Back when, if you wanted to do something for a friend, or send a message to a potential lover, or just share stuff you liked, or just have tapes for a mood or a party or event you could get a cassette tape and record songs from records and make a unique musical artifact. Unique to you, your mindset and your place and time.

Today mixtape has a new meaning and while it is easier than ever to share a playlist of music we no longer have that one-off, one person to one person item.

I miss making mixtapes. Thinking about the right music and putting it in the right order. Giving them to people and collecting the ones given to me.

What a strange little cultural artifact. Basically from the mid 70s to the mid 90s.

Ah yes, and you'd play your favourite over and over until that awful day when it got caught in the machine and unravelled. Sometimes it could be salvaged with careful re-winding with a pencil, but often it was too far gone and that perfect combination of songs was lost forever.

≡ Click to see image ≡

I miss the concept of them, but never made or received any.

I often imagine having my own personal DJ who could select music that's perfect for my mood and preferences; all while seamlessly introducing me to new things to enjoy.

I never really got into mixtapes myself, but I recently threw out several dozen cassette tapes because I no longer have anything to play them on. It was kind of tough throwing out some of that music, even if I haven't listened to it in decades.

When I was poor I'd record friends' albums, usually two to one 90-minute cassette, and I would try to do complementary albums, for instance: Side 1- Billy Joel: Turnstiles; Side 2- Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run. I associate those to albums together because of that. To me, they are a yin-yang thing- Turnstiles is cerebral, introspective. Born to Run is adventurous, outgoing.

I'll sometimes play them back to back now, but it's just not the same as it was when they were joined together on a single cassette.

I made a bunch of mixtapes back in the day (late 70s through the 80s) I'd work for hours, cueing-up songs on LPs and hitting record on my tape deck at just the right moment. I got really good at getting songs that worked well together and created a flow, with nary a gap between songs. Alas, all my tapes were stolen when some cretin broke into my car one night, parked outside my girlfriend's parents' house. Never made another one.

I tried my hand at making mix CDs, but the fun of creating them wasn't there the way it was with LPs and tape decks.

Yeah the CD thing was never quite the same. Many years ago someone broke into my wife's car and she was insulted that they did not take any of her tapes.

I just read that Lou Ottens died a couple of days ago. He was the leader of a small team at Philips that invented the cassette tape in 1962.

I remember buying my first Walkman in the mid-80s. It was life-changing, listening to Placido Domingo singing right in my ears. Amazing.