The Mix Tape

The Mix Tape is legendary in the annals of music.  As soon as people got the ability to copy music they started recording it on the current medium of choice:  tapes, cds, dvds.  Mix tapes have had a myriad of uses including often as a means of seduction.  For me, however, mix tapes/cds provided a way of mobility.  Before the Walkmen, or iPod, it allowed me to carry my favorite music around with me; primarily in my car.  And when I do share it with people it is more of a means of disseminating great music I have heard and at the same time providing insights into myself without having to articulate it.

I have been doing mix tapes/cds since 1985.  I generally do a bad job of preserving my own copies, and since the early ones were on tape, you do have the degradation issue.  But I was touched to have one friend tell me she still has copies of some of my tapes from nearly 30 years ago.  I did a better job with themes earlier on, but I still do try and find some unifying theme to the music or some theme in my life or the world that I can attach to it.

What triggered my mix tape reflection was Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a movie I watched on DVD a couple of nights ago and it just resonated with me.  The mix cd was not as central to the movie as say the mix tape was in Love is a Mix Tape (a sad book by a music journalist on the mix tapes he made for his wife who died).  But it is the mix tape, and the shared love of music that the protagonists shared, that fueled the love story.  The movie was set in NYC and brought back fond memories of my time there.  Music is such a soundtrack to the Manhattan scene.  The movie had sort of an After Hours development to it as the characters go from one not-so-mainstream NYC landmark to another.

Music is such a huge part of my life.  I must go to about ten concerts a year and that is down from my 1980s heyday.  And my dream one day is to find that someone, somewhere in summertime who shares the same love of music I do.  Maybe someday, someway . . .