Jan 12 2007
I Made You a Mix Tape (Pic of the Week)
This is my feeble attempt to make my picture match the topic of my post. The young lady who wrote this had finally decided we were meant to date, not just be friends, on the same night I had given up on her. What was my gift to her? A mix tape. Her gift confirmed my worry that she was too religious for me, which back then was saying something.
When her contempt for the mix tape and all it represents became clear, I knew I had made the right decision, religion or no.
My laptop’s CD burner whirs windily as it optically etches 22 songs onto a small silver platter. One hand backspaces to correct a typo as the other reaches into my Rubbermaid container for another baby carrot.
Happily munching the carrot, I think this puts mix tapes to shame. No, I know it does.
I remember what it took to create a custom cassette tape mix. My first stereo that I called my own was a GPX table-top model with a turntable on top of a cassette deck and tuner. I was recording Buckner and Garcia’s “Pac-Man Fever” off my record before most people knew what it was. When I wanted to capture tunes I didn’t have on an album, I sat with the radio tuned to my favorite station, hoping fruitlessly that the DJ would announce the next few songs he or she was about to play.
Telltale intro music from Santana’s “I’m Winning,” starts. I depress the record button. The fat-mouthed DJ starts talking. “Yeah, my head hurts, my feet stink, and I think I’m gonna play some Santana.” I let the recording continue because I want that song, and sitting in front of the radio waiting is not my idea of fun.
That was the version of “I’m Winning” that I listened to for years after that. I will forever associate that song with the DJ’s imbecilic remarks. Several other songs are the same way. Those annoying DJ’s had a guide telling them exactly how long they could talk before the vocals started.
And it drove me bonkers.
I want to hear the whole song. Sometimes the first 15 seconds are the best part, and I didn’t need a DJ interrupting that, not to mention perpetuating the myth that the lead singer is the most important part of a band.
Later, I had the fancy, dual-deck boombox (I think we called it a jambox, or, a ghettoblaster). I could record songs from tape to tape, and with a new feature called hi-speed dubbing. I rarely used it, however, because on my deck it dulled the highs, and even at age 12 I was a bit of an audiophile.
I was making mixes for myself, for friends. Some of them brought over a stack of tapes and we spent all night choosing songs to make the perfect mix. Often they just wanted to grab some of the songs I had recorded from radio.
Later, I made mix tapes from CD’s. In college, that got me in a bit of trouble with a young lady I had been dating. On Valentine’s Day that year, I took her to an event called “The Love Banquet,” put on by all the guys at one of the on-campus ministry organizations. It was to honor women. We had things going in our kitchen and that of one of our counterpart organizations on the same block. Walkie-talkies blaring, we coordinated the cooking like we knew what we were doing.
Doesn’t take much actual culinary skill when you’re heating up a bunch of frozen Chicken Kiev.
Oh yeah, the mix tape and the girl. So, after the dinner (we serenaded the women with a few songs), I rushed her to her dorm. “I felt like you wanted to be somewhere else tonight,” she said.
“What?”
Sure enough, I had a date lined up with another girl the same night, and she and I hit it off. I told the Love Banquet girl about it in the car one day, and she was not happy. She cried and said I confirmed her suspicions, and that part of my Valentine’s Day gift to her was “just some old mix tape you didn’t want anymore.”
That hurt. Sure, I wasn’t all that crazy about Amy Grant, but I knew she enjoyed it. I had put at least two hours into creating it. It was obvious to me, after seeing how little she understood the personal sacrifice involved in choosing and recording the songs, not to mention rewinding to get rid of that beginning blurb of the next song you accidentally caught while taking a little longer than expected in the bathroom, that I had made the right decision. (I’m still using the photo album she graced with scripture before giving it to me. I wonder if she’s still listening to that tape?)
I dated that second Valentine’s girl about a year and a half, by the way, and six months after her (in January 1992) I met the woman with whom I’ll celebrate our 15th anniversary this summer.
Maybe because I never gave her a mix tape (or did I?).
She made one for me, though, and we still have it. I won’t say her high regard for the mix tape was the reason I married her, but it was one quality among many that went in the “pros” list.
