wingolog

rememberings

22 October 2009 8:38 PM (music | belle and sebastian)

Incredible. I got a copy of "The Boy With the Arab Strap" this evening, and I smell things from 10+ years ago -- early fall flowers and grass, thousands of miles away, even as it rained and rained here today, all grey day long.

I used to be "that guy". You know, the guy you copied tapes from.

In Namibia, when I was in the Peace Corps, we traded tapes a lot. In the fall of 2003 a new group arrived, and one of the girls in it was really cute. We might have been a thing. I engaged in mating rituals -- that is, "I'll send you a mix tape". And then she laughed!

Apparently somewhere in 2003 things changed. Indeed when I got back in winter 2004, it was all about the Ipod contraption, mp3s, and some mix CDs.

But everyone who knew it, knows it: a mix CD does not a mix tape make.

4 responses

  1. wingo says:
    22 October 2009 9:04 PM

    I see from the logs someone is trying to reply. I think my blog software might have a bug; if you fail to reply, please send me mail (wingo pobox com) with the text of your reply. Thanks.

  2. iain says:
    23 October 2009 0:21 AM

    Making mix CDs is so much easier, there was something nice about sitting with a tape deck and a CD player and spending a couple of hours putting a mixtape together, even trying to get fancy and crossfade the tracks.

    Yeah, everyone knows there's no time involved in making a mixCD. All you can do now is try to make a nice cover, but even thats been reduced to searching on flickr and printing, no more card, scissors and glue.

    One more craft goes phooey.

  3. Thomas Vander Stichele says:
    23 October 2009 6:53 PM

    My mind is cooking up a 'trumps' cd for a friend who likes songs with trumpets.

    I miss the days I was part of mixtape circles around the world.

    A feature in my future music player (hah) is to burn crossfaded mix cd's. I'm not sure if that's a great or bad idea. Computers don't do tapes anymore. How about we put together a computer that can make mix tapes like in the days of yore ?

  4. Mike says:
    24 October 2009 9:39 AM

    I was having this very conversation with a friend last weekend:

    “Mix tapes were great” I said.
    “They sure were. Oh, I’ll make you a mix cd!”
    “Cool! Oh, wait, I don’t have any optical drives any more. It’ll have to be a mix flash drive.”
    “...”
    “What? Just put a playlist on there with it.”

    Hilarity ensured. I am still waiting for my mix stick though.

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