Ode to the mixtape
Where, oh where has my tape collection gone?
TRACEY LINDEMAN THE LINK (CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY)
MONTREAL (CUP) — A lot of my fondest childhood memories revolve around music, and more specifically, the radio. Hot summer days were inextricably linked to listening to Oldies 990, the now-defunct AM band radio station responsible for all of my doo-wop and rockabilly sensibilities. Sitting in the sun, sipping lemonade and listening to the Shangri-Las croon about candy stores and gang fights represented the bulk of my pre-adolescent days.
Them, and Alice Cooper.
I’m pretty sure everyone on my school bus recited “School’s Out” on that fateful day, when we could earnestly sing, “No more pencils/ no more books/no more teachers’ dirty looks.” But I could have just transferred those memories from watching Dazed and Confused one too many times.
Anyway, I began listening to popular (read: current) music on the cusp of the 1980s and 1990s. Because of this, I named my New Kids on the Block doll Axl. Donnie Wahlberg may have had a wholesome appeal, but he certainly didn’t have Axl Rose’s swagger. That’s why Appetite for Destruction remains one of the greatest albums of all time, and no one remembers Hangin’ Tough. Sleaze never dies (especially when it comes to venereal disease).
My first tape ever was Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation, and my second tape was Bon Jovi’s Keep the Faith. Somewhere along the way I picked up No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, and inexplicably, TLC’s CrazySexyCool. You can’t win ’em all, I guess.
I was a fervent MuchMusic fan, usually logging four to five afterschool hours of music video watching daily. I remember the first time I saw Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” videos — they played back to back. 1991-92 was a good year, though I only really started listening to Nirvana a few years after Kurt Cobain died.
Anyway, I suppose it’s fair to say MuchMusic was responsible for exposing me to a diverse catalogue of music, for better or for worse. Sook- Yin Lee, Bill Welychka and Steve Anthony all took their turns pushing the latest hits on my malleable young mind.
This propelled me to listen to the radio with a blank tape in the deck, set to record and pause, so that I could begin recording with the quick release of a button. When I ran out of blank tapes, I would judge the merits of my used tapes and record over those. I regret taping over Keep the Faith to this day.
There weren’t really any Britney Spears of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I suppose all the young girls were enamoured with Salt-N-Pepa, En Vogue, Mariah Carey and TLC.
I know musical trends always rotate — sometimes pop’s on top, and sometimes it’s not — but it seems to me that there was no real overarching genre that dominated the early 1990s. But then again, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention; lost in my Guns N’ Roses reverie. After all, I was just a kid with a tape deck, no money, and an irrevocable love for GNR. I suppose not much has changed since then, except now I have an IPod.
Getting an IPod was a big step for me. You see, I was one of those technologically inept kids — I only got a CD player in 1996, and I got my first computer in 2003. I lugged around a massive Panasonic discman held together with black electrical tape until last winter when I conceded defeat in my technological resistance and bought a friend’s 20 GB IPod.
On one hand, IPods are great for musical opportunists with short attention spans — you can get the hits and forget the rest. But on the other hand, it commodifies the music -listening experience — something that should be more of a pleasure than a chore.
Author Chuck Klosterman bemoans the advent of the compact disc in Fargo Rock City, his 2001 heavy metal manifesto, by that insisting CDs discourage people from listening to albums in their entirety.
Instead, listeners skip tracks so they can get to the hits and kill the filler, an action that also removes the possibility of stumbling across a gem of a song in the rush to get to the Top 40 tune.
In High Fidelity, John Cusack plays Rob Gordon, a man with a passion for making mix tapes for lovers and friends, and discussing acceptable mix tape esthetics. Making mix tapes require so much more effort than making mix CDs — you’ve got to time it properly, fade songs in and out at the appropriate times, and ensure a song doesn’t get cut off at the end of Side A.
On top of that, you’ve got to manually sift through your own music collection to determine what songs you need to include, not just drag and drop from a digital library. You could make a mix CD in a matter of minutes, but a mix tape is a sonic testament of your love for the person on the receiving end. God knows we could all use a few more mix tapes in our lives.
