mixtape musings

Remember mixtapes?

I made them all the time as a kid.

I still make them now.

September 2020 -- Hawaii is closed again :( What few gigs were opening up are shutting back down, and I feel the need... the need… to stream. Join me Sunday Sep. 6 noon Hawaii time (6p EDT) for a little jam sesh, just me and my git-fiddle and a few of my FB friends (that's you).

With all the extra time on my hands, no gigs, confined to the house, and so much craziness in the world right now, I've been reflecting a lot. So leading up to my WORLDWIDE LIVE STREAMING EVENT this Sunday haha, I wrote this hard-hitting food for thought piece about …. mixtapes. Remember mixtapes? I do.

"Mixtapes were a form of potlatch – the Native American custom by which a gift given requires that a reciprocal gift be received in the future. I’d make you a mixtape of my favorite songs – presumably ones you would like and might not already have or know about – and you’d be expected to make a similar tape for me of songs you think I’d like. The reciprocal giving wasn’t super time-sensitive, but you couldn’t forget. The gift of a mixtape was very personal. Often they were made for exactly one person, no one else. A radio program with one listener. Each song, carefully chosen, with love and humor, as if to say, ‘This is who I am, and by this tape you will know me better,’… Other people’s music – ordered and collected in infinitely imaginative ways – became a new form of expression.” - David Byrne, from How Music Works

This was me. I was making & receiving mixtapes all through my formative years, starting in middle school. During the early 2000’s Napster-era especially, I went crazy making mixtapes. (By then it was mix-CD's, but let's stick to the mixtape label.) I’d make mixtapes for myself and others, digging up old songs I never thought I'd hear again, thinking I'd better grab it while I could, because something about all this free music on Napster didn't quite feel right. Little did I know that in a few years, Napster would indeed be shut down due for "piracy", only to be replaced by Youtube as everyone's new free music spot, where a thin façade of copyright protection somehow justifies what still feels like stealing music or "piracy" to me… But let's keep it to mixtapes.

I was still making mixtapes for people up until a few years ago. I still keep lists of songs for potential new mixtapes I might want to make for someone, different lists for different people. But I haven't made one in a couple years. No one plays CD's anymore, tapes & tape decks are gone, LP's are a novelty, and you can't make mixtapes with them anyway, and they're too bulky even if you could. I thought about making mix-thumb-drives, but people are already so accustomed to a "phone/iPad-only" experience to listen to music, I have a feeling the mix-thumb-drive idea is non-starter. "I have to download this stuff to my computer first? Blechh!"
Plus those little drives have so much storage available now, if I only sent you an hour's worth of music on a keychain-sized drive that can hold literally thousands of songs, wouldn't it feel like a waste? Wouldn't you feel like I hadn't put enough energy into it? "This thing holds 50,000 songs but he only gave me 14? Why bother? Thanks for nothing dude."

But limitations drive creativity, and the 60-90 minute format of a blank tape was elegant in its limitations. 60-90 minutes gives you just the right amount of time -- time enough to put some real thought into the mixtape, time enough to make a statement with the songs you choose, who you're making it for, the music you want to hip them to, and getting the order of songs just right. Much more time and it would become a chore for the giver and receiver of the mixtape, especially if you subscribe to the pact of the “potlatch” Byrne describes above.

A shared custom playlist on your favorite streaming service or recommendations on social media just aren't the same. I actually thought about posting once a week, 10 song recommendations. I even made a "Friday Mixtape" post here on FB in April, listing 10 great instrumental songs of all kinds, with a bonus 11th song for good measure. But I didn't follow through in later weeks. While people might have enjoyed and taken the time to hunt down & listen to some of the songs, chances are they didn’t. And selfishly, it didn’t bring me the same joy as making a mixtape for someone. These cloud-forms lack the intimacy and "temporal snapshot" quality of a physical, "hard copy" mixtape. A mixtape was a moment in time, made for probably just one or maybe a handful of people in mind, usually with tracklist and perhaps some doodles handwritten by the creator on the tape/CD itself, or the glossy label it came with. Years later, the ink would be appropriately faded, the tape a little worn out, or the CD scratched and now skipping on some songs. The skips themselves could become forever intertwined with your nostalgia for a song. You'd hear the same song on the radio in a few years, and expect it to skip at that one part, just like on your mixtape. It was an artifact symbolic of its time and in many ways to the relationship between giver and givee.

But more broadly beyond mixtapes - I mourn the loss of music of the "hard copy" form as the ubiquitous musical currency. Digital & streaming music certainly has its advantages, the biggest one probably being almost every song ever available on-demand. We'll set aside for now the larger discussions of the digital age's potentially deleterious and at least paradigm-shifting effects on the music industry, the plight of individual artists, sound quality, people blasting their music from the “dentist-drill” speaker on their phones (a la Patton Oswalt) in what used to be more quiet public spaces… not to mention the dying print medium and other juicy debatable topics.

I miss buying a whole album just for the single and getting turned on to other songs the radio didn't play (we used to be forced to do that, kids). I miss liner notes and pictures of my favorite bands being in a little booklet I could touch and feel and smell (that new cellophane plastic glossy paper smell, you know?). I miss going to the second-hand music store (big ups to Lakewood Record Exchange circa 1990's) and with $20 I had from slinging the Sun Post once a week, taking two hours to pore through the used tapes and CD's to find just the right music with which to burn a hole in my pocket.

