squeeze in one last song before the tape ran out. Often times, I tried to make mixes that weren't merely collections of songs but rather attempts to mirror the free-form FM radio of the late 60s. (Even though I wasn't born until the 70s.) Other times it was making mixes to impress chicks or, as the above excerpt mentioned, to garner a reaction from a new friend to see what he or she was like. Yep, those were the days. I used to have a blast making them. Aside from music, I'd throw in Monty Python skits, Benny Hill quotes, bits from Seasame Street records - everything but the kitchen sink. I'd even grab lines from movies that I'd rent to throw on them. Nowadays it's much easier to make a mix CD. The non-linear assembly process, the readily available sources of sounds on the Internet, et al. With a CD, it's easy to skip tracks. And you don't turn CDs over. There's no side A and B. You can't end a side with a cliffhanger song on a CD like you could with tapes. You know, a song that begged for a recapitulation, a song sans denouement, or one with some cryptic lyrics that needed explaining. Plus tapes had about 12 minutes more running time than CDs. You could split a mini-suite up or put a song that recapitulated a theme of another tune waaay over on the other side of the tape and see if the listener catches it.

Ah, just wait for the new super blue laser DVD-A burners to come out. Then kids will have a couple dozen gigs of space to play with and make a mix DVD that will play for an entire weekend non-stop.