December 7–14, 1995

gift guide

Crazy Mixed-Up Tape

The metaphysics of mixology.

By Margit Detweiler

"Here you go, Merry Christmas," he smiles, and hands me one of my favorite gifts in the whole world — a mixed tape.

Overjoyed, I take it home and pop it in the player.

The tape kicks off with Joni Mitchell's "Blue."

Not exactly a wham-bam thank-you-ma'am opening. Hmmm... he has seemed a little gloomy lately.

The mix segues into John Prine moaning sadly, "Old people, just grow lonesome..."

I'm getting concerned. Was it something I said?

Then Leonard Cohen sings, "Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye."

Maybe he's still chagrined because I rented Uncle Buck right after he said, "I just wanna talk."

Then Michael Stipe croons, "A simple prop, to occupy my time..."

Suddenly, the mood of the tape becomes sarcastic, snide, pissed-off.

Patti Smith, Courtney Love, The Dead Kennedys, "I'm Looking Forward To Death"?

Oh this is bad.

Maybe he's trying to tell me... gulp... it's over?

The mixed tape can be an intimate, powerful piece of art. A collection of songs, as recorded by you, for a particular purpose and person — an inexpensive way to send a loving (or nasty) message and share music with a friend. It's like being a DJ at a station with no particular format. What could be more wonderful?

I like to spend hours on a Sunday, nestled in the corner by my stereo with albums, CDs and tapes spread out around me thinking about the person I'm making a tape for. I'm in lust? How about Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing"? I'm melancholy? A little Tom Waits. Perhaps I just want to rock out?

Need you ask? Kiss.

Some would say this is a massive ego trip, or at least a waste of time.

I say it's the perfect gift.

There are methods to the mixed-up madness. It's really quite a science.

Like an album, a mixed tape can be a product in and of itself. One friend, an avid mixed taper, noted that it works the way Albert Barnes wanted his paintings displayed: juxtaposed as a purposeful jumble of styles.

The songs echo each other. And nothing is accidental.

Ultimately, the songs (or paintings) equal more than the sum of their parts — the tape has become an entity of its own.

So if you're planning to make a significant other or friend a mixed tape for the holidays, here's a highly subjective guide to the ins and outs of mixology.

A Mixed-Up History

When did someone come up with the first mixed tape? Hard to pinpoint. I called a few pop culture/ music experts who didn't have much to share except that mixed tapes gained steam along with home-recording cassette tapes in the early '80s.

But I remember making mixed's on 8-tracks from the radio. Remember, though, there was no "pause" button in those days, only "stop," which provided a heavy thud between songs, not to mention the loud "grrrrrkkkkclunk!" between tracks.

Listening to your old mixed tapes can make you cringe at your former taste in music, or make you wistful for the particular point in your life when you created them. Mixes can be like little time capsules of your own past.

A few years ago Tower Records offered a service where you could make your own mixed tape at the store — for a true mixed taper, that's sacrilege. Needless to say, the expensive service flopped.

Sometimes you can buy mixed tapes (often of dance or reggae fare), but according to Alex Walsh of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), that's illegal.

You know that little imprint on the back of the CD that says, "Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws"?

"Mixed tapes are just a different form of piracy," says Walsh. "We've certainly had busts in the past and intend to in the future."

But the RIAA only pursues criminals who produce tapes en masse and sell them — not joe schmoe at home mixing up Seal with Barbra Streisand for his own use. That's perfectly legal — though maybe it shouldn't be.

The Mixed Genres

Party Mix

Designed to keep the beer flowing and the people mingling, the party mix is perhaps the most popular of mixed tapes. K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Nirvana, Donna Summer, surf music and — de rigueur at the frat party —"Mony, Mony."

The Ego Mix

This is the tape that says, "I want to impress you with my musical knowledge" and usually mixes Hawaiian slack key guitar with Arvo Prt.

The Looove Mix

From Sarah Vaughan to k.d. lang to Chaka Khan — everyone's version of the love mix is radically different.

One friend believes the mixed tape "is part of the seduction process." This same guy told me after giving a prospective lover his collection of songs, "If she listens to this tape, she'll know everything about me." Unfortunately the woman never listened to his tape, and gave it to a male friend of hers who adores it. Ouch!

The Platonic Mix

This is the mix you make for your pal — just good-time, usually inspirational music. Just be careful or you could have the following scenario...

The Mixed Message

The songs you select for your mixed tape could really say something — or let your recipient think you're saying something. Local hi-fi rock and roller Joey Sweeney illustrates how the mixed tape can be a "dangerous weapon."

