Ah cassette tapes. As a child born in the early 80s and raised in the 90s, mixtapes were everything. I spent so much time recording songs off the radio, and from other tapes, to ensure I was getting the perfect order of songs for myself and others. It was an art. Everything was handwritten. It was awesome. But it was also a huge pain in the ass! Tapes broke, got tangled, skipping to the next song was not an option, and if you left them in your car in the Miami heat they were toast. But they were great because 30 years later, I still remember their impact.
Author Marc Masters feels the same way which is fun because tapes clearly hold a special place in his music-loving heart. “The cassette tape is revolutionary. It’s small, it’s cheap, it’s easy to use…Tapes can go everywhere you go. They can get lost at the bottom of your backpack. Huge sprawling piles of them can gather on the floor of your car.” He talks like he’s still using tapes but my question is where is he playing them? Don’t get me wrong, I still have mixtapes in an armoire along with all my vinyl and books of CDs. But I don’t have a way to play a tape. I wish I did! I wonder if my old Walkman still works…but I digress.
Masters describes cassettes as “personal, amateur, and subjective” – all of which is true of course – and he’s very into their convenient size and how “the way the case swings on a hinge is like a miniature book.” I never thought about tapes that way! But I do know the main attraction of tapes for me was the ability to put songs by a variety of bands and artists together in any order I desired. When I was making mixtapes I was too young to think about the legality of it all, but Masters points out that cassettes allowed people to copy music which the National Association of Recorded Merchandisers didn’t love for obvious reasons. That being said, “home taping was never actually deemed illegal.” The second most important aspect of the tape is that it was portable and, with the invention of the Walkman, I could bring my music anywhere. It was liberating! My boombox was the center of my room and my Walkman was a staple in my backpack. “The Walkman was revolutionary because it was personal, just like cassette tapes.”
As far as making music, artists could record and share with the masses which was a huge development in the industry. “Offering a cheap, quick way to make, capture, circulate, and share new sounds, the cassette was a crucial conduit for entire scenes, genres, and movements.” Masters then goes into how tapes helped launch hip-hop and metal and how tape trading changed the game. Recording was an art and the actual art on the tape was all part of the promotion. People went to concerts with tape recording devices secured to their bodies so they would be undetected by venue security. Trading those tapes took on a life of its own and creating rare recordings of specific songs and/or entire shows made tapes highly sought-after commodities. “Recording live performances appealed to those fascinated with the continuing story that concerts told, as artists worked out their music in public in real time.” There were even situations where the fan-made tapes became source material for official live albums which is a whole other level.
Another big mixtape fan is Rob Sheffield aka one of my favorite music writers. In 2007, he published a book called Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss One Song at a Time which is a beautifully written, deeply personal, and horribly tragic story about Sheffield losing the love of his life told through his mixtapes. He is quoted in High Bias regarding the power of mixtapes: “I believe that when you’re making a mix, you’re making history…[A mixtape] does a better job of storing memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mixtape tells a story.” No truer words from a great writer, an genuine music fan, and someone who endured unfathomable loss.
Adding to Sheffield’s point, Masters talk about “music as an extension of personality.” So many music fans define themselves by the songs that make them happy, move them, and evoke the kind of emotion impossible to replicate. But he’s also careful not to come off as too much of a fanboy and, like any good writer, acknowledges the opposition by quoting Mojo editor Phil Alexander: “It’s hard to feel nostalgic about cassettes because they were so awful.” He also quotes New York Times writer Rosencrans Baldwin: “As a format for recorded sound, the cassette tape is a terrible piece of technology. It’s a roll of tape in a box. It’s essentially an office supply.” I laughed out loud to myself when I read that!
So the bottom line is this: cassette tapes are clearly antiquated technology but the way they could be personalized will never go out of style. Mixtapes became mix CDs and creating both were a big part of my childhood and high school years. “Giving someone a handmade mixtape is surely more personal than sharing a playlist, whose creation is more akin to data entry.” Hahaha so true. When I finally sold my 13-year-old Subaru a few months ago, and got the new car I’d been wanting for years, the only bummer was losing my CD player. Wookie still has both a tape deck and CD player in his car but eventually when he upgrades, all of those options will sadly be gone. While nostalgia has its place, and so do mixtapes, I am glad to have been part of the cassette-loving generation whose childhood memories will always have that type of soundtrack.
More Quotes:
“As a tool to make music, the cassette tape had become more than just a format. It was now an aesthetic, a category of artistic creation all its own.”
“I can’t imagine ever fully stopping tapes; they are the symbol of the underground.” -Dominick Fernow, Hospital Productions music label
“This was a community operating outside normal channels, using cassettes to circumvent the system.”
“The work of a few individuals can make the difference as far as ensuring a lasting legacy for creative people.” -Peter Gershon, Signal to Noise magazine
“Suddenly you didn’t have to be content just to consume music; you could rearrange it, curate it, mold it to your personality and aesthetic.”
“Mixtape making literally changed the way people interacted with and listened to music.”
“If the tape you were making was meant to be a gift for someone, it took serious focus.” -Adam Horovitz, Beastie Boys
“Mixtapes are literal conversation pieces, audio letters in which the songs could take as words, phrases, paragraphs, or even essays. They can also be timepieces, serving as snapshots, portraits, or even moving pictures.”
“I have not encountered a technology for recorded music whose physics are better suited for fostering the kind of deep and personal relationships people can have to music, and with each other through music.” -Nick Sylvester, Pitchfork
“The cassette’s best qualities – cheapness, accessibility, compactness, user control – are traits that no single format has combined in exactly that way since.”
“It’s hard to make a CD-R not remind you of Staples or OfficeMax. It’s easy to make a tape look awesome…they’re already little machines that come in a million different shell colors with a million textured patterns. Plus, they are in constant danger of being eaten, so they are the bravest of all formats.”
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