Love of music, part 2: The Mixtape

To the unpracticed, just looking at an audiotape of yesteryear, one may think that transferring 15-18 songs from multiple tapes to one tape was easy. Let me assure you, it was/is not.

There were a myriad of things that needed to be addressed when making a mixtape. (And I promise you I am writing this missive in all seriousness.) Issues such as avoiding an excessive amount of blank tape at the end of one side (which required careful planning of the length of each side of the mix) and reducing the audible click between songs (which required mastery of the pause button on the cassette recorder) demanded skill. There were also important considerations such as the transitions between songs, the jarring effects caused by juxtaposing a soft song with a heavy song, and the overall narrative arc or theme of the entire tape. Yeah, this was not a simple way to share music. This was art. (Mom, that should make you feel better about all your tapes I taped over when I was 11. I was a budding artist.) This is why, until only two years ago, my primary stereo was a monstrous 6-Disc changer with DUAL CASSETTE decks.

We all know of my love for Nick Hornby. He loves music and loves lists. So I love him. (If interested in falling in love with music, lists, mixtapes, life, Nick Hornby or all of the above, check out 31 Songs. And the accompanying mix CD). Hornby wrote in his book, High Fidelity (which I also LOVE, but highly disagree with three of the choices on his "Top Five Bands or Musicians Who Will Have To Be Shot Come the Musical Revolution" list), the following paragraph on the rules of mixtapes:
“...Making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind", but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.”

I hold these mixtapes, the rules that govern them and the people that follow them with the utmost respect and reverence. I automatically discount mixes and people that break these rules. Once, a bunch of girls got together for a mix exchange party. Everyone brought 5 copies of a mix. There were some great mixes available. I was impressed. I, like several others, had spent many nights working on my mix. It was on CD, but I went about it like a mixtape, editing and crafting and ordering the songs. (I think one of the best transitions I've ever made was between "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Thunder Road.") I made a custom cover and liner notes. I wrote a small paragraph on each song with phrases like "If Neil Diamond is the Jewish Elvis, then Elton John is the Gay Elvis. Unless the rumors were true and Elvis was the Gay Elvis." It was good, I tell you. Good. Someone, who shall remain nameless (but if you really wanna know, email me and I'll tell you - they deserve to be outed), slapped together a mix that looked slapped together. Sharpie title on a disc, no case or cover. When we got it home, holyhell, my ears bled. It was awful. It was a haphazard mix of who knows what. Without purpose or reason. The sound quality was bad, there may have been a Christmas song on there and GASP - the SAME song was on there twice. I haven't really hung out with this person since. It was a slap in the face.

Not only is the mixtape an art, but it is a didactic art. It entertains, yes. But more importantly, the purpose is to inform. Sometimes to explain to a professor the history of the world in 90 minutes (which is a tape Melissa and I made one night at BYU when we should have been studying for finals, but we thought if we made this for the professor, he would give her extra credit. He did not.) Sometimes to heal wounds, like the mix Hoss made for me soon after we tried to reconcile after our divorce. It was unexpected and sweet and went a long way towards helping our relationship. But more often than not, the mixtape's purpose is to explain one's heart. A mixtape says: "This is what I am trying to say at this exact moment; these songs by these artists in this particular order explain myself better than I can with words. So I spent a ridiculous amount of time crafting this for you. Here is a part of my soul."

You want to get a girl? Make her a mixtape. Trust me, I know. I still have every one I have ever been given. Even Jason Warner's. And he was a terd. But he knew the rules and his mixes melted me, terd though he was.

Even musicians know this. Watch this video of the song "Singing in my Sleep" by Semi-Sonic. (Actually, you can quit watching at the three minute mark.) Lyrics below. Props to Semi-Sonic for incorporating lines of other songs into their lyrics (it makes you feel like you are listening to a mixtape!) and props to Eric Rowe, who made me my first mixtape of the Samples ("Did you ever look so nice?" reference.)

Got your tape and it changed my mind

Heard your voice in between the lines

Come around from another time

Where nobody ever goes

All alone on the overpass

Wired and phoned to a heart of glass

Now I’m falling in love too fast

With you or the songs you chose

And all the stars play for me

Say the promise you long to keep

I can hear you singing to me in my sleep

I can hear you singing to me in my sleep

I’ve been living in your cassette

It’s the modern equivalent

Singing up to a Capulet

On a balcony in your mind

In the city the lion sleeps

Pray to Sony my soul to keep

Were you ever so bright and sweet

Did you ever look so nice?

And all the sounds dream for me

Dive me down in a soul so deep

I can hear you singing to me in my sleep

I can hear you singing to me in my sleep

*le sigh* I feel for the younger, digital music-raised generations that will not know this art. Will not know the sleepless nights of going over tapes with a stopwatch, a notepad, cut up magazines, and some packing tape for laminate. Will not know the hours and hours of waiting by the radio just to hit record on a song you love, but has not yet been released. Will not know the skill it takes to hammer out song after song, in the best possible order, and have only 32 victorious seconds of blank tape at the end.

I hope you get the point. This is serious. This is love. This is art. So for you, my dear blog readers, I am writing ALL of this to announce that I am in the process of crafting a mixtape for YOU. Get excited.