With all due respect to former boyfriend G., one of whose mixes once made it impossible for me to listen to Prince’s “When You Were Mine” without feeling absolutely gutted (which, to be fair, is how one should feel when listening to it), but my favorite mixtape was from college boyfriend Ross, given to me a few months after graduation and we had broken up. There was a good mix of old soul and new pop on there (“Hey Ya!” opened side two—it was quite literally a tape!), sad boys (Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” and Bob Dylan’s “Fourth Time Around”), and singer-songwriters who would become favorites (Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “I Send My Love To You” and “Sinaloan Milk Snake Song” by The Mountain Goats). Ross named the mix “Variations On A Theme.” If he was in love with me, I was ignoring that pretty willfully. One of my favorite entries is the very first track, a recording of the poem “” by W.S. Merwin, which ends, “On the door it says what to do to survive / But we were not born to survive / Only to live.” Please know that the gap between Merwin saying, “Only to live,” and the opening guitar strum of the following song, the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man,” is perfect. It makes Merwin’s recitation sound mythical, like an incantation. What to do to survive? Nothing. But here’s a bunch of music to making living a little easier.
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“Hey, thanks for the mixtape. Why are they all break-up songs?”
I grew up in the hey-day of mixtapes, but my favorite one is later, from 2009. A friend of mine who usually does pretty bassy/shuffly or avante gard electronic music did a mix of party bangers (available here) but still very bassy/shuffly.There are songs from MIA, Basement Jaxx (a Stanton Warriors remix, the best kind), Sunship (shoutout my UK Garage phase!), an absolutely bonkers mix into “Push it” (yeah, the one you know) and “Bring the Nose” (same)… and ends with a bonkers Christina Agulerra remix. My favorite song on it though is a Baltimore Club track Id never heard before that has become my total theme music. Here’s a RZA song that captures kind of the flavor.
I’ve received one mixtape, and it was nothing but Aimee Mann’s “Stupid Thing” on repeat. I took it as proof I’d improved the musical taste of the person who made it.
If you’ve ever been into the Trance Music scene, Paul Oakenfold’s 1994 Goa Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 became a huge thing within the 90’s electronic/EDM mixtape community. It has everything but classic Trance to Psychedelic Trance and even early Drum and Bass.However, there was one 2006 live radio session by Mary Anne Hobbs who introduced the entire British radio-listening community to Dubstep music. BBC Radio 1’s Dubstep Warz resulted in the popularity of pretty much one of the most popular electronic music genres around, bringing the genre out of the niches of UK Garage and House Music and into its own mainstream thing:
I mean you say “the entire British radio-listening community” but u was probably listening to BBC Radio 2. :/
I make (or used to make) amazing mixtapes, and I miss using cassettes to create them. I’d include all kinds of sound clips and snippets in between songs, and these days, I’ve gone so far as to find those same snippets on digital media so I can recreate my old mixes and put them into Google Play Music. It’s weird thinking back to when I’d have to work the play and pause buttons just right to get what I wanted, and now it’s just a matter of drag and drop on my screen.Creating playlists on Spotify and the like is still fun, but it’s not the same. It’s too easy. It’s great when you find a run of songs that work together, but there’s no equivalent to recording them by hand, with the physical media actually spinning and whirring on the machinery in front of you. I appreciate modern technology a lot. I just miss being able to watch it working.
Same. I used to spend hours making mix tapes for people, and I really miss the effort I’d put in to it.The only consistent things on my mixes wereat least one NoMeansNo song, and 1 cartoon song (yakko’s world, Gummi Bears theme, etc.) Everything else was fair game, and I always nailed it…Now, I don’t even nail my wife….hi-yo!
NoMeansNo! Great choice. I went through a phase where Rancid’s ‘Crane Fist’ was on every damn mix I made. Blastin’ lyrics of elastic!
Dancing here and there and everywhere! Definitely showed up on one of mine, then got relegated to shuffle mixes that got played in the kitchen at work.
Not to pick the nit, but it’s “bouncing here and there and everywhere”, you beautiful person!
