The Importance of the Mixtape

(photo courtesy of thinkgeek)

Aside from failing to go to bed at a reasonable time both Friday and Saturday...and now Sunday...I spent much of my weekend working on music with a friend. It's nothing serious, we were just in it for the pure pleasure of making something on our own. I'll save you my spiel about trying to forge a career in music. I'll just say that I've come to understand how important and rewarding it is just to simply write and jam with friends. If you aren't having fun, there's no point.

Anyways, today I was attempting to craft a mixtape, or in the 21st century's case a mix CD, for a friend. I was aiming for a dance-oriented, electronic mix, a genre that's not really my forte, but what I struggled with most was trying to get it to flow. Whenever I make a mix, I put most of my focus on how each song flows into the other. It took me, like it usually does, a few hours to go through my library, find songs to use, and then arrange them. I couldn't imagine having to make it on a cassette tape. It's a true artform.

Back in January, I was hanging out at a friend's apartment watching High Fidelity. My feelings on the movie are for another post, but I must admit that as I watched Cusack completely nail a role, I understood the significance of the cassette in the art of making a mixtape.

Today, we e-mail people mixes or construct them in our universal iTunes players from where we burn them to CD. The problem with the modern day mixtape is that if you don't dig a song on the mix, you can just skip to the next one with ease. That is where the problem lies. Aside from those mixtapes that are simply created to give a friend new music to checkout, the mixtape is meant to say something, to have a flow, a rhythm, a path of its own. The tracklist was not meant to be skipped through because it gives a mood, expresses a feeling (or feelings), and at its full potential, tells a story.

When mixtapes were actually made on cassettes they achieved this potential. We all know that cassettes are not the easiest thing to go through track-by-track, but they helped maintain and preserve the effect of that story, that mood, that feeling that the tapes creator intended it to project. The truly sad thing is how tape players are basically non-existent anymore. Yes, they still exist, but because they aren't such a popular medium anymore, there are fewer tape players produced these days.

I recommend checking out Rob Sheffield's book Love is a Mix Tape for a better understanding about the subject. Plus, it's a terrific read.

I also recommend checking out http://www.muxtape.com/.

For those who want the convenience of digital but the spirit of the old, check out the USB mixtape by clicking one of the links below.
USB mixtape 1
USB mixtape 2
USB mixtape 3

or just check out the search results. (courtesy of Yahoo!)

Coming Soon: My review of What Laura Say's new LP Thinks and Feels.