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Friday, June 1, 2007

My dirty little secret - I don't do mix tapes

As my last entry waxed romantic on the joys of the mix tape (or at least described someone who does), I should come clean: I've never been a mix tape guy.

I've got plenty of old cassettes lying around the house, containing hundreds of songs that I taped off the radio in the '90s, but I don't consider those true mix tapes, as I did not record those with a specific track listing or mood in mind; I just taped whatever was on the radio.

I could never be a mix tape guy, because sometimes I'm JUST NOT IN THE MOOD for a song that comes on, and I need the ability to skip immediately to the next track. Mix tapes require a level of patience that I shall never possess.

Despite that, I thought it would be fun, as Rob Sheffield does in his book, to analyze one of my old quasi-mix tapes, featuring songs I taped off the radio, circa 1991. I dare say this is a stellar cassette.


Side A:
Good Vibrations, Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch
Broken Arrow, Rod Stewart
The Promise of a New Day, Paula Abdul
Fading Like a Flower (dance version), Roxette
I Can't Wait Another Minute, Hi Five
Love On a Rooftop, Desmond Child
Crazy, Seal

Side B:
Emotions, Mariah Carey
Do Anything, Natural Selection
I Can't Wait, Nu Shooz
Red Red Wine (with rap), UB40
Running Back to You, Vanessa Williams
The Power, Snap

This is one of the few tapes I have that I really can listen to all the way through because it has a lot of happy dance songs, with no filler. "Good Vibrations" is a classic. "Love on a Rooftop" is a little-known song I've always loved - until I just found it on YouTube and realized that it actually sucks. Oh well. Ditto for "Do Anything," except that song still holds up for me.

Obscure YouTube links:
Good Vibrations - Marky Mark
Do Anything - Natural Selection
Love On a Rooftop - Desmond Child
The Promise Of a New Day - Paula Abdul

5 comments:

BeckEye said...

Oh God. First you say that you're not a mix tape fan, and then you admit to being a radio taper? Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrgh!!! That kills me. Did you ever read my post on the mix tape? Well, a little self-promo never hurt anyone: http://thepopeye.blogspot.com/2005/10/all-mixed-up.html

Scott said...

What's wrong with taping from the radio? How else was a teenager with no money in the pre-Internet era supposed to get music?

BeckEye said...

I taped from the radio when I was like, 10. But I soon became a pro. You do the tape-to-tape transfer or album-to-tape. It was a process. But I was anal enough to go through it, counting up all those minutes and planning/re-planning the song selection.

Scott said...

I think we're talking about two different things here. Making a tape-to-tape mixtape requires that one actually owns the original tapes first. When I taped off the radio, it was because I didn't own the songs already and couldn't afford to go buy them. It was my only method of music acquisition.

I appreciate the effort that went into your mixtapes... being that I'm also quite anal about that kind of thing, it's amazing I never got into mixtapes...

But the reason I didn't is that I did something else - I made my own top 20 countdowns. Each weekend, I'd tape myself counting down my favorite songs of the week, just like Casey Kasem.

Those were good times... I think I'm going to blog about my countdown-creating days sometime.

Dale said...

You need to look into mix cds and screw the tape part. :-)