Whoops, I knew that!
I used to have a friend, Mixmaster Steve, who put together a yearly CD for us. One year, his offering contained The Negro Problem, late-era Pavement (I’d never really listen to them until then), Fountains of Wayne, and other pop gems. It really changed my life. The bands on that CD are still some of my favorites.If you’re out there, Steve – Thanks a million!
Tift Merritt – Mixtape
When I first got to college, a friend of mine was really into the Beatles. Now, my mom had been one of those screaming 14 year-old fans way back in the day, but I was pretty ignorant of their oeuvre. This friend made me a mixtape of all her favorite Beatles songs, including a lot of the more obscure ones (Baby’s in Black, I’ve Just Seen a Face, Michelle, Get Back etc), and had scattered chunks of dialogue from the movie A Hard Day’s Night into it. It was a cassette, and I think I must have left it in a car stereo at some point and never got it back, and it still makes me sad.
I used to work in a shampoo and aerosol factory on the night shift, back in the late 90’s in the north of England. I met a ton of interesting folks there but one particularly cool guy was called Stewart. He was a few years older than myself, into literally all kinds of music, and was pretty much the only person I knew with a) the internet and b) a PC capable of burning CDs. I used to give him blank CDs and he’d return them full of whatever songs. Which is how I got into The Jesus and Mary Chain, ‘the Scottish Sonic Youth’ Urusei Yatsura, industrial remixes of Bjork, and god knows what else.
Must be a white suburb thing
…nah
i don’t think i ever got a true mix tape from someone. but in fifth grade someone dubbed a copy of ‘appetite for destruction’ for me (around the time it was released) and it was basically all i listened to for the next few years. i love that record so much.
I was a regular expert at sequencing mix tapes, so probably one I put together for myself.
My future spouse and I exchanged mixtapes early on in our relationship, when we were both still teenagers. The one I made had a lot of Weezer and Radiohead, the Strokes, and some classic rock tracks, I think the Who and Eric Clapton. My spouse’s had Fiona Apple, Ani Difranco, Cat Stevens, Poe, Van Morrison, and Tori Amos.
I don’t listen to much Ani Difranco any more, but I would say my current tastes are a lot closer to the latter mix than the former.
So, there’s a bit of dialogue in High Fidelity wherein Rob is talking about how to make the best mixtape, something about you have to build it up, then reel it in a bit (I’m too lazy to go look it up atm). Anyway, when the film came out I took my then current girlfriend to see it. Bear in mind that at the time I was working in a record store. As we were walking out, she asked me “So, Mr. Music Guy, is that shit about the mix tape true or not?” (we were very much like Rob and Laura, TBH), and of course I said it was and that I’d make her a tape, which I slaved over for like a solid week. Naturally, once she’d listened to said mix, and we’d had sex to it like three times, she told me I had no idea what I was talking about.
It’ll be an even twenty years since we broke up this July.
Then, as a fun gag, she ended the CD with “That Thing You Do” because she knows that it always gets stuck in my head.Hey….how do you sell a chicken to a deaf man?you say HEY! WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A CHICKEN?!I love that movie like I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and I have more than once wanted to start an Oneder’s tribute band.
I got into a car accident when I was living in New Orleans 13ish years ago and was given a loaner while my car was being repaired. It was a new Dodge Charger which was a pretty slick rental at the time. There was a mix cd in the stereo when it was given to me that had 14 tracks of R Kelly’s I’m a Flirt and one track of the Cupid Shuffle. Right then and there I committed I would listen to nothing else while driving that car. It was a hilarious week.
Yes, I too am well practiced in the art of the mix tape, both as general expression of artistic taste and as an instrument for pitching woo. I still make them from time to time, in fact, as I still have the necessary stereo setup; and I listen to them on the same portable tapedeck I’ve had lo these many years.I’ve also received many good ones, and it would be hard to pick out the best. The best ones all came from platonic lady friends, strangely enough – maybe prolonged, low-level frustrated desire is the crucible in which stellar compilations are forged.