"I know people for whom music is just background noise. They don't listen to it. They just consume it. These people have never made a mix-tape for anyone. These people are not my friends. These people have no soul."
- Love Is A Mix-Tape; Rob Sheffield
I've written before about the first time I ever made a mix tape. Everything about it was right: the delight of finding new music and trying to take it all in, the very real awareness, and not implied, of bootlegging because of the restrictions back home, the heightened sense of needing to achieve perfection because of the scarcity of cassette tapes, necessitating the need to sacrifice an existing one. It was exhilarating and challenging and I was hooked.
I've written before about the first time I ever made a mix tape. Everything about it was right: the delight of finding new music and trying to take it all in, the very real awareness, and not implied, of bootlegging because of the restrictions back home, the heightened sense of needing to achieve perfection because of the scarcity of cassette tapes, necessitating the need to sacrifice an existing one. It was exhilarating and challenging and I was hooked.
***
"The mix tape is a list of quotations, a poetic form, in fact: the cento is a poem made up of lines pulled from other poems. The new poet collects and remixes. Similarly an operation of taste, it is also cousin to the curious passion of the obsessive collector. Unable to express himself in 'pure' art, the collector finds himself in obsessive acquisition. Collecting is strangely hot and cold, passionate and calculating."
- Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture; Matias Viegener (edited by Thurston Moore)
I started listening differently to music after that first mix tape. Always, somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a separate train of thought that listened to, and appraised, music--especially songs--separate of its own merit and as part of a bigger possibility. I'd now subconsciously start to cross reference artists and their songs for their compatibility, for their divisiveness. It was as if I was hosting different parties of songs and trying to decide who to invite, based on the party's theme: a quiet Sunday dinner? A rambunctious cocktail party? Candlelit small tables by the river? Who could come? Who would come? How would they be seated? And how would the party turn out?
"The mix tape is a list of quotations, a poetic form, in fact: the cento is a poem made up of lines pulled from other poems. The new poet collects and remixes. Similarly an operation of taste, it is also cousin to the curious passion of the obsessive collector. Unable to express himself in 'pure' art, the collector finds himself in obsessive acquisition. Collecting is strangely hot and cold, passionate and calculating."
- Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture; Matias Viegener (edited by Thurston Moore)
I started listening differently to music after that first mix tape. Always, somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a separate train of thought that listened to, and appraised, music--especially songs--separate of its own merit and as part of a bigger possibility. I'd now subconsciously start to cross reference artists and their songs for their compatibility, for their divisiveness. It was as if I was hosting different parties of songs and trying to decide who to invite, based on the party's theme: a quiet Sunday dinner? A rambunctious cocktail party? Candlelit small tables by the river? Who could come? Who would come? How would they be seated? And how would the party turn out?
***
"To me, 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."
- High Fidelity; Nick Hornby
I adhere to some of the better known rules of the game, and I have some of my own, which have seen changes over the years. (Up until a few years ago, every single mix I ever made contained a Queen song. Somewhere along the way, it became an either/or situation with songs by Elliott Smith. This year? I tried to do neither and see where that would take me.) I don't slice and dice the choices very much, though; for me, a mix happens or it doesn't. Similarly, I almost never listen to a mix all the way through, even in sample mode (i.e. playing the beginning or end snippet of a song to see how it flows). Maybe because that first mix was made for me, and not someone else, I've always continued to feel that way, even when I have a definite theme or person in mind. I still like to be a little surprised by my own creation.
***
"I do recognize that not everyone feels as bound by the implicit playlist-exchange code of conduct as I do. That's why the code is probably implicit only to me.
She must not understand. Greater even than my desire for her to consider me [...] is my desire--no, my need--to hear, in great detail, her every single thought about each single song, each artist, each lyric: Which songs did she like, and why? Which ones has she listened to most and which ones does she find herself skipping over automatically? The order of the songs, did she notice the flow? Admire the transitions? Feel my beating heart inserted into each track?
Or am I asking too much?"
- Naomi And Ely's No Kiss List; Rachel Cohen & David Levithan
My speciality is personal themes--that is, any theme but always, somewhere in the back, there is a 'someone' in mind. Even when doing large mix exchanges, there is still that sense of sending it to someone. Mostly because I think a person's music choices, and then especially a mix, is a calling card of sorts. An invitation, however subtle, to take a little peek into them. Of course, when you issue an invitation like that, you're not content with someone just stopping by, spending a little while, and then moving on without a word. You want some sort of guarantee that you didn't just waste your time entertaining them at your very own, personal expense.
- Naomi And Ely's No Kiss List; Rachel Cohen & David Levithan
My speciality is personal themes--that is, any theme but always, somewhere in the back, there is a 'someone' in mind. Even when doing large mix exchanges, there is still that sense of sending it to someone. Mostly because I think a person's music choices, and then especially a mix, is a calling card of sorts. An invitation, however subtle, to take a little peek into them. Of course, when you issue an invitation like that, you're not content with someone just stopping by, spending a little while, and then moving on without a word. You want some sort of guarantee that you didn't just waste your time entertaining them at your very own, personal expense.
So you wait. You hope. And when you hear back, you mostly feign nonchalance and pretend to almost miss it, to preserve some sense of dignity. Because sometimes you won't hear back.
There are rules, you see.
***
"I thought you had a rule never to use the same song twice."
"Not if the mix has a completely different theme and recipient."
- Memories Of A Teenage Amnesiac; Gabrielle Zevin
I noticed over the last few months a reluctance in me to finish a lot of the mixes I'd started. Usually, I am good for one or two every couple of months; the past 12 months, quota fell far shorter of that. It seemed that every time I'd decide on a song or a certain arrangement or theme, I'd get a sense of deja vu. It took a while (I'm not always quick on the uptake for everything!) to realize that this space had become, in my mind, a little mix project of its own, albeit with a lack of [deliberate] desire to share. Even so, and despite the little to no feedback solicitation, I couldn't easily shake a sense of been there, done that. It seemed too much of a challenge to have different perspectives for the same view.
Too much of a challenge. I'm hooked again.
***
This mix came about in the best way possible: prompted by another mix, some late night exchanges, and reactions to events in a very particular point in time. When it's effortless, that's the best.
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