Been cleaning out a bunch of stored junk and I came across a box of mix tapes. Throwing these things out is going to be impossible - all I can think is how much time and effort went into creating them.
Everybody loves a good mix tape, or rather, everybody at one time loved a good mix tape.
These things are now relics of a by-gone day, antiquated as cathode ray tubes. Technology has made creating a mix tape a pointless exercise.
Not to say that people no longer create their own music compilations, it's just that ever since downloadable music and MP3 players hit the scene, creating a mix tape really doesn't require all that much creativity anymore.
Log on to Pandora, select the songs you want, download. Load 'em up on a flashdrive or your MP3 player and take 'em with you.
If you have CD's that do not prevent you from uploading them to your media driver you can use your computer and save the expense of paying .99 a song, or whatever the going rate is.
Before that was all possible though, one had to have a few pieces of equipment in order to create a mix tape.
When I first started creating mix tapes, all I had was a radio and a portable tape player/recorder. I would literally wait by the radio with my fingers on the play/record buttons, hoping beyond hope that the DJ would play my request and I would be able to record most of it without to much of the DJ's gab being recorded at the beggining or the end of the song.
Recording a song off the radio was the only way I could get access to a song anytime I wanted it, as we were poor and didn't have money to throw away on an album just so I could listen to it repeatedly.
I wanted to listen to songs repeatedly for the same reasons most people did and do, because I liked them and wanted to learn the words.
When I got my first record player, it was as rudimentary as you can possibly imagine. It didn't have any capability other than playing vinyl records, and I didn't have too many of those. The first few years I had a record player I believe I owned a whopping two albums and maybe three or four singles.
My older brother had left his record collection behind when he joined the Army, so I had a bit of access to those, but much like my sisters albums, what I wanted to hear and what they had in their collections were decidedly separate.
I would borrow some albums or singles from friends occasionally, but to record them, I had to place the small tape players even smaller microphone next to the speaker and try to avoid feedback.
Things got better when I joined the AF and could buy equipment that was capable of not only allowing me to record albums directly to tapes, but tapes directly to tape as well.
However, there was still the issue of proper segues. A proper segue meant just a slight pause between the songs without losing any of the end of the prior song or any of the beginning of the following song.
It required a bit of effort with songs that had long fade outs, or ended abruptly. Songs that faded in were also a pain in the ass. It could literally take hours to make a good mix tape, and mix tapes were very, very important for two reasons:
Road trips
Impressing a girl
Back then, in those days of impulsive road trips, having music to travel with was very, very important. There was no Sirius XM, there was no HD radio.
Hell, there was hardly any radio outside of major cities at all, and what stations there were devoted themselves to talk, country, or the word of the lord. Or all three.
In 1987, driving to Las Vegas from San Diego meant enduring a lot of crappy radio for almost 200 miles. Mix tapes were salvation.
Then there was the challenge of impressing a girl. First off, after it was determined that a girl might like the music I liked (which, if I met her in the clubs I frequented, usually wasn't that hard), song selection had to be undertaken not only as a letter of introduction, but almost like a resume.
Handing a girl a mix tape was like saying, "This is who I am, what I'm about, hope you like it."
If this is sounding like something out of High Fidelity, so what, it's my take on it.
Making a mix tape got much, much easier with the invention of the CD player, and even moreso with the introduction of the portable CD/tape player/recorder.
And now...well now you don't really have to make mix tapes. Just select shuffle on your iPod and you're good to go.
I wonder what guys do to impress a girl these days? Creative mash-ups?
I'm going to have to find a way to upload these tapes to my computer. They are getting old, and who knows how long tape players will still be available?
Here's the track listing from one of my 90 minute mix tapes. It's from the '80's, so the selections are a bit dated.
Side A
Money For Nothing - Dire Straights
Longest Day - Del Fuegos
Cool Drink of Water - Gun Club
Perfect Skin - Lloyd Cole and The Commotions
Tell Me When It's Over - Dream Syndicate
When The Shit Hits The Fan - Circle Jerks
I Will Follow - U2
Paper - Talking Heads
Don't Worry Children - Lords of the New Church
One More Time - Joe Jackson
Unsatisfied - Replacements
Legend of a Wheel Man - Fleshtones
Side B
Police On My Back - The Clash
If You Were Here - Thompson Twins
Wake Up - Trio
Somebody Like You - Marshall Crenshaw
(Let's all) Turn On - Hoodoo Gurus
And She Was - Talking Heads
Disgracing The Family Name - Skafish
You Say You Don't Love Me - Buzzcocks
Hot Rod Lincoln - Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen
Wild Blue Yonder - Screaming Blue Messiahs
When Tomorrow Comes - Eurythmics
Love Rollercoaster (album version) - Ohio Players
Mission Drive - Wonder Stuff
Tina - Camper Van Beethoven
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