I can’t describe the wonder I felt the first time I created my own mix CD. Copying without quality loss. No more tape hiss. Should I use Dolby Noise Reduction, or not? Type B or Type C. Metal tape position, or standard? All those decisions were out the window and I could concentrate all my energy on the music.
More recently, I copied my mix CD called “’80’s Soul” for a local friend about my age, with exactly the same songs I recorded from a soul station in Little Rock in 1982. The difference this time was that no DJ’s were talking over the beginning or the end of songs. I didn’t have to sit there, real-time, waiting to hit record or stop.
As I sit here deciding where to bite my homemade turkey and provolone sandwich, my CD-ROM auto-ejects and waits for me to put in the next blank. I swap discs and click Continue to burn the third copy of a mix CD I created solely to share music with three people I’ve never met face-to-face.
That brings me to the wonder of the Internet, but this post is about mix tapes.
At least, it started out that way. Have a nice weekend.
You can tell I’m older than you…. I used to make 8-Tracks!!
My dad had a part time job working in a high end audio store, and the boss gave him one to use for a while.
My brother and I bought a case of blank tapes, and charged our friends $5 for each copied tape (yes, I’m a scofflaw).
That was a LONG…. time ago! *chuckle*
Have a great weekend bud..
Don’t feel old Dave, I also was the neighborhood 8-track recording guru, thanks to my older brother having a lot of money. Much like today though, if the person provided the recording media I did it for free.
I eventually moved on to a Phillips reel to reel, then cassettes and finally CD’s just last year. There are still songs today that I listen to on CD and expect the skip or pop from my first mix tape made from the LP.
Don’t tell anyone, but I’m still a closet Amy Grant fan.
I’m not sure why..but even with the new ease of mix cds…I find that I make far fewer of them than I made mix tapes. Maybe it’s becasue I had way more free time in high school to hover over the tape deck, carefully lining up the timing. Or maybe it’s because I don’t need the mix tapes for myself since I have an iPod. But these days, I just don’t make them very often. Which is to say that if any web-type friends of mine SHOULD happen to get a mix cd in return for the mix cd that might be shipped to me…well…they should feel pretty special.
Also, I’m glad you finally clarified what we were looking at up there. It looked like she had scrawled her proverbs on a piece of wood or even worse the back of a door. I would have been a bit freaked out if she had gifted you a proverb graffittied door and even more freaked out that you had KEPT the door all the years!
Wasn’t that Tommy Smith with that Santana prelude? I remember that too, but I’m not sure who it was that said it.
And tell me that every time “American Pie” ends, you don’t have “Magic 105″ being sung by the DJ, ringing in your ears just after the last “this will be the day that I die?”
If you have the audio of your call into the radio station about the trivia question…you should enter that on here. Hilarious stuff…
Dave and Blitz - Oh, we had 8-track players in our house (and my mom’s car), but only my aunt had a recorder. I tried to use it once to record a record, but I already had a cassette recorder by that point, so no reason to try too hard at 8-track.
Blitz - Some of my favorite Beck songs have samples from records, and the hiss and pop somehow seems to enhance the song. Maybe digital perfection in recording and playback has made it all less human somehow. Hmm…
Have you guys heard there’s a new record player that uses a laser as its needle, and will play old-fashioned records?
Moksha-na-na - I don’t make mix CD’s very often, either. My CD player in the car plays MP3 CD’s, so I just drag some folders onto a CD and go.
Charles - Oh, yes, many classic rock songs end with “Magic 105″ in my head.
Funny you should mention that trivia question. I still have the recording, and it’s in my plan. I have another that I was hoping to pair with it, but I can’t find it.
OMG Mark, thanks for this memory. When most of my friends were at football games or bowling or going to the movies with their boyfriends, I was home in my room with an AM/FM radio and a Phillip’s cassette recorder cursing out long-winded DJ’s and poking a pencil eraser in the wheels of the tape to set it to the exact right spot to start recording. And a result of those nights, I can still print smaller and neater than anyone I know, having all the practice of listing all those recorded songs on those tiny lined cards that fit in the cases. I still have most of those tapes, at least the mixes that I didn’t give away. I’ll have to do a post about them one day. Not that any of you youngsters will recognize many song titles, but some are classics. I only wish I’d known to use metal tapes back then.
