Mixtape Mondays: An Introduction

Like everyone else, I made mixtapes throughout the 1980s and 90s. And like everyone else, I pretty much gave it up as MP3 technology became prevalent.

When I stopped making mixtapes, it was like giving up keeping a diary. (Not that I actually kept a diary regularly.) MP3 playlists are an equivalent, I suppose, but they’re ephemeral—there’s no physical object, no homemade J-card, no permanent record of what momentarily caught your enthusiasm.

If the MP3 (and the discrete, skippable CD track before it) atomized music and destroyed the ideal of the cohesive album, then the podcast may be resurrecting it. An unholy confluence of nostalgia and neophilia—to wit, the advent of free, easy-to-use audio editing software—leads me now to resurrect my mixtapes, and page through my old diaries again.

These are not rips from the original tapes; these are all-digital reconstructions of the content, replete with crossfades, volume-levelling, and a few subtle tweaks. These are my old mixtapes the way I always wanted them to sound. This is the way my head sounded, once upon a time.