The death of the mix tape

OK, time to date myself here.

Who remembers making mix tapes? Sitting on the floor, surrounded by LPs and cassettes, reading lyrics and song times, cuing stuff up, trying to get the breaks between songs just right, striving for the last song on a side to end just before the tape ran out - not too long before and not after?

Well, I think that art form is dead. I made SHG a CD for his birthday using iTunes, and it just did not have the same feel. And when done I did not have the same sense of monumental achievement holding the coveted cassette in my hand, wondering if I should copy it since so much effort went into it: if the CD dies, just burn a new one. Granted, I can easily listen to the play list on my machine, make my own copy, and rearrange it as I see fit.

But, here's how to be a die hard about it: Buy an audio CD burner for your home stereo. I actually have one I bought before I had a computer that could cope with a burner (well, I was running Windows NT at that time, and we all know how flexible that OS was). I love it - you get the experience of making the tape but CD quality. You have to buy special audio CDs for it, but hey, small price. This does not mean I am not going to put all my music on my computer, but I will keep the CDs in a binder so I can get to them when I am feeling creative.

I have actually have transferred some old cassettes and mix tapes to CD . They sound like shit b/c of the cassettes, the song breaks are all screwed, but at least I have them in a modern format. So, the mix tape need not be dead.