I recently had a conversation about “the art of the mixtape” with a friend of mine. She said even though mixtapes still exist and are easy to create, especially in the mp3 digital age, nothing will compare to original cassette mixtape. I have to agree with that. Before Napster or torrent sites my cousins and I would call all of the Boston radio stations and request our favorite songs so we could pop in a cassette and steal music the good ol’ fashioned way. The quality was bad & sometimes we mis-timed when to press record and stop but that gave the mix character!
I love homemade presents that have personal meaning and have never been the kind of girl who expects diamonds or expensive gifts for birthdays or special holidays. If you really want to catch my attention, make me a mixtape! Just think of everything you can express through music; You can tell your love how you feel through careful song selection, you can create a killer party mix or roadtrip collection or even compile the perfect sleepy-time jams to drift off to Lala land to.
Mixtapes have basically been replaced by playlists on our ipods. Same purpose, different context. One is not better than the other but I really do miss the days of guerilla mixtapery (ok I made that up but you get my point).
Mixtapes were the inspiration behind CAVATA’s “Its A Wrap” tee, actually. Its funny, I thought about making an old-school cassette mixtape the other day and then realized I have an ipod soundsystem (sans cassette player) and haven’t seen a cassette tape for sale in years. Bummer. Back to iTunes!
-Lori
