Earlier this week I was telling some colleagues the story of when my cousin and I got stuck at a train crossing for so long that we listened to both sides of Genesis’ “Abacab” album on cassette. Just hearing the word “cassette” brought back memories for those of us old enough to remember what they were, and the delicate operation of taping favorite songs off the radio, or copying records onto blank tapes and hoping the needle never skipped while you were doing it, or how the pause button was always just a little bit looser than the other buttons from overuse, or what an amazing invention the dual cassette deck was since it opened up the songs in your cassette collection to mix tape inclusion.
From the day I had access to a cassette deck and cared enough about music to make it worth the effort, I was a master of mix tape creation. Some of them were about putting my constantly-updated collection of 45s into a more portable format, or weeding out the filler from favorite albums, or creating a soundtrack of necessary songs to keep in the car for the summer, or just putting together a compilation for a someone when I was certain how hearing those particular songs in that particular order was going to change their life for the better.
There were a lot of things to consider when putting together a mix tape: Which songs were better suited for Side A, or Side B? What was the strongest way to introduce whatever musical theme was running through the entire collection? How did you suck the listener in and keep them engaged enough to want to hear what came next? When was it best to change the pace with a slower song (usually the 3rd or 4th one)? How many songs from the end of the side did the emotional closers start to appear, and how many closers could you even get away with stacking on each side? (Three in most cases, but even that was pushing it.)
I still remember the day I walked into my local Best Buy and first saw the cassette section of the music department had been reduced by half to make more room for compact discs. Back then there was no way to record music onto a CD, so this wasn’t a good sign. But as soon as personal computers caught up, I was back in business. Mix CDs were a different animal altogether. The best you could get away with was about 15 songs, and without any Side 1/Side 2 break to define the emotional pacing, you were forced to rethink the whole format. CD mixes were so cheap and easy to make they almost became an afterthought.
As technology moved on and CDs slipped into the obsolete, it became all about the playlists for me. Playlists were the greatest since the only limitation was access to the music, and, music nerd that I am, this hasn’t ever been much of an issue. Playlist creation is a favorite hobby of mine now, to the point where I’ll invent reasons I need specific playlists just so I can justify making them. There’s a party at my house this weekend to celebrate my sister’s recovery from her car accident from earlier in the winter; I figure 50 songs that she would like will probably be enough to get through the evening...especially since I’m allowing her to bring her Karaoke machine into my house that night, which really should be enough evidence for anyone of just how much I love my sister. After the party is over and the work week begins again, I’ll have a Work Day at school to look forward to. Work Days are those blessed days we get at the end of each trimester when the students stay home and teachers get the whole day to work on report cards and catching up on everything. A nine-hour playlist should work for that day, since going a little bit over the amount of time I’ll spend at school will be enough to give me the element of surprise about which songs on the playlist will actually get played. And once I’m done with my grading and I'll be able to devote even more time to hammering out the last few revisions, I’ll have eleven different writing playlists waiting for me created specifically for my current manuscript, each representing different tones of the story.
As you can see, this is all something of a problem. But it’s the kind of problem I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without.
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