Epic Win: Original Mix Tapes
Submitted and Written by Brian D
It was the original playlist. There was no real way to get individual songs off of all your different cassettes, and there was no such thing as a multi-disc CD-changer, much less a “Shuffle” option on an iPod! All you could do to get your favorite songs from differentartists on to a single collection was man your stereo, blank tape inserted and at the ready, listening to your favorite radio station, and prepared to press that “RECORD” button the instant they started playing a song you liked and wanted to capture!
It wasn’t easy! You had split seconds to determine if those first few beats were indeed the song you wanted. You had to avoid DJ’s babbling through the beginning of songs and try and hit “RECORD” as soon as he finally shut up. Miss the timing? Rewind –> Stop –> Play over and over and over again to get the tape back to the proper spot and ready to try recording again. And then, what if that damn DJ started babbling before the song was finished?! Or the radio station inserted their call letters or a jingle in there somewhere?! There was no telling when the next time the station would play that song again, or if you’d even be around to hear it!
I think back and remember making mixtapes with Third Eye Blind and Sugar Ray on them. Hmm…
I still have 2 tapes full of Pearl Jam’s live concert in Atlanta, where Eddie Vedder cursed, realized he was live, then said “F*** it!” My mother was less than pleased when she heard about that one (it was covered in the newspaper the next day.)
Hell yeah! Nothing beats the good ol’ mixtape! The only reason why I don’t do them anymore is because I broke my walkman a few years ago.
I have most of mix tapes still. Funny thing is, my mix CDs still go by the same name. Guess I’m old, clinging to the past… *sigh*
I remember the joy when I got the dual tape deck and could make mixed tapes from my collection.
I love the dual tape decks. I still make mixtapes for when I only have the option of tapes. (Yes, some cars don’t have a CD player/ iPod port.)
I used to improvize! I never had a fancy dual tape deck, so I would use the family hifi, and my tape player. That way, I could put records on the tape as well!
not that weird ’til you think I was born in ‘92.
92 as well.
i still have many a mix tape that i made, or was made by friends. i like the ones were you ran out of tape half way through a song. to bad i have nothing to play them on any more….
Just one year before the iPod came out, High Fidelity proved that the mixtape was an artform. http://unhub.com/high-fidelity
I had it good back then. My dad had an awesome home stereo system with a dual-cassette dubber..and a cable-ready radio tuner so we could have high-quality piped-in music….and our local cable carrier that usually sucked was good enough to provide the MTV stereo-radio hookup.
So yeah..I was ripping cassettes full of MTV music that sounded WAY better than what my friends could come up with placing their recorders in front of their televisions and praying their bros/sisters would not walk in and screw up the recording.
As I’m sitting here listening to a playlist on my iPod, reading this made me smile. I always remember how much I wanted to make mixes of just my FAV songs and not the ones I didn’t like. And then I remember getting my super duper double cassette recorder with an AM/FM radio!!! It was small and red and I loved it so. It was a birthday present and I remember making so many tapes on it! And then we got a double cassette with a CD player. Wow!!! It was our very first CD player (many have come and gone since then) and I ‘inherited’ (read: stole) it from my folks when they got their good stereo and I still have it to this day. I even have some blank tapes around my house. Maybe I’ll burn some of these playlists to a CD, then put them on a tape. I still have a tape player in my car…
When my husband and I were dating in middle school and high school we had “Our Tape” that one of us would put a song or two on, then we’d give it back with the notes we were constantly writing to one another. I remember being thrilled when I could put songs from CD’s onto the tape, and I could finally put on some songs that definitely didn’t get radio-play, like Redundant by Green Day from Nimrod. We must have had at least 5 different incarnations of Our Tape by the time we graduated.
This is definitely a Nostalgia Win.
i was the queen of the mix tape! i would spend hours in my basement making tapes for my friends. i traded tapes with friends around the country to get introduced to new music. i do the same thing with cds now but its not quite the same… while i appriciate that i can whip out a mix a lot faster now, all the hours and effort i would put in before really showed that i cared, you know?
Nosalgic fail for the writer of this posting Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind do not count as nostalgic. If you had talked about recording Tiffany or Michael Jackson from the radio that would be diffrent. But come on! Sugar Ray! What was that like 1999.
Who cares what the music was? It was the same experience- the waiting for the radio to play the song, etc..
It’s a shame you’re too much of a music snob to appreciate the real emotion of the nostalgia- the care and time it took to lovingly craft the perfect mix of the music that made you happy and meant something to you in your young life.
People don’t have a choice of what year their parents conceived them.
lighten up!
I make my students (College Composition) do mix CDs complete with inserts and lyrics–that’s how much I miss making mix tapes. That and it teaches about selection, theme, and organization. But mostly the missing mix tapes thing. Plus, when they hand them in, I don’t have to buy music for a whole semester.
