rememberings
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.
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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.
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 ?
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.