Ah, the analogue cassette tape. Those little plastic beasties were the medium for countless adolescent epiphanies, and they were an endless source of frustration in my adult years in the music business. Holding one of these in my hand now, I see a fragile, tempermental and inefficient medium that’s better off dead. My teenage years were a different story.
In high school, everyone traded tapes. Sure, vinyl was nice, but the tape had two distinct advantages: it was portable, and you could record on it. Both these factors lent it great power. I grew up in the Walkman generation, and though it’s commonplace to see middle-aged types walking down the street with those white Apple buds in their ears these days, shutting out the world with headphones was something rebellious in my day.
What’s more, the cheap blank tape was a tabula rasa, begging for some sort of input. In the late 1980’s, popular radio was a desolate wasteland of Top 40 drivel, but everybody had an older sibling who had tapped into some ephermal source of utter coolness, and tapes of their record collection would end up making the rounds in our social circle. If I’d relied on the radio, I’d have never heard the Pixies, the Violent Femmes, REM (when they didn’t suck) and Metallica (ditto). Blank tape and the Walkman made radio obsolete, and contrary to what the RIAA says, trading tapes was not piracy but a tremendous source of free publicity for artists that would have starved in the radio climate of the time.
Then there’s the mix tape. Sure, the industry is awash with half-assed compilation records, but have you ever found one that gets the song selection and pacing right for you? Well, in my day, we made our own. The mix could tape take any number of forms, as long as it stuck to some sort of internal logic. For yourself, it could be just about anything. Made for someone else, it could be anything from a you-gotta-hear-this tape for a friend to a love-letter (or the opposite). In the days of analogue, it took time and no small amount of effort.
By my senior year, I was able to afford my own 4-track recorder, a Fostex X-26. This was a blessing and a curse. I spent hours locked away, revelling in my newfound ability to overdub and bounce tracks. I was like a low-budget Phil Spector, saturating the tape with every possible instrument I could get my hands on. It allowed my band at the time to make listenable demos with clear instrument separation, and it was a great learning tool.
Of course, tape wasn’t without its faults. For decades, engineers fought the inherent deficiencies of the medium. Basically, you’re running a thin magnetic filament through a series of pulleys and spindles and rubbing it across a magnetic head to extract the +/- charged bits. The whole process was delicate and subject to error and corruption in one of several given spots. It was mechanically complex and fragile. That’s never a good combination.
If the tape didn’t get “eaten” or hopelessly mangled by the machine, you still had to deal with the fact that the whole process tended to introduce warble and hiss into the recording, things that were the bane of engineers and critical listeners alike. What’s more, given the number of moving parts and the delicate nature of tape itself, these things had a limited lifespan. Forget exposing them to heat or magnetism. Until a few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to stop at a traffic light and see a garbled bundle of dead tape on the ground outside, somebody’s beloved music brutally mangled by the car’s cassette deck.
Nowadays, the cassette is all but dead and buried, a historical curiosity at best. Vinyl is a niche product for hardcore collectors. Yep, we’re in the digital age, for better or worse. When MiniDisc came along, I ditched tape like an ugly prom date and went digital. Funny thing is, I still take pains to get that elusive analog “warmth” that’s missing from digital recordings. I have yet to come across an amp that has the same fat-yet-clear tone as my old tube-ridden Ampeg SVT3.
I’ve gone completely digital (aside from instruments) over the last decade, and I haven’t really looked back. Until recently. I was cleaning out some old boxes, and I found the venerable X-26. What’s more, there was an old tape-in-progress from 1991 or so in it. I felt an odd pang of nostalgia as I played it back in all its hissy, distorted glory. I could hear the valiant attempts at compression, the cheap reverb and all the other tricks I used to “multiplex” my work, and what’s more, they wouldn’t sound too out of place on some indie label these days.
Lest I get tempted, I remember how much of a hassle the whole process was, and I realize it’s just plain more efficient to stick with digital. Still, I decided to spend one last afternoon with it for old times’ sake. What the heck, a modern mix, high-school style! It took a bit of time to relearn the primitive controls, but in a few minutes, I was able to do crossfades and splicing like an old bedroom pro. So here’s the result, direct from digital to analog! If you want a copy, feel free to drop me a line, but be warned, you’re getting it on cassette, just like we did in my day.
If some of the artists look familiar, that’s because I wasn’t really satisfied with the mix I made for Ellen back in January. Sure, it came off well, and she enjoyed it, but the problem was that it was based on a specific set of rules (alternating male/female vocalists). I had the artists I wanted represented, but I had to choose songs from them that would work in an artifically-imposed sequence. So consider this a companion mix.
Radiant Flutter
Dntel – Dumb Luck
Postal Service – Brand New Colony
Broken Social Scene – Fire Eye’d Boy
Books – None but Shining Hours
13 & God – Perfect Speed
Stereolab – John Cage Bubblegum
My Bloody Valentine – Map Ref. 41N 93W
Guitar – House Full of Time
Clark – Ted (Bibio Mix)
Manitoba – Jacknuggeted
His Name is Alive – Up Your Legs Forever
B. Fleischmann – Tsip Tsap
James Figurine – You Again
M̼m РBallad of Broken Birdie Records (Biogen Remix)
Helios – Halving the Compass
Sigur Rós – Njósnavélin
Max Richter – Ionosphere
Susannah & the Magical Orchestra – Love Will Tear Us Apart