Wow. Yeah. I remember having to camp by the radio and waiiiit for them to play the song I wanted, and oh my YES!! regarding dearly wishing the DJ would shut up already so that I could push record.
I pitched many of my old mix tapes about four years ago since I don’t have anything to play them on anymore, though I saved the recordings I made of Dr. Demento shows in the late 80s. I’ll turn those into CDs someday…
Ah! Another Dr. Demento fan! I haven’t been able to listen to Dr. Demento for years now, since they took it off of the internet radio station I listened to it on. Before that, they used to play it on a station I could get from home, but when they stopped carrying it, I could only get it online. I would listen to it on his site, but I have heard too many horror stories about the low quality and low reliability, and I don’t like buying things that are not physical.
hell yeah of trying to catch the demento stuff! and remember 86 when theyd attempted to put a big tax on blank tapes because the ria freaked home taping was killing the industry? SEE KIDS? NOTHINGS CHANGED!
the description was spot on! possibly the greatest trip down memory for any true music freak…
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that I never -did- understand what that whole “Noise Reduction In/Out” thing meant. I knew about Dolby noise reduction – is that it? what does the ‘in/out’ mean?
Basically On/Off. “In” put it into the circuit, “Out” took it out.
If it just said “Noise Reduction”, it wasn’t Dolby.
Mix tapes FTW! I have a box full of all my old ones in the garage that I sadly can’t listen to anymore, cuz I have no had a tape player for about 5 years now. My tastes in music have also changed drastically as well. Though I wish I could listen to them again for nostalgia’s sake. I don’t miss all the inane DJ babble that would mess up my favorite songs at times, though. XD
Ah, I remember those days… My procedure went like this:
*starts recording a mix tape of AC/DC’s “Big Balls”*
*DJ starts talking with 45 seconds to go*
*wants to commit grievous bodily harm*
Geez–am I the oldest person on this site? I remember making mix tapes on 8-tracks.
And even back then, only morons put the recorder in front of a radio or TV to capture music. You would wire things direct to get the cleanest sound possible. And this is mid-1970’s technology. By the early 1980s, you could record direct from any source with even a cheap boom-box.
Don’t know if you’re the oldest, but I had a combination 8-track player, record player, tape deck and AM/FM stereo in a 1 foot cube. Didn’t make mix tapes from the 8-track player, since technically, it belonged to my parents, and they didn’t have great music. That and I was born in ‘78, so by the time I was making mix tapes, 8-tracks weren’t really around anymore.
I had the same combination stereo you had & thought is was the best! Even had big speakers! I also had a separate record player & would record from it to tape too.
1963 here.
This must be what helped refine my ability to know a song by the end of the first bar…
If you did extra lettering on the case inlay card, it was really something special…
Ah, those hours spent next to the stereo, as I stacked tapes and CDs to copy and agonized over just the right songs…
I still have songs that when I hear them today on the radio, I still hear the DJ’s voice – or the overlay of another song – at the beginning or end of them because I didn’t manage to hit “Stop” quickly enough on the tape recorder while making my mix tapes 20 years ago.
For me, the end of “Don’t Talk to Strangers” by Rick Springfield will always end with the first chord of “A View To A Kill”, and Vincent Price’s laugh-out on “Thriller” will always have the DJ coming in and laughing with him…
One word The 80s! (ok maybe two words?). Oh the time I spent parked in front of the stereo. Good times. Better times listening back with that “someone special” later *lol*.
i used to record the songs but redub the beginings like i was a dj lol that was cool
I was always that one kid who was a few years behind all the other kids in school. lol I mean, I had an Atari 2600 while the other kids had a Playstation or a Nintendo. So yeah, I know all about mix tapes. My parents didn’t buy me a computer until 1996 and I didn’t get a cd burner until we got the newer, better computer right before I graduated from high school, so I spent my time by my radio trying to listen for Marilyn Manson and other bands to catch on tape. Then I’d switch to the classic rock station and get some Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Janis Joplin, then I’d turn to the country station and get some Garth Brooks and Vince Gill. I honestly think I had more fun making the mix tapes than actually listening to them!
Oh man, the hours I spent grabbing stuff off KOST 103.5…now I’ve found many of those songs on Youtube and downloaded so I can have them and remember those days. I was glad to get my stereo that let me record directly from the radio because it was inevitable that the minute I tried to record by holding my recorder next to the radio, somebody would come in my room and talk over the whole fricken song. EVERY time…
The real joy of giving/getting a mix tape was that you knew real effort went into it. It is too easy to just click the link and send it in an im to the girl/boy of your dreams. There is no real effort in expressing yourself through your favorite music. I was too young to actually get a mix tape from a boy but I WANTD one!
