Mix Tapes are a Virtue

 

What's your favorite Mix tape? After I worked at the radio station I had this yearning lets say subcutaneous desire to create mix CDs for people all the time and tie all the song together thematically. Gorgeous loops of sound and theme fitted to the personality of my friends and what I perceived to be their loves and likes in a conjuncted dance with my own desire for personal expression. I would write descriptions of every song in a fine tip pen and affix a personalized label to the case, working idly for weeks and then intensely for hours or days and then feigning almost indifference when the gift was actually given.

 

Good times.

 

Obviously not every Mix CD I ever made was done the same way, some I put more effort into than others, and for a while there I made CDs for myself that were quickly-assembled hodgepodges of newly-downloaded sound, sort of personal refresher courses on the newest in indie-music updates. I shouldn't give myself that much credit. I'm not indie. My latest Mix CD (for Sam, last week) included F**k You by CeeLo Green.

Don't say it. I know.

Anyway (¡aYay!) Today's Game! (¡Yay!) is that I need you'ns to tell me:

 

What was your favorite Mix Tape or Mix CD you've ever been given?

 

Did it have a theme like rainy days, or vampirism? Or a Band or Song title theme? What tied it together? Were they happy songs to start that got sad in the middle and then got happy again? Or a Groovin' Jazzy Roadtrip Mix perhaps? An alternating Mix on the best of Deerhoof vs. the best of Opeth? Something for your someone? Something for yourself to get over your someone?

 

I had a friend who made me a Mix CD of all the saddest country songs he could think of when he knew I was bummed out over a breakup. That was a pretty swell gift that I can almost never listen to anymore.

 

But I thanked him anyway. I thanked him because I'm genuinely grateful. Mix CDs may seem outdated these days in the Age of the Instantly transmitted iTunes Playlist, but they are truly wonderful gifts to give. Gifts that keep on giving. Yesterday I established this, while I drove through Texas... Gifts that keep on giving...

 

In recent case and specific point: I was riding away from my Uncle Enrique's funeral in the back seat of my cousin Johnny's wife's SUV when I happened to notice a familiar-looking CD case on the floor behind Johnny's drivers' seat. I picked it up and opened the case, discovering inside two gleaming discs marked cryptically with only the letters D+J respectively, in my script, in permanent sharpie. Without thinking, without even asking, I took out D and reached forward to insert it into his CD player.

 

“What is this?” Johnny asked, as Repeater by the Helio Sequence came on, followed by Imogen Heap's Can't Take It In.

“Ha!” It might have been a sad day overall, but in those few minutes I was transported back to the halcyon days of winter of 2005, and everything was again, temporarily, brilliantly right with the world.

 

Share your Mixtape Stories! Also, please recommend music for me to download and fall in love with and CDs that I should buy and recommend books that I can read and read and read over and over again bc I don't own a TV so help is much much needed thank you very much.

 

Well I gotta go lie down now. As the man said, heavy is the head that eats the crayons. Maybe I'll wake up in a few hours and check to see if anyone still reads this shit.