MIXTAPES

RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,779 Posts
edited March 2016 in Music Talk
Anyone here miss the mixtape? You made a mixtape to give to a girl you had a crush on. You headed over to your homies to make a mixtape of his records. You graffiti'd all over the cassette and made your own cover art with fold out panel. The awful hiss of fourth generation dubs. Rewind, Fast Fwd. Putting scotch tape over the holes so you can overdub for the millionth time because you are too cheap to buy more cassettes. Hearing the old mix bleed through the silence. I miss this shit.
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  • Anyone here miss the mixtape? You made a mixtape to give to a girl you had a crush on. You headed over to your homies to make a mixtape of his records. You graffiti'd all over the cassette and made your own cover art with fold out panel. The awful hiss of fourth generation dubs. Rewind, Fast Fwd. Putting scotch tape over the holes so you can overdub for the millionth time because you are too cheap to buy more cassettes. Hearing the old mix bleed through the silence. I miss this shit.

    I have a huge box of old mixtapes that I made at my dad's house. I need to go through them next time I go for a visit.

  • JLRJLR 3,835 Posts


    Yep, those were the days...

    I had a slow jams mixtape for girls. Richard Marx for dayz.

  • nzshadownzshadow 5,518 Posts
    yes.

    i was the little mixtape king in my circle of friends. toiling for hours, knowing that the 1 second overlap pause button edit will be heard, cutting up all my comics and magazines for covers, staying awake at night stressing over playing orders, giving the tapes to girls with all the teenage angst that goes with it, wondering of she 'got it', if she 'really listened' to the tape.

    My wife still has a shoebox full of some of my tapes, the cassette player chewed my favorite one just last week.

    1991: Some of my boys went away for a year so i made them a gang of tapes to take with them, 2 years later i was macking this girl that knew them from travelling. we were at her place, she puts on some music and it is one of my tapes!
    she dug it so much one of my boys had given it to her.

    that tape got me laid.


    i fuckin love tapes.

  • i fuckin love tapes.

    A mixtape has a lot of personality, it's like a piece of work and make great gifts, especially if you put some work into the artwork and all that.

    Everyone can burn a CD, a tape just has a better feel to it.

    - J

  • Mike_BellMike_Bell 5,736 Posts
    The mixtape (sigh)...
    I used to make mixtapes when I was in high school. I would do one side, my brother would do the other. Sometimes, I would just make my own mix, trying to flex my cutting skillz.
    After the tape was done, my brother & I would toss it in the Sony or Panasonic radio and jam that shit on the back of the bus!

    The memories.

  • PrimeCutsLtdPrimeCutsLtd jersey fresh 2,632 Posts
    I just like how mixtapes take you back to the music you were feelin' at the time. Pop in one of those bad boys in the cassette deck and you are transformed back in time when life was a little easier.

  • piedpiperpiedpiper 1,279 Posts
    mixtapes are simply great.
    I used to make some custom-made mixtapes for friends. I invested quite some time to design the cover (gatefold style+poster inside!)

  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    I so miss mixtapes. A couple of my friends and I would be constantly swapping them for years. Always looked for some strange record I'd unearthed to start off the mix.
    Funnily enough was talking to one of these friends the other day and he showed me his whole collection of my mixtapes, was about 10 high. Didn't even remember some of the stuff I'd put on there so was like rediscovering my musical interests from 10-12 years ago.

    Always loved doing a compilation for the ladies as well, especially the do i/don't i debate over misogynistic but good rap tunes.

    One thing I don't miss though is when I used to have almost finished a tape, listened back to it and decided that the first track was all wrong. Rerecording a whole compilation was never a fun time.

  • I do miss the 90min mix on TDK chrome and the smell of the cassette and the stickers I never used that would end up under the turntable or on the floor, only to be found years later, and how much the crappy Memorex Normals had really tight reels so at times I would record and it would stop because of them dang reels not rotating, I miss rewinding the tapes in class with my pencil only to find out later I rewound the wrong side and had to do it all over again in the next class, I miss my just finished master getting eatting in my box, I miss burning the tape on my four track, I what I miss most is when you have a bunch of tapes in your pocket and you use the urinal at work only to watch them fall in Piss (true story I let my co worker borrow a bunch of tapes and he dropped them in the urinal at break, and now he's an MC)... Lots of good stories are being lost with the CD but do I miss all the after affects of a cassette no....

