Something about the classic mix tape makes it untouchable, especially in today’s point and click world. iPod mixes, as great as they are, can’t touch a mix tape. Mix CDs can’t either.
There’s no labor of love in an iPod mix or a mix CD…well, at least not the same amount. I’ve put together some killer iPod mixes and mix CDs in my time (i.e. Britainical, pink striped sox, the sonic olive lounge, In the Mosh Pit), but even they pale in comparison to the mix tapes I used to create.
Gathering all those cassettes together and pouring over them, trying to find that perfect song to tell the recipient how much your heart soars and your privates throb when you think of them and that it will always be that way, or the best group of songs to recapture a certain time, be it college, after college, a particular party, or any period in time, really. A theme, a genre, a random gathering of aural diversity…
…and then comes the art of the mix tape: are there enough songs to fill the classic 90-minute format? Are there too many? If there aren’t enough, what additional songs can you add to fill the gap? If you’ve got too many, what can you discard and not lose the power of the mix? Pick carefully, because one false choice can fuck up the entire listening experience.
Trust me. I know…there was a mix tape once I made for someone who made my heart soar and my privates throb almost incessantly. Enter the mix tape I made for this particular person and you would have been in heaven. Until that last song, the filler at the end of Side B. Fuckin’ “Drown Soda” by Hole, to complete a tape full of songs more along the lines of the Human League’s “Heart Like a Wheel” and at least one or two songs from Sam Phillips and God knows who else (the track list has been lost to the decay of my mind). Maybe even “Damn, I Wish I was Your Lover” was included, although we’d already gotten to that stage by this time. So, it was a killer tape, killed by Courtney Love and her caterwauling. I kept a copy of that tape (I might even still have it somewhere) and listened to it exactly once. Why only once? Because good ol’ Miss Pretty on the Inside herself just ruined it.
You know, know that I think about it, it’s entirely possible that tape got trashed because of that awful choice I made.
But then, there are classics in the Mickey Glitter library of mix tapes. Take “Love Song for A Vampire,” if you will. I created that tape in 1992 or 1993 and still have the original cassette. Inside the villa. With the original label created with that old Mac program, Hypercard. That particular experience never gets old for me; I’ve moved it into a digital format, namely my iPod, but it’s not the same because some of the songs on the tape couldn’t be found. I’m very protective of that tape; not just the physical tape itself, but the songs themselves. I’ve tried tweaking it, adding songs over the years, namely “Love Song for a Vampire” by Annie Lennox, but ultimately, any song not on the original doesn’t stick around in the iPod mix for long.
And the age-old quandry: if the last song on Side A is too long and the tape stops recording, do you flip the tape and put the rest of the song on Side B or do you just move on and start fresh on the new side? I was never able to decide on this.
With the mix CD, it’s so easy now, to tally up how much time of the alloted minutes you’ve used because it’s all digital. Where’s the art, the skill in that? If you only use 45 minutes of the approximate 60 you’re allowed on a CD, it’s not like you’ll have 15 minutes of hissing. Nope. The CD will just start over. And if you’re lucky enough to have an stereo in your car that will play MP3s, you’re golden because you can put like, a million billion songs onto a CD, and at least triple that if it’s a DVD.
I’m sure that’s wonderful (I don’t know because I don’t have a CD player that will play MP3s in my ride) and I would love that, but not for a mix CD. Talk about too much of a good thing. However, I would be the first to burn a disk with every available KaTe Bush song for my car instead of carrying around all the CDs. KaTe is a special case, though…*that* can never be too much of a good thing. Ever ever ever. Even my other favorites, Kirsty MacColl, Black Box Recorder, Sarah Brightman, The B-52s, and T’Pau would probably not get that treatment. Not even the fucking Clash would rate for that amount of overkill adoration, worship, obsession…
But I digress. Along with that “Love Song for a Vampire” tape is one made for me by a friend of my sister’s and later of mine, full of songs by Jad Fair, PJ Harvey, Bikini Kill, Belly, Mazzy Star, Madder Rose (was that a band or am I confusing that with a song title?), &c. I’ve still got that tape around here somewhere, too but have never even attempted to put it into a digital format.
No, that one will stand the test of time as old skool analog. It’s perfection itself in that state.
