Make me a mix tape, don't leave out Husker Du.
Put something on that the Cars did in 1982.
Put on Duran Duran, Duran Duran U2.
Make me a mix tape that brings me closer to you.
-- The Promise Ring, Mix Tape
The closest I've ever come to understanding curation is making mix tapes. There are probably curators reading this and choking on their canapes at such a comparison, but mix tapes are how I first understood the joy of putting existing things together to make something that was more than the sum of its parts.
The first mix I ever made was in 1991. It was a terrible-quality collection of songs taped over an old Elton John album that I'd dug up from somewhere. I had heard that people made tapes of all their favourite songs so they didn't have to carry a lot of tapes with them all the time. A friend had told me that you just had to put tape over the holes in the spine of an existing cassette and you could put whatever you wanted on it, and having all the money of an eleven-year-old at that point a blank tape from the store was about as accessible as, say, a human kidney. The choice was clear: Rocket Man would have to be sacrificed.
This mix I made had REM and Lou Reed and Tom Petty and the Cowboy Junkies and the Monks and Pink Floyd all these other bands that I probably shouldn't have been listening to at such a young age but captured my imagination and made me want to listen over and over, tracks that I'd borrowed from my brother's collection and taped using his stereo that had high-speed dubbing. The high-speed dubbing made me feel like I knew what I was doing because the knob was big and it made a cool noise. Unfortunately there was a giant KA-CHUNK between each song because I didn't discover the beautiful delicate function of the pause button for cutting between songs until several attempts later.
I loved that tape. I had a walkman and would listen to it on the way to school, rewinding it by putting a pen through the spool and spinning it around to save the batteries. When the batteries began to fade Lou Reed sounded even more maudlin, and when fresh ones were put in he sprang to life again. I had no idea what the rest of these albums sounded like but it didn't matter, they didn't belong with any other songs except the ones on this tape. Side A was good but oh, Side B! Listening to Side A became just a way to get back to you. I'd save Side B for the walk home in the afternoon, all the hardships of school and friends and bullies and life melting away under a private universe I'd made for myself that no one else could hear, six songs per side. Suddenly any money I could get my hands on went to batteries, blank tapes and head phones so I could make another world for myself to walk around in.
Over the years the mix tape evolved into an art that began with a stack of vinyl and CDs, filtering out the crap and boiling everything down to the perfect balance of intro, theme, pace, genres, contrast, and the holy division of Side A and Side B. I made mixes for my friends, for driving, for dancing, for wallowing, for falling asleep, for waking up, for riding the bus, for sunlight, for night time, for spring time. Participated in trades with groups of people, made intricate and extensive liner notes, even one with an accompanying book of essays on each song. (Yes, for a boy. Shut up, I was fourteen. For the record I never worked up the guts to give it to him, which is probably good because then there would be someone, somewhere, that had evidence that I once owned some Def Leppard.)
CDs and the internet changed things: Side A and B were trampled under progress, fused together into a long playlist that involved no fumbling intermission. Around 1998 the internet made everything gloriously easy when source material came not only from your own collection of music but also the collection of everyone else online. The medium changed but the methodology and intent didn't: it was still about sharing, putting things together to eloquently express a theme, and giving away something hand-made and personally sequenced.
Last year I got an iPod. I'm a little ashamed to admit how much I love the iPod. Suddenly an entire *eighty gigs* of music is portable, playlists can be composed and tested and reshuffled while I'm sitting on the train. I can now road test a mix for weeks or months to work out the kinks and make sure it's right. The mix tape medium has evolved and changed a lot - I haven't owned a tape player in almost ten years and I make liners in Photoshop - but some things remain the same: playlists are still 11-15 songs, it's all in the sequencing and the theme, and the first rush I felt at eleven when I made a mix of truly excellent songs has never left or been diminished.
Below are the result of the last six months of mixes. There are liners and playlists - of course, I can't give you the music to download lest the RIAA come to my house with dogs and goons and arrest me for being the worst kind of thief and criminal. I'm probably not allowed to tell you that I fully support you going out and getting these tracks in whatever way you choose; I'm sure saying that is technically supporting free downloading, and we all know that any decent, law-abiding, freedom-loving human being is supposed to be against that sort of thing. After all, Metallica is down to their last seventeen airplanes. Have some fucking decency, you animals.
At any rate, get the tracks, play them in the order below for maximum effect. If you have trouble finding some of the more obscure stuff, email me and I'll sort you out personally.
This section will be expanding until I run out of ideas. If you'd like to trade mixes, I'm absolutely up for it, one hundred percent. Mail, online, playlist trades, I don't care. Just email heyastrid at disastrid dot net and we'll set it up.
April 2008.
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All Of You And All Of Me
01. Glory - Liz Phair
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About A Girl
1. Lola - The Kinks
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Go
1. Glorious - Adorable
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The Fifty Ways
1. 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover - Simon and Garfunkel
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You're A Lover In My Bed And A Gun To My Head
01. Flower - Liz Phair
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Get Up
01. Battleflag - Lo Fidelity All-Stars
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