Variety Tapes

This is a variety tape that dates back to the eighties–the height of the mixtape era. What a strange bunch of songs to put together. Very classic mixtape construction from me on the B-side, but the A side is very off-balance.  Hip Hop and very hard Industrial rock will do that to your mix. The easiest solution is to avoid these hard-to-mix songs entirely–which I usually did.  I made this in September of ‘88. I was working at Montgomery Ward and had very little money to blow on records. I don’t think I had taken the CD plunge at this point. I’m sure of it, in fact. The CD era came slightly after this. I was still living on Lincoln and Diversey in Chicago. Most of these records were purchased at WaxTrax which was a few blocks down the street.  I still like most of these songs. I used the classic ‘fade out trick’ at the end of this tape of picking an instrumental (from The Style Council’s underrated piano heavy album of the same year). It was a function of my desire to fill every inch of recordable material with music.

WNYC New York Soundcheck does a show about the lost art of the mixtape.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/4256/cassette-tape-closet-by-patrick-schuur.html

A new movie is about making mixtapes! 

And it doesn’t totally stink.  Discussion anyone?

Check out the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NickAndNorahMovie

Great stuff on muxtape.com about their battle with the Recording Industry. Must read for mixtape fans.

http://muxtape.com/

NPR All Songs Considered did a nice story about Apple’s New iTunes 8 ‘Genius’ feature. It sort of makes a mix tape for you on the fly that uses some Pandora-like AI to guide the making of the ‘mix’.  I’ve been playing with it for the last week or so and I have to say it’s quite good. It’s especially nice on the iPod for setting a mood. And the promise is that it will get ’smarter’ as more data is gathered from the cloud. Exciting stuff. Also, check out the mix-like offerings on this very fine site. Good stuff all around.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2008/09/itunes_genius.html

WNYC New York had a story about a classical artist inspired by mixtapes today. And this archived show from June of this year is a great story about the art of the mix.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2008/09/17/segments/109129

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2008/06/19/segments/100830

http://www.myspace.com/channelv

I look forward to playing around with this new ‘analog’ player.

Post your mixes here and let’s share!

Here’s a story about it in ADWEEK:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i68343da3c822c824d2dbbd74ed268c24