"Last year, after a friend of mine harangued me for months to make her a tape," says Sweeney, "I finally did. To me, this was a totally platonic venture... My record collection and musical sensibility being what it is, though, the tape did turn out to have its share of the sap. I got weird vibes from this person for a couple of weeks until she finally said something like [quavery voice], 'Um, like, did that tape, like, Mean Anything?'"

"What a nightmare, 'cause it didn't, and I had to be real careful in what I said or what records I talked about with her for the next couple of weeks. 'I better not mention the Red House Painters'... that kind of thing..."

Sequential Reasoning

You can turn someone on to a band just by putting a song in the right place.

Wedging Captain Beefheart between Howling Wolf and a '70s Herbie Hancock can emphasize the blues and funk of Beefheart and prove he can swing and groove right along with the rest of 'em. So if you don't think a friend could stomach a whole album of Beefheart's bellowing rambles, try him mixed up.

You can juxtapose like styles and like songs: Jonathan Richman's ode to his favorite band, "The Velvet Underground," with a V.U. song like "Foggy Notion"; or Townes Van Zandt's "To Live is to Fly" next to the Cowboy Junkies version of the same song.

One complete nut I know made a tape of his favorite "best parts": it kicks off with the beginning of "Taxman," segues into the Fifth Dimension break into "Let the Sunshine In," and adds the beginning of AC/DC's "Hells Bells." There's, of course, a little bit of Freebird.

How about a whole tape of call and response songs?

Neil Young's "Southern Man" meets Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" followed by the triple-threat of UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne" with the musical responses from Roxanne Chant and The Real Roxanne!!!

Um, nevermind. But it leads us to...

The Theme Mixed

I've never been much for theme tapes, but some people really get into entire tapes of girl groups, garage bands, all songs from 1964, or all Neil Sedaka. They can be fun, though it seems more a study than an entertainment.

But one friend made a "Lou Reed Doesn't Suck" tape for me, in an effort to prove that albums like Rock and Roll Heart were worth a song in a mix. It's an incredible collection of songs. However, both sides end with Metal Machine Music.

Fast-forwarrrrrrd.

What To Call It?

This year a friend freaked me out when he sent bulk e-mail to all his friends of possible mixed tapes they could choose from as Christmas gifts.

There was February's tape: "Where Is My Anything?: recorded on Valentine's Day itself, as I drank a bottle of Dom Perignon"; and March's tape: "Let Me Ride on the Wall of Death 32 Times: A tape in honor of my birthday"; and June's tape: "Ally Aid for the Bro-beaten: Music to help friends who find love goes from bad to weird."

This stuff falls under "the ego mixed," too. Don't worry, he lives in San Diego.

Adding Those Mixtra Special Touches

Should you splice in bits of vocal ephemera: phone machine messages, clandestinely taped conversations?

If they're brief. The same goes for the bad-song-that's-funny. Just remember the person will undeniably, eventually press FF unless you plop it at the end.

You might hang onto certain albums — Fabio's musings on romance, The Brady Bunch singing "American Pie" — because they're great for the goofy quotient. Saturday Morning, the new album of '60s and '70s cartoon music as interpreted by the likes of Liz Phair (The Banana Splits theme song) and The Violent Femmes ("Eeep-Op-Ork-Ah-Ah" from The Jetsons), seems perfect for this genre.

Soundtracks: The Pre-Made Mix

For all the joy of a mix without all the effort, try one of today's soundtracks!

It's all Quentin Tarantino's fault. With the popularity of soundtracks from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (now the frat party album), soundtracks have become less about embellishing a scene in a flick or being "incidental," and more about making mo' money. But a few of them —Devil in A Blue Dress, Blue in the Face, Wigstock and Kids — are great in their own right and make swell additions to your own mixes.

Mix-Stakes to Remember

's nothing worse than a deadly song on a mixed tape, the song that doesn't sit well with the rest of the music. You often know it when you do it, but you do it anyway. Diamanda Galas doesn't wedge well between The Spinners and Wilco. She just doesn't.

your levels. Being the sloppy chick I am, I'm wont to vary my levels so that the song soars awkwardly from low to high levels mid-song. There's nothing worse if your friend is an audiophile.

Half the fun is keeping the tape for a week before you even give it to your recipient.

And the best kind of mixed tape?

The one where someone just says, "These are a few of my favorite songs."

A friend, recently transplanted to Texas, created one of my favorite mixes after he moved: "Stuff I Was Listening To While Making Dinner." While some tapes make you feel love, or melancholy, this one absolutely makes me feel like I'm sitting in his living room again, petting a cat, eating spaghetti.

Bliss.