Ode to an Artifact
I remember about 15 years ago, seeing a piece of artwork wherein a broken cassette tape was portrayed as an anthropological artifact from a long-lost time. Scant years later, that artistic gesture has become a plain fact.
Remember mixed tapes? They're about as rare as hen's teeth these days... but that only adds to the pleasure of receiving one. Like a handwritten letter or a polaroid photo, a mixed tape is a unique token of friendship, now intimately bound up with nostalgia for the recent past.
Any mixed recording from a friend tends to hinge on references to things you've experienced together and stories you've shared. It's an introduction to some tracks you might like, sure, but it's also a reminder of some things you already love. And in every little lyrical twist, there's that lingering excitement about whether it will be a pun on something only you and your mixed tape making friend can understand. That's good, rich stuff, whether on CD, tape, playlist, or whatever.
But on a mixed tape, you can't get away from the quality of the sound. Analog sound. It doesn't just level out the sources, it individualizes them. You can hear the difference between one record and another, between a record and a CD. It's like making a collage out of pictures from different magazines instead of scanning them all and pasting them together in Photoshop. In the event that you recorded from a record, you can hear the needle drop. That puts you right in the room with your friend who made the tape, and that's a good thing.
Plus it can legitimately be said that anything recorded on tape is not the original file all over again. It's a version of it. A personal version, just for you, that degrades with every playing and gradually wears down to nothing from the sheer effort of existing and making music. Like me.
Now, I'm not knocking mixed CDs. Far from it. I love mixed CDs. You may not have to record them in realtime, like you do tapes, but they're still a fine gesture, born of love for music, and the aesthetics of combining and balancing, and genuine goodwill for the lucky recipient. Bring on the mixed CDs, I say!
But at the end of the day, the clincher may be... that only a mixed tape will play in my van. And play, and play, and play....
Remember mixed tapes? They're about as rare as hen's teeth these days... but that only adds to the pleasure of receiving one. Like a handwritten letter or a polaroid photo, a mixed tape is a unique token of friendship, now intimately bound up with nostalgia for the recent past.
Any mixed recording from a friend tends to hinge on references to things you've experienced together and stories you've shared. It's an introduction to some tracks you might like, sure, but it's also a reminder of some things you already love. And in every little lyrical twist, there's that lingering excitement about whether it will be a pun on something only you and your mixed tape making friend can understand. That's good, rich stuff, whether on CD, tape, playlist, or whatever.
But on a mixed tape, you can't get away from the quality of the sound. Analog sound. It doesn't just level out the sources, it individualizes them. You can hear the difference between one record and another, between a record and a CD. It's like making a collage out of pictures from different magazines instead of scanning them all and pasting them together in Photoshop. In the event that you recorded from a record, you can hear the needle drop. That puts you right in the room with your friend who made the tape, and that's a good thing.
Plus it can legitimately be said that anything recorded on tape is not the original file all over again. It's a version of it. A personal version, just for you, that degrades with every playing and gradually wears down to nothing from the sheer effort of existing and making music. Like me.
Now, I'm not knocking mixed CDs. Far from it. I love mixed CDs. You may not have to record them in realtime, like you do tapes, but they're still a fine gesture, born of love for music, and the aesthetics of combining and balancing, and genuine goodwill for the lucky recipient. Bring on the mixed CDs, I say!
But at the end of the day, the clincher may be... that only a mixed tape will play in my van. And play, and play, and play....
posted by David Newland at 25.2.05
2 Comments:
I have a few tapes I can gladly give you....they currently just take up space :(
So, I take it you liked the tape. :)
You've articulated exactly what I love about mixed tapes - making them and receiving them. It's the reason I still prize a mixed tape made more than 10 years ago by someone I barely knew except through an online community. Someone that I soon lost touch with and now have no idea as to their whereabouts. I don't even miss this person per se, but I hold their memory fondly in my heart and have a mixed tape as a souvenir of our unique friendship. I mean, how can you resist a mixed tape that starts off with a clip from Beverly Hills 90210 (from the days before we could easily download .wav files from TV shows off the Internet - this sucker was taped remotely off of a TV speaker - BRILLIANT!) and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? Good times. Good tapes.
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