Excerpts from "Mix Tape : The Art of Cassette Culture", edited by Thurston Moore
"I made what I thought was the most killer hardcore tape ever. I wrote 'H' on one side and 'C' on the other. That night, while we were in our bed, and after Kim had fallen asleep, I put the cassette on our stereo cassette player, dragged one of the little speakers over to the bed, and listened to the tape at ultra low thrash volume. I was in a state of humming bliss. This music had every cell and fiber in my body on heavy sizzle mode. It was sweet. For my birthday that summer, Kim bought me a Walkman with a speaker built into it. This allowed me to have the Walkman right next to me pillow and play the 'H/C' mix tape at an even more intimate range." -Thurston Moore.
"The mix tape as a form of American folk art: predigested cultural artifacts combines with homespun technology and magic markers turn the mix tape to a message in a bottle. I am no mere consumer of pop culture, it says, but also a producer of it. Mix tapes mark the moment of consumer culture in which listeners attained control over what they heard, in what order and at what cost. It liberated us from music stores and radios in the same way radios and recording liberated generations earlier from the need to be present at the performance of live music.
The mix tape is a list of quotations, a poetic form in fact: the cento is a poem made up of lines pulled from other poems. The new poet collects and remixes. Similarly, an operation of taste, it is also the cousin to the curious passion of the obsessive collector. Unable to express himself in a 'pure' art, the collector finds himself in obsessive acquisition. Collecting is strangely hot and cold, passionate and calculating. All we can agree upon is that it's not the same thing as making art. Or is it? A mix tape can never be perfect. My taste as a mixer tells you even more about me than my taste as a consumer already does. No mix tape is accidental." -Matias Viegener
"In the future, when social scientists study the mix tape phenomenon, they will conclude -- in fancy language -- that the mix tape was a form of 'speech' particular to the late twentieth century, soon replaced by the 'play list.'
It takes time and effort to put a mix tape together The time spent implies an emotional connection with the recipient. It might be a desire to go to bed, or to share idea. The message of the tape might be: I love you. I think about you all the time. Listen to how I feel about you. Or, maybe: I love me. I am a tasteful person who listens to tasty things. There is something narcissistic about making someone a tape, and the act of giving the tape puts the recipient in our debt somehow. Like all gifts, the mix tape comes with strings attached." -Dean Wareham
"The mix tape as a form of American folk art: predigested cultural artifacts combines with homespun technology and magic markers turn the mix tape to a message in a bottle. I am no mere consumer of pop culture, it says, but also a producer of it. Mix tapes mark the moment of consumer culture in which listeners attained control over what they heard, in what order and at what cost. It liberated us from music stores and radios in the same way radios and recording liberated generations earlier from the need to be present at the performance of live music.
The mix tape is a list of quotations, a poetic form in fact: the cento is a poem made up of lines pulled from other poems. The new poet collects and remixes. Similarly, an operation of taste, it is also the cousin to the curious passion of the obsessive collector. Unable to express himself in a 'pure' art, the collector finds himself in obsessive acquisition. Collecting is strangely hot and cold, passionate and calculating. All we can agree upon is that it's not the same thing as making art. Or is it? A mix tape can never be perfect. My taste as a mixer tells you even more about me than my taste as a consumer already does. No mix tape is accidental." -Matias Viegener
"In the future, when social scientists study the mix tape phenomenon, they will conclude -- in fancy language -- that the mix tape was a form of 'speech' particular to the late twentieth century, soon replaced by the 'play list.'
It takes time and effort to put a mix tape together The time spent implies an emotional connection with the recipient. It might be a desire to go to bed, or to share idea. The message of the tape might be: I love you. I think about you all the time. Listen to how I feel about you. Or, maybe: I love me. I am a tasteful person who listens to tasty things. There is something narcissistic about making someone a tape, and the act of giving the tape puts the recipient in our debt somehow. Like all gifts, the mix tape comes with strings attached." -Dean Wareham