  • ladydayladyday 623 Posts
    My fledgling relationships always seemed to start off with an exchange of mixtapes and spending hours trying to strike the right flirty but laid-back tone while also trying to throw in enough obscurity to hint at my enlightened taste in music. And then on the receiving end, agonizing over every song searching for meaning.

    One time I made a really raunchy tape as a total joke for a friend I kind of liked and it was intercepted by his mom.

  • bthavbthav 1,538 Posts
    i made an early punk mixtape for this girl i was crushing on in 8th grade. she then gave me a tape with green day, screaching weasel, and like no use for a name. needless to say she became a whore in high school and a sorority slut in college. i never looked back.

  • cd's will never capture the essence of mixtapes..i still got a gang of 'em.Actually right now i'm trying to transfer a bunch to cd but they don't make no 90min cd's!Also fixing broke ones was always like open heart surgery..those wurrr the dayyysss..

  • bthavbthav 1,538 Posts
    do 45 min 45min man. only way.

  • yeah. i know but after all the work back in the day it kinda sucks to break it up like that..at least for me..

  • DrJoelDrJoel 932 Posts
    I have a lot of mixtapes boxed up at my parents place. I miss making mixes out of all my new stuff and taking them to work at Wings To Go (now-belly related) or trading up with friends. Making radio edit mixes for my mom's car before i had a license, hearing stories of people scotch taping extra tape onto their 90s to make them a couple minutes longer, etc. Building sound clip intros on some little soundblaster program i had on my computer. The first tape i played in the car when i got my license was DJ Juice 33 or 34 or something. Driving around for no reason. Oh good god, the memories.

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,896 Posts
    I remember once my gurl was moving to London.

    So I got one of my best friends to do the intro (One of his early beats and cutting up of her name using De La's *Jennifer OH Jenny*).

    I did a full mix tape with a mix of her fav songs, some of mine and drops from friends of ours. Including DJ X wishing her luck from on his radio show. All in all is was a pretty dope tape. Very Smooth...

    And while that gurl and I broke up years later. I still wish I had the tape. Not for anything to do with her. But I'd love to hear the Intro that Serious did for me. Shit was crazy nice!

  • PrimeCutsLtdPrimeCutsLtd jersey fresh 2,632 Posts
    did any of you collect the maxell max points?

  • I remember once my gurl was moving to London.

    So I got one of my best friends to do the intro (One of his early beats and cutting up of her name using De La's *Jennifer OH Jenny*).

    I did a full mix tape with a mix of her fav songs, some of mine and drops from friends of ours. Including DJ X wishing her luck from on his radio show. All in all is was a pretty dope tape. Very Smooth...

    And while that gurl and I broke up years later. I still wish I had the tape. Not for anything to do with her. But I'd love to hear the Intro that Serious did for me. Shit was crazy nice![/b]

    Would that be Dj Serious??


    I basically co-sign on everything that's been said in this thread. Mixtapes were the shit. CDs just don't hold the same weight.

  • volumenvolumen 2,532 Posts
    RIP Cassettes! I only covered a couple years ago when I gave my friend a tape and he said "What the hell am I supose to do with this?"

    Always made tapes custom for who was getting it and never remembered anything about it once I gave it away. But the girls still love the CD's!!!!!!!!

    Used to make "pause" tapes back in the day. Friends used to trip on how everything just mixed right together when all I was useing was a double cassette recorded. You get really good at manually rewinding tapes to just the right point!! And of course I thought I was the only on doing it until I heard stories from people like Mix Master Mike talking about doing the exact same thing.



    Ahhhhhhh, the good old days these little munchkins will never know!!

  • bthavbthav 1,538 Posts
    did any of you collect the maxell max points?

    so weird, i was think about this the other day. and this is what the oracle had to say.

