Mix Tape 
asked by janmueller on November 2, 2006 2:33 PM
Stop. Fast-forward. Pause. Rewind. It has become part of our vocabulary when talking about the momentum of our lives . . . .
Over forty years ago Phillips launched the compact audio cassette at the 1963 Berlin Radio Show and our relationship with music has never been the same. Durable, inexpensive, and portable, the new format was an instant success. By the 1970s, we were voraciously recording music onto blank cassettes. It allowed us to listen to, and, in effect, curate music in a new way. Privately. Mix tapes let us become our own DJs, creating mixes for friends, lovers, and family, for parties and road trips.
Artist and musician Thurston Moore looks back at the plastic gadget that first let us make our own compilations. Over eighty home tapers, including artists, musicians, actors, writers, directors, comediennes, talk show hosts, and, of course, record store employees were invited to tell the stories behind their mixes. From the Romantic Tape, to the Break-up Tape, the Road Trip Tape, to the "Indoctrination" Tape-the art and text that emerged was of the mix cassette as a new way of re-sequencing music to make sense of our most stubbornly inexpressible feelings-a way of explaining ourselves to someone else, or to ourselves.
Over forty years ago Phillips launched the compact audio cassette at the 1963 Berlin Radio Show and our relationship with music has never been the same. Durable, inexpensive, and portable, the new format was an instant success. By the 1970s, we were voraciously recording music onto blank cassettes. It allowed us to listen to, and, in effect, curate music in a new way. Privately. Mix tapes let us become our own DJs, creating mixes for friends, lovers, and family, for parties and road trips.
Artist and musician Thurston Moore looks back at the plastic gadget that first let us make our own compilations. Over eighty home tapers, including artists, musicians, actors, writers, directors, comediennes, talk show hosts, and, of course, record store employees were invited to tell the stories behind their mixes. From the Romantic Tape, to the Break-up Tape, the Road Trip Tape, to the "Indoctrination" Tape-the art and text that emerged was of the mix cassette as a new way of re-sequencing music to make sense of our most stubbornly inexpressible feelings-a way of explaining ourselves to someone else, or to ourselves.
Reviews
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I had really high hopes for this book.
Being one of the last people I know that still makes mix tapes on a regular basis I was excited for that feeling of togetherness and validation that occurs only when you find a network of people "out there" that see something the same way you do. I was distinctly dissapointed. I am a huge fan of Thurston Moore and I will say that his pieces of writing are the only moments of this book worth reading (and they are deffinately worth reading). However, it feels like Moore emailed a bunch of people and asked them to contribute track lists/art work/essays of/on mix tapes they'd made or recieved. More than half of the contributions feel thrown together or hardly considered and many are of mix cds and not tapes at all. I was hoping for a tribute/document of a unique mode of communication between people where the time and effort put in to the TAPE stands as a testament to the intensity of feelings being felt. Instead of buying this book I recomend buying a tape deck and either busting out those old mixes or make new ones of your own. It will be far more satisfying and true to feeling your looking for (but won't find) in this book.
Being one of the last people I know that still makes mix tapes on a regular basis I was excited for that feeling of togetherness and validation that occurs only when you find a network of people "out there" that see something the same way you do. I was distinctly dissapointed. I am a huge fan of Thurston Moore and I will say that his pieces of writing are the only moments of this book worth reading (and they are deffinately worth reading). However, it feels like Moore emailed a bunch of people and asked them to contribute track lists/art work/essays of/on mix tapes they'd made or recieved. More than half of the contributions feel thrown together or hardly considered and many are of mix cds and not tapes at all. I was hoping for a tribute/document of a unique mode of communication between people where the time and effort put in to the TAPE stands as a testament to the intensity of feelings being felt. Instead of buying this book I recomend buying a tape deck and either busting out those old mixes or make new ones of your own. It will be far more satisfying and true to feeling your looking for (but won't find) in this book.
reviewed by casurf on November 5, 2006 3:07 AM
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This neat little curio--along with sections of Hornby's "High Fidelity" [1995]--is a great artifact for those of us old enough to have shared music with friends via the cassette tape. Before mix-CDs, cassette tapes were a great way to hip your friends to new bands or to write a love letter to your latest crush without having to rely on your own bad poetry. Instead, you had to create a track list that would be impressionable on the recipient, and come up with some cool titles for each side of the cassette. Also, the more Scotch tape to make ex-cellent collage-cover-art with, the merrier! You also had to record the tape in real time, and make sure you could fit everything on the 45 minute side without the songs cutting off. This book captures all of that, including brief notes by the people who submitted some of their mix tapes to Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth), editor of the project. There is plenty of cool tape art and great track lists on display here. I like the tape Jim O'Rourke (of everyband, including Sonic Youth, Loose Fur, Gastr del Sol) makes a tape for a female love-interest thats Side One ends with the apocalyptic "Ambulance Blues" by Neil Young. It's these kind of details that make this book so fascinating and fun to flip through. It is an anthropological artifact, documenting the fact that these "unauthorized" tapes, at one point considered threats to the music industry as CDRs and online sharing are now, were really important sentimental, formative and foundational items to many people during the 80s and 90s. Bravo Thurston! Great idea.
reviewed by porsche on November 21, 2006 5:16 PM