Remember making mix tapes? It was a labor of love. I spent many an hour at my dual cassette radio making delicious mixes of jammy jams. I would even name them (super mix tape nerds would even name the A & B sides of the tape).
My favorite mix tape of all time was named the Funk Box. I made it while I was living at the beach for a summer. I still remember some of the songs on it Beck – Beercan, James – Laid, Beastie Boys – Get it Together. These tunes were mixed up with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, G-Love & Special Sauce, and De La Soul.
It was my masterpiece, but sadly the tape is MIA. Someone was either so envious of Funk Box that they stole it or so tired of hearing it that they flung it out a window.
Let’s start a revolution. Stop ripping and burning. Go to your basement and dig out your dusty shoebox of tapes and listen to some old mixes. Get lost in the static hum of those old school beats and guitar riffs. Play. Flip. Rewind. Repeat. You will thank me for it.
February 18, 2006 at 1:29 am
I’m the same age (33) and I recall my mix tapes fondly. I had a super-cool (or so I thought) Fisher multi-component system and also had a thing for a old-school rap. I remember actually adding my own (very poorly done) scratches to mix tapes by dubbing the turntable to the tapedeck. LL Cool J and Run DMC never sounded so bad as they did after I was done with them.
February 18, 2006 at 10:11 am
Wow adding scratches to your mix tapes. I never got so adventuress. I bow to thee!
February 24, 2006 at 3:03 pm
[...] I don’t own an MP3 playa’ and have been satisfied with XM and buying CDs so far. If we all get fed up with this high falutin mp-whatevers of the world we can always go back to mix tapes. Posted by TheShortFatKid Filed in lowTECH [...]
July 4, 2006 at 11:49 am
Guy, I vividly remember the Funk Box. I remember hours of making tapes and searching for that one song that would keep everyone dancing long after we falsely claimed the cops were busting the party and kicked all the non-regulars out. However, I think Google and not CDs are to blame for the lost art of the mix tape. Now.. anyone who can remember five words from a song can type them in and POOF.. they are given the artist, song, album. . You no longer have to be a true student of music to find that exceptional song, or new artist. As for the FUNK BOX, I believe it met its end after a beer spilled in the top draw of the dresser/ DJ stand we used in Spring street. Rest in Peace..
July 6, 2006 at 7:25 am
Sniff … sniff … poor Funk Box. I hope you are happy in that big mix tape heaven in the sky.
July 7, 2006 at 8:17 pm
The Funk Box was a significant right of passage for those lucky enough to take in a whiff of that mix tape genious. It’s possible the Kryminal may have a sneaked out a bootlegged copy from your OC bungalow that summer to share with the Towson crowd.
Will have to take a look into all these years later.
Peace
Luv the Blogs Guy. Keep up the good work!
July 7, 2006 at 9:29 pm
The mystery deepens.
September 28, 2006 at 10:28 am
I am still getting over the death of the Mix-Tape. However, I still gotz all the vinyl in the basement just in case!!! Can you believe with all the tapes I made I don’t have one…guess cuz I never made em for meeself…
Blogs make me Poo
Poo makes me laugh
Blogs=Funny
Mix Tape Nerd
Steve Beck (What the Heck!!!)
October 9, 2006 at 9:24 am
Ahhh, steve beck, mix tape sensei. Master Beck is such a bad ass mix tape nerd from way back that he actually rigged up a system to record the audio from Yo! MTV Raps. That way he could have tapes of all the great live performances from that show. I bow to you, oh great mix tape nerd.
February 21, 2007 at 10:38 pm
[...] Congratulations to Guy, from The Short Fat Kid, for his post “I Miss Mix Tapes.” [...]
February 23, 2007 at 3:40 am
I know exactly how you feel. I recently dug up one of my old tapes (not literally – it’s not like I’ve been burying them in the back yard) and listening to made me feel all nostalgie. Which may or may not be a real word.
What amazed me about the tape in question (which, for some long-fogotten reason had been labelled “Spider-Man In Hell”) was the amount of work that had gone in it. Inbetween the variuous Sleeper b-sides and Blur remixes were clips from roachfest movie Joe’s Apartment. That involved buying a special cable to connect my tape recorder to my video recorder and then manually cueing up the video – you just don’t put that much effort into loading up your shuffle do you?
February 23, 2007 at 6:37 am
I love the mix tape name. Mine were never that inventive (e.g. Guy’s Booty Mix)
Another fun thing about mix tapes was finding that short song that would fit at the end of your tapes. You may only have about a minute and thirty of tape left and you don’t want to leave any blank space.
February 23, 2007 at 7:08 am
I’d forgotten about that! There are some artists whose sole purpose it is to fill those gaps. The Lemonheads were always good – Evan Dando seems incapable of writing a song longer than three minutes.
What I really could have done with back then was some kind of database where you could store all of your music then order them by track length… oh hang on…
February 23, 2007 at 8:25 am
Skits from rap albums were always good for filling the gap to.
August 14, 2007 at 9:03 am
[...] from the book about the Beastie Boys‘ album Check Your Head. Apparently the B Boys were huge mix tape nerds while making Check Your Head … There was another DJ angle to Check Your Head, as Yauch [...]