I used to keep mine by the TV, ready to record, but I thought it was a personal invention of mine :B Of course, I was 13… And I invented it in 2000. I also recorded funny bits of Friends episodes. I still laugh out loud at those bits when I listen to em
Y’all are youngins! Pearl Jam? Try Cyndi Lauper! Wow, I feel old….
What about sitting there with a pen and paper trying to figure out which songs you could fit on a c-90?
Let’s see….3:26…..I have 13:35 left on the tape……60 seconds…carry the one….
One thing tho? Hanging a cassette on your rear view mirror looked really stupid…thank god for CDs!
Memorex. Maxell. TDK. Using cheaper ones is what motivated me to figure out how to splice them back together when the tape itself broke. Strangely enough, I made some with my dads record collection. He had some good stuff like Boston, Styx, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, etc. I was born in ‘71 so I lived through the transition from records to 8-tracks back to records to cassettes to CDs and possibly beyond. Can’t forget singles on 45s, my best friend bought Joan Jetts “I Love Rock and Roll” on 45 and played it at least 50 times a day for a long time.
1960 for me : ) , I sometimes made the mix tapes from radio or tv, but I really liked to record my favs off my lps, so I wouldn’t have to run over and pick up the needle and skip those skanky cuts…
As a teen, I had no idea that by making mix-tapes I was participating in a cultural phenomena that we would all wax nostalgic about years later. It’s cool in restrospect, but we didn’t do it because it was “cool”. We did it because, well, how ELSE are you going to get your favorite songs together in one place? Or get that one song you like without having to buy the entire cassete when you don’t want any of the other songs on it?
It’s never the things you expect to be nostalgic that are nostalgic. It’s the things you take for granted.
=^)
CB said– “I still have songs that when I hear them today on the radio, I still hear the DJ’s voice – or the overlay of another song – at the beginning or end of them because I didn’t manage to hit “Stop” quickly enough on the tape recorder while making my mix tapes 20 years ago.”
Me too!
Ahh yes. I never really made a mix tape in the traditional sense of the term, but I did record off the radio quite a bit. Especially in the mid-late 90’s when KDGE would do Retro Rage on Saturday nights, and The Retro Cafe during the week. Then around ‘01 I got a CD burner in my computer. That kinda made the tapes wan for a few years. I now love combing thrift shops for tapes taped off the radio. I even have some 8 tracks of radio play, but most of them have snapped where the tape meets itself.
By the by, did you know that Suck UK makes digital mix tapes? I saw some at Borders the other day. 32 or 64mb flash drives that fit into a cardboard cassette.
Ha ha, I still have all my old mix tapes from the 80’s. AND a tape recorder. I’m converting them to mp3 via a tape deck and an $8 cable from Radio Shack. There are some old songs that just don’t exist yet on CD or digital.
haha I’m excited to see so many people shared the experience. I knew as I wrote out the description for this (I’m the one that submitted it, BTW) I couldn’t be the one who went through it.
I forgot to mention the stress of having to figure out what to do with that time at the end of a tape’s side – blank space that was too short to fit a full song in, but too long to leave totally blank. I’d find all kinds of different things to fill that space with – excerpts from stand up comedy routines, radio commercials that I really liked, long instrumental intros to cool songs, the full version of which would kick off the next side of the tape.
And, BTW, I didn’t put Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind in there! I think the site’s admin did. I’m a definite child of the 80s, and so it was all Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Simple Minds, Pychedelic Furs, Duran Duran and the like for me! Bon Jovi if I was feeling particularly hard core haha.
And points for your for the submission.
Now I am curious. The submission has more than 2600 thumbs up – but it has (at the time of writing this) 79 thumbs down.
I wonder, why would anyone give this a thumbs down?
I’m not bashing or criticizing or starting a flame war, just genuinely puzzled.
?
OH yes how I hated those DJs who started talking before the song ended!
Another great memory! I also rem getting mad when the DJ kept talking after the song had started or he started babbling before the song was finished! Didn’t these people know they were making things harder for us kids? LOL My favorite time to record was on Sunday’s when Kasey Kasum (sp) did the Top 40!
I completely blanked this out of my memory, until now! I can hear the DJ in my mind…
I can’t believe I forgot how and why I made them! Lack of money, single deck tape recorders… My favorites were to record the holiday countdowns with all the top songs!
I loved my mix tapes! My parents pretty much weaned me on Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles and Kris Kristofferson tapes that they copied off of records. Later in life when I got tapes I was allowed to record onto, I totally stalked the radio all summer waiting for JUST the right songs.
I miss that….
Yeaah! Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind mix tapes for my win
I remember making mixed tapes. I still have one where you can hear me I singing along in the background… oops.
I totally did this – I didn’t care if the DJ was in it or not.
I used to call the DJs and request songs and funny thing was, several of us would listen at the same time every day and call in and the DJ would say HI to each one of us…and it was like a clumsy precursor to internet chat rooms. lol