In fact, some of my greatest finds were from the used music store. I discovered artists or albums that I still love today and simply wouldn't have found otherwise, often based on superficialities - the cover art looked cool, or the name of the album was interesting, and they were half the price of the stuff at the mall.

The Danny Gatton album "Redneck Jazz" is probably the best example of this. I bought it strictly for the cover art and the name of the album - both of which had an earthy, homemade, yet refined appeal. Seriously, how great is the name "Redneck Jazz?" I think I was 14 years old, just getting into playing guitar. I loved the precision and fluidity of bluegrass and country guitar players, but also was becoming interested in the rhythmic and harmonic complexities of jazz. As I began to explore new sounds, beyond what great stuff my parents and the radio exposed me to, the name "Redneck Jazz" sounded like it was fusing two exciting elements of music I'd only heard separately before, and just the thing to potentially blow my teenage mind.

And it did. When I got home and listened to the actual music on the CD, my seven dollar hunch was repaid a thousand times over.
Years later, I would come to learn more about Danny Gatton, the "world's greatest unknown guitar player," a man nicknamed "The Humbler" because of his endless chops and capacity for fierce improvisation. I would come to find out the CD I had was rare, a late 70's album that was in very limited re-issue as a CD. How it even made its way to a used record store in Lakewood OH was a mystery -- it was released on NRG records (Danny's mother's label) and very likely was only released in & around the Washington DC area where Danny had achieved regional fame. Not until after his tragic suicide in 1994, along with the coming of the digital era and settling of inter-family ownership disputes, did much of the 70's era Gatton stuff become more widely available. (His major label releases didn’t arrive until the early 90’s.) Even so, some of the songs and specific versions from "Redneck Jazz" I have yet to find anywhere online.
There were others too - especially classical & jazz albums that have not been re-issued digitally and hard copies are now difficult to find, even on E-Bay.

But beyond just the music, the record store itself - especially the local used record store - offered so much. It was a safe space for young teenager to ride his bike to and explore a more adult world. The guys & gals working there were mysterious and cool and a little scary to me.. usually teenager just a little older than me, or maybe in their twenties, a little grungy, dressed in ripped jeans and a thin t-shirt, probably some piercings, smelling of the smoke break they just took in the basement. The posters on the walls were not of The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Billy Joel that my parents introduced me to (and artists I still love), they were of heavier new bands, local bands, rappers, and more obscure stuff, almost always brimming with dark foreboding energy, or at least a "you're not gonna hear this on the radio" vibe. Or even find in the Columbia House record club catalog. (10 albums for a penny?! Yes please!)

These lucky finds and forays into a slightly larger world evoke wonderful feelings of nostalgia that I think the digital era has taken away. I miss hard copies of things. I miss the brick-and-mortar stores that sell them, especially the weird ones.

And I miss mixtapes. But I’ve found a work-around.

Playing live music for people has become my version of the old school mixtape. While I occasionally write my own songs, my act has almost always been playing covers. There’s a notion among some musicians that playing covers is somehow “less than” playing originals. I understand this it doesn’t feel like you’re making a personal statement, you’re just re-treading where someone else has already been, it’s a creative dead end. If your ambition is to get your own music heard, it’s hard to disagree. But I still do 😊

My ambition has always been to just play music – any music, as long as I like it – and share it with other people. Over the years I’ve found sooooo much creative release and personal connection playing feel-good songs everyone already knows, for crowds large or small (usually small), paying close attention or not listening at all (usually not listening), sober or otherwise (usually otherwise).

They connect with the songs of course, but it’s more than that. They connect with the energy and commitment I bring to the equation, the musical choices I make to adapt the song to my act, and especially how much I’m enjoying myself. The crowd knows if you’re enjoying yourself, and there’s no doubt it’s what they respond to most. People dance and cheer and sing along and raise a glass – or don’t – both of which make me want to up the ante, increase that personal connection, remind myself if I should forget that this is my favorite thing in the world to do, and the best way I’ve found to hopefully spread joy to others, maybe even inspire them.

Compliments, when I get them, are often on my song choice. “Your singing and playing, not so much.. But we loved the songs you chose!” Kidding aside, I have come to value this type of compliment as much as any other. There is value in the curation of music – David Byrne also talks about this in his book – and as the performer to a captive crowd, you get to dictate what songs people will hear. I love when people ask me what the name of a song was, or who wrote it. Just like with the mixtape, I’m sharing a little piece of myself that I hope will resonate with you. I often choose songs on the fly, deviating from my prepared setlist, based on how I’m feeling, or how I think the crowd is feeling. It’s making a live mixtape in real-time, and there’s plenty of thought and creative energy that goes into it. Not only does it keep great songs alive to a new audience for those who don’t already know it, but you can arouse nostalgia and good feelings in people who already do.

Making live mixtapes for people has been a way of life for me for over fifteen years now. I have grown as a musician with every performance, every hour of rehearsal, every moment thinking about ways to improve my act. Playing covers has allowed me to play hundreds of live gigs. Wherever I am on the ability spectrum, I’d be much closer to the “don’t quit your day job” side without all those gigs playing covers, making live mixtapes. I would have never met so many talented musicians and lifelong friends along the way, or been able to go places and attend cool events I never would have otherwise. I don’t feel like it’s been a creative dead end, or less personally gratifying, or just a re-tread. It’s been amazing.

I hope you can join me Sunday for my next live mixtape.

Copyright 2020 by David Sedlak