  • tonyphronetonyphrone 1,500 Posts
    My double tape deck just died - but i acctually bought a new one at circuit city the other day for $150 - I acctually thought i could find a cheaper one but no...


  • sticky_dojahsticky_dojah New York City. 2,136 Posts
    cutting up of her name using De La's *Jennifer OH Jenny*).

    did that too, my first tape for a girl. but i didn't help. well, i dunno, was that before or after i s***** *n her t******? aahh, memories....anyone still doing mixtapes? i heard of some dj's still doin it. i wanna do one too now...

  • tonyphronetonyphrone 1,500 Posts
    anyone still doing mixtapes?

    Me. I've got a tapedeck in my car. But also, i haven't figure out how to do a digital one...


  • dgriotdgriot 388 Posts
    I inherited a lot of cassettes from my dad when he passed a few years ago, and am slowly working through 'em. A lot of Rap-A-Lot, No Limit, Cash Money, E-40, B-Legit, etc. Made me fish out my old walkman from high school. With that said, here's my projected 2018 version of this thread.

    "Man, remember when CD-Rs were the shit?"

    "Yeah! People would make crazy ass inserts and make special art that they'd print ON THE CD ITSELF! You just can't get that with BVXORZ players these days."

    "Oh even better was collecting those CD-R mixes with ghetto xeroxed covers and janky felt tip markers from heads back in the day. I still bump DJ Maru's Killin You Softly on the regular! And don't get me started on those speciality 3" CDs! Even if you couldn't play 'em in your car without an adaptor, they were still the shit!"

    "Haha, I hear ya! And what about when they eventually rotted over time and became virtually unplayable? Man, trying to recover the music off of that would be a bitch. On top of that, everytime you accidentally scratched it and it started to skip right when your favorite joint was on?? Kids JUST DON'T KNOW!"

    "I'm sayin'! And standing in line at Best Buy before it became FYE Best Target-Mart & Noble in the morning to get that 100 spindle of TDK 8x for free after mailing in the rebate?! shiiii..."

    and so forth

  • frenziefrenzie 174 Posts
    I have a good mate who is still using cassettes on the regular. Infact, he is so out of touch, that he doesn't even use an email account, doesn't own a computer, and only recently started using a mobile phone.. and he is 34 years old!

    It's great, because he is a bit of a 'bedroom' DJ, and every so often he will throw me his latest mixjoint on cassette - I love it!

    Quite amusing, as he has been known to give a club promoter a cassette mixtape (on a few recent occasions), quite oblivious to the fact that hardly anyone has a cassette player anymore (needless to say, he doesn't get too many gigs)..

    ahhh.. god bless him!

  • Speaking of mixtapes, back in the early eighties, I used to use two boxes, place them right in front of each other and push "play" on one and "record" on the other and run out of the room and shut the door so that there would be no noise. Sometimes, I would sit there quietly until it was done. Damn, innovation kiddies...

  • covecove 1,566 Posts
    I still rock tapes. My walkman is my outdated ipod...and it's got a speaker!
    It's just easier for me to record onto tape and I still love them.
    I also find some pretty good (dusty) tapes around town...

  • Black Moon used to rock mixtapes too . . . and put them on their album (!?) Following quote is from "Rakim Told Me":

    Walt [Mr. Walt, the DJ] points out another interesting sonic situation on Enta da Stage that contributed to the fuzzy, grimy sound of the tracks. "We never brought records into the studio. Everything we sampled was off cassettes. That's why the album sounded like it did. It's not like we consciously tried to do it that way, but we borrowed a lot of the music we sampled, taping it from other people."

    No wonder that is one of the muddiest sounding records in hip hop.

  • karlophonekarlophone 1,697 Posts
    BVXORZ players

    yo i gots BVXORZ raers for days!

  • DjArcadianDjArcadian 3,630 Posts
    I still remember the days when AOL just started. I was like 13 or 14 at the time and started up some innocent romance with some lady who didn't realize I was so young.



    We traded some mixtapes for a while until she found out how old I was. I had this feeling she was gearing up to come out and visit me. First time I heard Army of Me was on one of her tapes.
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