My [Partially Borrowed] Theory of the Mix Tape (CD)

I grew up. literally surrounded my music. My mother listened to it while I was in the womb. I've been told I could only sleep next to a blaring speaker--Led Zep, the Who, -anything loud. I've read that the cassette was invented to make sure that you would not have to listen your mother, in any environment, but especially in the car, from the ages of 13 to 15, but it is because of my mother and her music that I am the afficianado I am today.

And really, I thought I was the only person on the planet who devoted so much time to making mix tapes until I discovered the book “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby and read,

"I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter -- there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention . . . 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 h.)

I remember thinking that I had met a soulmate in this author. This is exactly the way I’d thought about my craft. A ridiculous amount of thought goes into every aspect of the mixtape. You have to rearrange the songs time after time until they have the right flow, take out ones that don’t seem to fit even if you really, really wanted to put them on the tape…I mean, there are actually rules. I even found websites dedicated to the rules of the art. However, I think the mixtape is personal, and you can’t really borrow from anyone else’s methods.

Mix tapes for people who are new friends should be a mix of music that they don’t really know but will like. Then they will think you’re cool and listen to your musical advice. Mix tapes for good friends should be like letters written completely in lyrics. Music is a language and mixtapes are fabulous forms of communication. I've always enjoyed making mixtapes for friends. So to steal a line from Nick Hornby himself, “all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when… other people don't like them as much as I do”

If I made you a mix tape (CD), it means that I must love you enough to share my art. For some, it means more. What else can I do but write you a letter in songs? Listen to what the words say. Figure it out.