By Mississippi Smith, who misses the 80s very much….
“A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mind”, but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and…oh, there are loads of rules.” – Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.
Back in the day, before CDs were popular, I loved making mix tapes for friends. The art of waiting for a song to come on the radio so that you could capture it on tape, only to try and eliminate the ads around said song by re-recording on another tape; the painstaking job of trying to decide which song flowed into the next and the satisfaction of listening to the finished product, only to give it to a good friend, made the hours it took to create my masterpieces worth it.
Nowadays, all we have to do in order to hear a song we like is download it off the web. Yes, technology has killed yet another ancient art form by making it too easy to listen to what we want to hear. I think, in order to combat this sort of passivity fostered by iTunes, we need to bring back the lost art of the mix tape by sharing our love of music and dispersing to the masses through this timeless art form. If you really can’t part with modern technology, I’ll allow you put a USB stick in a tape in a cassette case (or, even better, there’s a shop in Parnell that sells Cassette tape shaped USBs), but nevertheless, here’s some sound advice to create the perfect tape, whatever the occasion.
Before we begin though, it occurs to me that some of you lovely student weren’t even born in the 80s. You may not know what a cassette tape even is, or was. This makes me feel really old. For future reference, here is a picture of a cassette:
Your reaction will probably be like mine whenever I see a gramophone (or a fax machine, for that matter): Holy crap. How does it even work? Well, it’s a little like a VHS (you remember those? Before we had DVD?) but smaller. Wikipedia tells me that the Cassette tape:
“… consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetically coated plastic tape is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second pair when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement (“auto-reverse”).”
Yeah. Let’s go with that. Now, onto the fun stuff: Making a tape!
1) Pick a theme
What are you trying to achieve here? Is it a nostalgia tape for your high school pals, reminiscing about those songs that you liked waaaaay back in ’98 (or ’08, even)? Is it a tape to your boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other, documenting the soundtrack to your love? Is it a post break up tape, with the songs making their ways through the emotional scale from overwhelmingly sad to unbelievably happy? Any self respecting mix tape needs a theme that you need to commit to. I got into the habit of making close friends mix tapes for their 21sts as I found that my money was dwindling from buying elaborate gifts during birthday season and, funnily enough, people loved them! When executed well, no-one will ever deny the power of the mix-tape.
2) Find the perfect opening song…
…especially if you’re trying to design a tape to pick up your dream date, because if the opening track is shithouse, chances are the person you’re making it for won’t listen past this poignant outpouring of emotion. How you start it is up to you: will you win them over with charm, humour or sap? I’d advise to stay clear of the following: boy bands (unless they’re presented with a dash of irony); any epic Whitney Houston song (as amazing a song as “I will Always Love You” is, I’d nestle her safely in the middle of the tape) and anything with an overly possessive title (ANY cover of “You belong to me” or songs with titles like Natasha Bedingfield’s “I wanna have your babies”) are definite no-nos.
3) Do NOT use My Heart Will Go On as a way of wooing someone. Ever. It’s not even an 80s song, anyway.
DO NOT use this on a mix tape. I don’t want to know what you get up to every night in your dreams. You’re not Jack. You’re certainly not Rose. Your friend/ esteemed family member /loved one will most certainly let you go if they hear this blasting from their stereo. Don’t even play this track when you’re home alone. Inevitably someone will hear you and perhaps report you to the Good Taste Police. That is all.
4) Some songs get little too straight to the point …
There are some songs out there that you don’t even have to listen to in order to get the gist of what they’re trying to tell them. Songs like 90s classic Horny, The Eagles’ Desperado and Afroman’s esteemed hit Because I got High are ever so slightly too …uh, forward. Try something a little wittier, like Bon Jovi’s You give love a bad name or, everyone’s perennial favourite, Westlife’s Flying Without Wings (Get it? Get it? Oh. I thought it was clever anyway…)
5) Try not to cut any song off midway
I know it starts to get a little stressful as the tape comes to an end, but try and time the “last song” to the length of the tape available. If there’s no decent song, try and find some instrumental ‘outro’ music to fill the gap. Nobody wants white noise to spoil a beautifully crafted tape. It’s like having a delicious picnic on a beach, only to have your last piece of fish stolen by a crafty seagull. Well played, metaphorical seagull. Well played.
There we have it. Go forth and mix those tapes. But be careful, my 80s children; for as Spiderman’s Uncle Ben says: “with great power comes great responsibility”.