The Art of the Mix Tape...

 

It was probably about 1978 due to the luck and new found profitability of being employed at a well paying blue collar union job that I upgraded the 8 track tape player in my car to one of those new fangled cassette players. I also upgraded the vehicle but that's another story. I then purchased a state of the art stereo with large, loud speakers, turntable and cassette deck and began recording the albums I had been buying with my yard mowing money since age 12 to cassette for playing in the car. Just for a reference point my oldest child will be 40 this year. Substract 28 from today's date and google what the hit songs were. That's what I sounded like going down the street. 

By 1984, time for another car upgrade, my taste in music had evolved. I had been playing music with other guys in little bands a bit and attending lots of shows so certainly I knew "good" music. My taping theory had also evolved and I was making mixtapes. I thought you should make a mix tape so when you were on a cruise in your Rocket 88 the intensity of the experience and the excitement of the trip increased with each song that blared for the scientifically ordered tunes that were committed to the tape. On a recent clean out of the cassettes in my music room, the kids breathed a sigh of relief, because that is a subtraction of  the amount of crap that the old man has ratholed away to be disposed of on his passing to the other side, I discovered the original mixtape I had made. Note in the photo it's labeled "Greatest Hits." 

Another theory I have concerning mixtapes is that the first one you make is the best. I would not call listening to any successive tape a let down but maybe a tension and release thing. The emotions created by listening to music reached a peak, a climax and then feelings and experiences moved on. 

It won't be long but probably at least once more before I pass to the other side and maybe you can count twice if my wife needs another one it will be time to upgrade cars again. They tell me you can't get a car with a cassette player or a cd player in it anymore. You either play music off your phone or plug in a zip drive. Since my cars have been upgraded fairly recently, you have to consider 10 years ago recently, they are technologically advanced enough to play a zip drive. I have made two zip drives for car play. They follow my old theory that the first one you make is the best. 

That first zip drive, I started it on a whim because I wanted to practice my technology and it contains all the music that was on my computer at the time and for a short period everything I next bought till the drive was full. All songs are legal downloads. I bought them. The artist or their heirs were compensated. There is close to 5000 songs that will play randomly (it does seem to have it's favorites that play more often) and they range from early New Orleans dixieland jazz and ragtime to angry Eastern European punk rock and Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks. There are songs in Spanish, English, French, Russian, Portuguese, Swahili and I don't know what else. 

The second zip drive is still a work in progress. It's not as large size wise as the first because I was going to make them identical (see first mixtape theory) but it would not take all the songs. I then started to make it by ripping music from a cd or record one recording at a time. I would say there are 50 plus cds on this zip drive or about 3 gigs of 12 gigs used. On a recent 30 hour driving trip there were recordings I knew that were on the drive that never played. There will be more driving. I'll get to them. 

When I was cleaning up the cassettes in my music room I probably tossed at least 100 and probably more in the trash. Most were home recorded, some were visibly damaged to be unplayable and many had lost their labels. There were some old favorites such as the "Greatest Hit" tape, one labeled "Carl and the Rhythm Kings" which is a pretty good home recording of a four man combo playing electric instruments into a cassette player/recorder in someone's living room made about 35 years ago and one that I have not had the courage to play yet labeled "Gary's B-Day Party." 

Yes, I do still have a cassette deck that I can make real mix tapes on tape on. It's not the original one I bought with the money from that well playing blue collar union job but I do still have the original large, loud speakers. I'll probably regret throwing away all those cassettes because little record companies like Nouveau Electric Records are selling their own mixtapes on cassette. 

When I started out writing about mixtapes I did not know I was going to mention passing over to the other side twice. Records became popular again after a decline in use and now cassettes are coming back. Maybe the afterlife is kind of like technology. You go back and forth.