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Mixtapes

Creating the perfect mixtape took hours of planning.

First, you’d have to decide what sort of theme you were going for. Just a collection of favourite songs to play in the car was fine, but there were many more speciality areas, of which these are just a few:

Potential New Girlfriend/Boyfriend Mix. Possibly the most important of all mixtapes, a group of songs intended, often through subliminal messages, to persuade a potential partner what a splendid catch you were – witty, well-rounded, thoughtful, and with great taste in music. Song choice would almost always be a blend of your all-time faves (if they don’t like ‘This Must Be the Place’, then they clearly aren’t the one for me) and songs that sort of hinted at the fact that you wanted to get into their pants. You needed to be subtle, but not too subtle. The recipient was to be left in little doubt that you were up for it, but the content would be ambiguous enough that you could deny all if they proved to be less than keen. Countless romances were started in this way. Millions of children walk the earth today because dad chose to place ‘Friday I’m in Love’ by The Cure next to ‘The You and Me Song’ by The Wannadies. Or something like that.

Party Tape. For lazy DJs everywhere. A couple of well-sequenced C90s could ensure even the dullest party had a bit of a buzz about it, and leave the host plenty of time to wander round with canapés instead of mixin’ and scratchin’ at the turntables. This mix would be filled with plenty of uptempo tracks to dance to, a handful of singalong classics, and the obligatory run of three slow songs, timed to come on towards the end of the evening when there was plenty of snogging to be done.

Impress Your Friends. The teenage muso, and those quite a bit older, to be fair, would often share mixes with fellow music-enthusiast schoolmates and friends. These were crucial in securing your position in the social hierarchy, and balance was the key. You needed just enough recognisable-but-not-too-obvious stuff (lesser-known album tracks from popular new-wave bands were ideal) plus some indie anthems (‘God, I love that song, man. Good choice’), topped off with a sprinkling of really obscure songs that no one else would have heard. Even the geekiest nerd could shoot up the popularity charts if word got out that he had some REM demo tracks and that Violent Femmes’ song with the swearing on his last mixtape.

Linked Themes. Mixtapes could take on any theme: Christmas songs, cover versions, driving, tracks to work out to; the list is endless. I was once given a mix where each song title contained a word from the song title before. It was shit.

The Break-up Tape. Sadly, not every tape sent to a potential partner led to love, marriage, and happily-ever-after. The majority of relationships came a cropper, and that would inevitably result in a break-up tape, and no more sorry an example of wallowing in self-pity has ever been witnessed in popular culture. Whether it included ‘All By Myself ’ by Eric Carmen, ‘I Want You’ by Elvis Costello (surely the most heartbreaking song ever?) or ‘Without You’ by Harry Nilsson, they were painful to listen to, on an emotional level at least. Thankfully, most break-up tapes never got sent to the ex and were just played repeatedly in darkened bedrooms to the backdrop of self-indulgent sobs.

Nowadays, of course, mixtapes have been largely replaced by Spotify playlists, iTunes mixes and the habit of burning CDs, but though these represent technological progress, they lack the heart, the soul and the sheer effort of their cassette-based predecessor.

And that is where a mixtape wins every time. If I were to create one for you, I would spend hours, days even, going through my records and CDs to compile the perfect tracklisting, a collection of songs that was just the right balance between stuff I like and stuff I think you would like. This would almost certainly be written down in a spiral-bound notebook, and go through many revisions before it was ready to be recorded.

Running order and sequencing were everything. Some songs naturally work well when placed together on a mixtape; others jar or clash. Tempo changes need to be handled with skill – moving from a piece of thrash metal to some ambient dance might work, but it requires planning, a brave attitude, and a rather diverse record collection.

Once all that was sorted, the physicality of the process would kick in, if that’s not too pompous an expression (I know it is, but it’s my book so I am using it anyway). I would have to arrange all the albums so they were in the right order for recording, taking each one in turn, queuing up the correct track on the turntable or CD player before dropping the stylus or pressing play, and then immediately releasing the PAUSE button on the tape deck. Any slip of the hand or delay and I’d miss the start of the track and have to rewind and start again.

It was something that took a lot of time. The fact that I would spend hours working on a mixtape spoke volumes about my opinion of the recipient. Consequently, a mixtape beats a CD or playlist. It just does.

And I haven’t even mentioned the artwork. Blank tapes came with a liner card, usually on the reverse side of the packaging, with space for you to write the tracklisting. Well, I say space, but there was never enough of it. A small grid might allow you to jot down ‘Stop’ by Sam Brown, but was no use whatsoever if your mixtape included ‘It’s The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ by REM. Consequently, many mixtape compilers customised their covers by either ignoring the lines completely and creating elaborate spidery biro listings or, preferably, by creating their own covers by hand.

Entire books and exhibitions have been dedicated to mixtape art, most notably Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture by Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth (who claims to only listen to music on cassette, although I think he might be fibbing). It was a whole subgenre of creativity, adding even further to the personal nature of the object itself. I once received a pop-up tracklisting from a girlfriend, and though she later dumped me for some tosser in the year above, she retains a small corner of my heart for the effort she put into the mixtape alone.

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