Mixtapes

[Waus]

My excellent gf got me a book "The Art of Mixtape Culture" for my birthday. I was a little bummed that I kind of came into music at large when CDs were pretty much taking over and never got to make mixtapes for anyone.

Who got to do that and made crazy cover art or just spread mixes around the world?


(!) "HOME TAPING IS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY" (!)

[kaiser soze]

My friends and I were mixtape masters. We knew how to work the pause and stop buttons like masters, rewinding the tape just a wee bit to minimize pauses and getting a slight "mix effect".

We also fucked around with our answering machine tapes for that psychedelic telephone experience.

My one friend made the ultimate Beastie mix by breaking up the songs...it was fucking awesome. The best break being in Sabotage before the bass solo ( I tossed in Little Birdy from Ween ).

We'd add little blurds from cartoons, our favorite movies, spoken word, radio commercials...trippy like Negativland

I miss those days, many of the tapes have fallen ill from overplaying, hot car interiors, or old age.

We've all pretty much graduated to turntables or editing software...but haven't made any "mix tape" exchanges in a lOoOoOong time.

[Kid Presentable]

Big on the mixtape, right up til 2001, when it then became apparent it would no longer do.

I could tell many pointless stories, or just say that when Check Your Head came out, I was inspired to make the least matched songs flow in the best mix possible. And I'd throw spoken word snippets in all over them, taken from motivational tapes and children's stories on cassette and such.

[abcdefz]

I used to make mix tapes all the time. There really is an art to it.

I also had a friend that I used to make tapes with. I'd haul a bunch of albums over or he'd haul a bunch of albums over and we'd take turns,
sort of responding to each other's songs. Or we'd do stuff much like that music tag thread -- your next song had to share at least one word
of the title of the previous song. Or we'd do an alphabetical tape, or whatever. All colors, etc. Mix in dialogue from movies and stuff.

Very good times.

One of the best tapes I ever made was for a party my roommate and I were throwing. The Irresistible Dance Tape. The goal was to get
people on their feet from the very first song, then make each subsequent song so danceable that it'd keep 'em going for 45 minutes. Mild
success -- some folks just weren't dancers. But it started with "Let's Go Crazy," I remember, because people knew that song, and that
spoken intro kind of gave people a little bit of notice that we were getting started. The song that had the most people going, though,
was "Traveling Band." Guys could kind of thrash around to that one, and I think the coke had kicked in by then, too. :D

[Kid Presentable]

While it's no doubt a great book, and your girl is probably great, it's fucking tragic to me that mixtapes are the new book-fodder.

[abcdefz]

Did High Fidelity start that?

[Kid Presentable]

I fucking hate high fidelity and all of its shitty characterisations. High Fidelity can eat a dick.

My first mixtape was all music from my mother's collection. Eagles, Dionne Warwick and a bunch of other crap (Addicted to Love, what?). If she died, I'd love to still have it.

[Drederick Tatum]

as a kid me and my brother used to put together mixtapes, but in the style of a radio show with voice breaks and shit. we didn't have mics so we stuck a pair of earphones in the crappy mic jack and for some reason we could record sound that way.

has anyone else done this? thinking about it was pretty strange to be talking into one of those little earpieces and it recording.

[Gareth]

"when i didnt have a mic i rapped on headphones"
not me, but charizma of charizma/pb wolf fame

[Lyman Zerga]

as a kid me and my brother used to put together mixtapes, but in the style of a radio show with voice breaks and shit. we didn't have mics so we stuck a pair of earphones in the crappy mic jack and for some reason we could record sound that way.

has anyone else done this? thinking about it was pretty strange to be talking into one of those little earpieces and it recording.

it did that with my sister but without the earphones part