My Gen-X Files – The Mix Tape

Between 1987 and 1999 I made 230 mix tapes.

            It started with a good title.  Something specifically tailored to the recipient.  Maybe I heard a song or two and it reminded me of the person; maybe it was their birthday.  I’d usually have a pack of empty cassettes, the nicest ones I could get my hands on.  I’d need to write out 20 songs minimum. If I couldn’t get to 20 songs they might be interested in, I put it off.  Most 90-minute cassettes gave to room for close to 30 songs.  28 most likely.  If I got 20 planned out, I could arrange them and fill in the blanks as I went.

            I didn’t do samplers.  A sampler is a collection of stuff that the creator is listening to and creates a full mix with multiple tracks from the same artist.  I liked getting those sometimes, but I only made them upon request. The songs for my tapes had to be chosen with the person in mind.  Hopefully I had an idea of their style.  I made sure there were sure-fire tracks in there.  These would be songs I already knew they liked, or from musicians whose recordings they already owned.  The rest of the choices would complement those. I liked to throw in a wild card or two, usually a Beastie Boys song, maybe a deep cut from a familiar band.  After that, I had a bunch of comedy bits, TV themes, personal recordings or messages, movie clips or whatever bullshit I thought would be fun.  After a few years, I had quite the collection.

            I’d need about 2 hours for a 90-minute mix tape.  That is of course, after they invented the speed dubbing feature, which recording from tape to tape at twice the speed.  However, once CDs caught on, it went back to the days of vinyl, where a 6- minute song took 6 minutes to record.  I’d always include a track list.  You can’t give somebody a mystery tape.  That’s not how I did things.  Then, of course, the title of the tape.  That was everything.

             I wish I could explain how much I love naming things.  I mean, I already wrote a post about it, but for years, I had lists of them going in notebooks and in my head.  I don’t know why, but I do.  I still do.  That habit has transferred over to fantasy football and in some of my novel writing.  It gives me so much joy to perfectly nail it.

            Here’s the most important part of making a mix tape.  I made my track list, my title, I sat through the record while a movie or a TV show was on in the background.  As carefully and as legibly as I could, I would write out the track on the cassette insert and the spine and I’d apply the labels on both sides of the tape.  (The sides would get named, too.)  But no matter how perfectly I arranged it, no matter how cool the title would be, to truly be a mix tape I would have to give it away.

            “Hey, I made this for you.”

            “Happy birthday, here’s a thing.”

            “I owed you one.  You gave me one last month.”

            You can’t do that shit with a playlist.  It’s not a physical thing.  It’s not personalized with your own handwriting or artwork.  It’s not edited to the half-second with audio bits from Tommy Boy. It doesn’t have my voice on it, saying dumb shit I’d probably like to erase.

            When receiving a tape, I believed in an etiquette. You would say your thank-you’s, and then you listened to it as soon as possible.  Y0u gave every tape, no matter if it was a hit or a miss, at least one full listen. I have the same process with a friend’s band’s recording.  They’re worth your attention, at least one time, even if it is a Jimmy Buffett cover band. (Yoiks.)

            Are you wondering how I knew I made 230 mix tapes in a 12 year-span? Seems oddly specific, right?  It should come as no surprise that I kept track of them.  I wrote down every single one I made, and for some reason, the month and year.  Why?  Another mystery.

            My mix tape career ended the same time a lot of things ended: when the internet came around.  I was also older and I wasn’t collecting music as much.  I rode into the sunset until 2005 or so, making Kid-Friendly mix CDs for my little ones.  (I’ll be completely honest.  It never occurred to me to play kids music for my kids. No ‘Old McDonald’ or something out of Nick Jr. I just got them started on the Beatles and that was that.)

            It’s all playlists now.  Your mix contains every song ever recorded. (This feels a little more like a post about me rather than a Gen X blast from the past.  They all end up that way, sooner or later.) I still have the occasional idea for a mix for someone, maybe a title or a theme.  No one has tape players anymore, let alone a CD player.  I have access to so much I could never get my hands on before, and that is cool.  It’s just not as personal. We did lose a little something about music there. It’s tough to make it feel like mine.

  Here is the yellowing, tattered pages of my list of mix tape titles: