So I've been to a few shows in the last week, and have seen some of my favorite bands; also on Sunday I rode down to San Jose, listening to a mix CD. All of this got me thinking about what it used to be like, when people actually made honest-to-goodness mixtapes. I'm not talking about the hip hop "Man, you gotta hear my mixtape, I'm going to be huge some day." I'm talking about the old fashioned TDK sixty (or ninety) minute marvels that really meant something.
I assume almost all of us have heard the whole "the making of a great mixtape is a subtle art" monologue from High Fidelity, so I'm going to spare that. Still, the physical act of making a mixtape used to have to mean something. You had to generally create a playlist of the songs you wanted the recipient (or just yourself) to hear. You were generally limited by the music you had on hand, and if you were without a song that you really felt needed to be on there, you had to tape it off the radio, hoping and praying that the DJ didn't prattle on over the intro or outro of the song. You festidiously wrote down track names, maybe even created some artwork if you were of a more artistic bent. You even had to work it out to find songs that were just right to get as close to filling out each side as possible. Then, when you were all ready, you rounded up all your tapes and sat in front of a dubbing deck for generally at least two hours to get that mix perfectly. I miss that. Making mixtapes was one of my fonder memories of growing up. I feel bad that generations from here on out will never really know the labor of love that was the perfect mixtape.
Nowadays, thanks to the wonders of mp3 and the computer, making a mix CD can be done in mere minutes. Don't have a song? Drop a buck and a quarter and you can download just that track. Chances are you can find somewhere just to download it for free, provided it's not an exceptionally obscure song. At least there is some artistic merit left in mix CDs and their packaging, but that is provided you are willing to put in the effort. Still, you toss it all into a playlist, you can even give it a test-listen to make sure everything flows according to plan, and it can go from computerized list to actual physical completed CD in somewhere around five minutes.
However, the other day I saw something that damn near broke my heart: rather than buying a CD or even downloading the album yourself, an artist offered the chance to buy a custom designed USB flash drive with his latest album on it in mp3 form. I do appreciate that there was some artistic merit put into it, it wasn't just like you get a cheapo flash drive with some songs on it, but still, it's the idea. I'm not saying it's the same as a romantic "these songs say how I really feel about you" mixtape, but that could be another logical step.
Another step, and what might be the end of the line in mixtape creation: the streaming online playlist. While it's a great and convenient format for sharing music and playlists, there's no art to it other than arranging the songs. There's no labor to it. I have friends (Augie, I'm looking in your direction) who are incredibly adept at making great public mixtapes, but I just fear that such innovations are leading generations of kids to not know what it's all about. Now I know some audiophiles out there will gripe about the loss of fidelity in copying tapes, and remind me that tape was a poor format to start with, the deterioration, and all that. But dammit, the term mixtape has stuck around this long for a reason, and it sounds a hell of a lot more personal and customized than "streaming playlist available at this url."
While romance may not be dead, the era of the mixtape sure seems to be.
2 comments:
Yeah, it's unfortunate. I actually found an old box of tapes a few weeks ago and I've been listening to them again. They've been taped over so many times and listened to so often that they're almost completely worn out. Fun stuff, though. I'm kinda proud of some of them, too.
My all-time great achievement was when I captured the introduction of Yellow Ledbetter with my voice making the request on a mixtape. The only problem was that I said I was Jonathan from South San Francisco, since I'd called in the same request like eight times under different aliases.
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