I’ve been working on a perfect mix cd in my own head these last weeks. There’s way too much great music to narrow down to one cd…
Oh, I hope you don’t mind, Ju and Moonshot and Shannon and I are going to go keep Amy company for the weekend. You and Mokker and Mr. Ju get the kids. Thanks.
Linda - I can’t believe I forgot about sticking the pencil in there to advance the tape past the non-magnetic part. Good call.
I hated when I used 90 minute tapes, because too many songs fit on one side, and I had to write below the fold, so that not all the songs showed on the outside of the case.
If you’re buying the plane ticket, then set it up!
Just dreaming as usual… would be fun tho!
I found my shoebox of tapes, which is all I have left of my collection. I’m seeing stuff like Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, and songs like The Rapper and The Lion Sleeps Tonight… :-)
ps It’s so cool that you still have that Valentine note. Why am I not surprised?
What?! I wasn’t the only one using the pencil to set the tape just right on those 90 minute tapes AND cursing the lack of writing space on the cassette liner? Sweet!
I absolutely adore Beck, by the way. He sho’ nuff ain’t no Loser. Soy un perdedor!
I considered it an event when I made a mixed tape from my CDs because I refused to use the high-speed dubbing and wanted to listen as I created. So, with 90 minute tapes, that took up an entire evening what with all the humming and hawing over what went next and which song went last so as to waste the least amount of tape space.
Did you ever listen to ALL the static near the end of a tape with a stop-watch and then curse the fact that half of your collection didn’t have track times on the CD, so you’d then have to listen to half a dozen songs with a stop-watch to make sure the one you picked wouldn’t go over the maximum time?
Or was that just me?
I must have been uber-anal, I can remember actually chosing songs the right length to put on the tape to utilize the utmost recording time. I’m ashamed of this. Don’t tell. Not all the songs, just if I had like 4 minutes and 26 seconds on a tape, I would find a good song that was 4 mins and 25 secs long.
But yes, Simon. Binder Dundat. What a sorry lot we were.
(I’m assuming that Mark probly did it too. Mokker, I don’t think)
Simon and Linda - You kidding me? I would NOT allow blank space to be wasted, and I would NOT allow a song to be cut short or continued on the other side.
Linda - You underestimate my dedication to the dorky arts. While I might not have timed the early songs on a compilation…I was certainly paying very close attention to the seconds by the time I reached the last quarter of the tape. Blank space was to be avoided at all cost and a song cut off or continued on Side B was an abomination!
If it wasn’t so completely and utterly impossible, I would think that the four of us were cultured in the same womb. It’s scary to me sometimes, but I love it. And the times that I don’t fit in, which aren’t that often- like when you’re talking Star Wars crap and shit like that, I think it’s just cause I’m a girl. Or that I’m old. Or that you’re all so much smarter than I am. And handsome and all that. And you have little kids. And you’re married to women. Ok, those are all incidentals… but I think we’re brothers and sisters of different mothers. I already have 4 brothers. If there was ever a question, I could certainly handle the three of you ;-)
Late to the party as usual, but I’m just adding my “amen” to all these comments, and to your post. I too used to sit there, listening to the radio with my finger on the “record” button, and often getting the DJ’s annoying chatter or station music mixed in, either at the beginning or the end. I would get so mad when they cut off the last 30 seconds of the song in order to talk or cut to a commercial.
I very carefully planned out my mix tapes, too, calculating what songs could fit on one side of a 90-minute tape, always being sure to use the Type-II chromium cassettes because they had better sound quality than the Type-I. :-)
And I dated someone for several years with whom I exchanged mixed tapes. Sometimes it was “this is a message I want you to hear,” but more often it was “here’s some good music for you.” And I still have all those tapes he made!
I am now fully smitten with my iPod. Have not gotten around to creating any latter-day mixes (via the playlists) but will do so once I’ve got all the stuff I want imported to it.
Great post! Glad to see all these other mix-nuts (oh yes, I said it) out there, too. :-)