Mux It Up

Doing a mix tape just isn't the same anymore. The barrier to entry has gone down too much, the ease of transferring songs between two people has ruined it forever. That's how I feel about the current state of mix tapes anyway. Then again, maybe that's just me and creating a mix tape is still magical if you do it with passion. I can't recall the last mix tape I made or received, although it's something I used to do all the time. Mix-CDs actually. When tapes were still in vogue, I was way too uncool to present (new) music to anybody. "So, here's a tape looped with 'Kokomo' and 'Don't Worry, Be Happy.' Hope you love it, because I love you..."

I'm still in possession of a mix tape that I've been hoping to pass to someone for over five years now. I haven't seen her in all that time but it's supposed to sum up a summer's worth of memories. "Cool Like That: Two People's Instinctive Travels in the Paths of Labor" Maybe I'll just be holding onto this thing forever. That's kinda sad no?

Another reason why making mix tapes just isn't the same is because creating the covers aren't as much fun anymore. Why spend time designing the CD cover when it'll most likely be ripped to a computer and then set aside? A mix tape loses something in the translation when it doesn't take two hours to burn and three versions of the CD sized paper to have everything lined up perfectly.

Then again, the sentiment of a mix tape can never be changed. It's something you make to make the other person think of you. It's taking ownership of certain songs so that when they hear it, even years later, they'll always think of you. Mix tapes are super devious if you think about it. I may have to bring it back...

Anyway, here's a mix tape from 1999 that I made for somebody. It had the best cover ever. A (traced) version of the Bad Boy logo, changed to a female with pigtails. I titled it "Ready to Cry." Little did I know how appropriate that would be.

Here's the mix tape in individual form, .rar form, and also the track list. Oh, and on favtape too, although it sucks because you can't upload your own tracks like with muxtape, meaning you can't get some songs on your mix if they don't already have a copy. I miss muxtape.

I miss a lot of things.