Mix-a-tune

In yesterday's post, I basically just shoved a couple of YouTube videos of an obscure German punk band from the '80s at you. No context, no explanation, just the videos and some ramblings about feeling old. I just wanted to play some jams, so that's what you got. But, as is always the case with your 'umble author, there's a back story.

At the end of last year, a buddy of mine from a more or less German speaking country suggested I read Jennifer Egan's magnificent Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. So I did. The book is about an aging punk rock record producer and what happens to the people from that scene as they are getting older. Frankly, on the basis of that description, I would have passed the book right by. Not another aging rock star book. But, a dear friend suggested it, and I have certainly done much harder things for friends. And as it happens, that book is tremendous. Not just because it is about people roughly my age, or because it's about music I appreciate, but because it's a really well crafted book. You should read it.

Now as it also happens, the Aryan who recommended the book to me is the guy who in my youth was always turning me onto the latest sounds, and I still happen to have a couple of artifacts from that glorious time, in the form of something that will swell the hearts of my contemporaries and will likely mystify the youngsters among you. That is, I have some MixTapes my friend made for me.

Exhibit from the Museum of Obsolete Media - a "Mixed Tape" 1990

See, before there were playlists, before there was digital music, before normal people had access to anything as exotic as a computer network, before there were even Compact Disks, there were vinyl "records" and record-able cassette tapes. Average people could buy blank tapes at the record store (or the grocery store, for that matter), take them home and record stuff. We recorded commercial broadcasts from the FM radio and "tracks" from 12 inch albums. We would spend hours recording mixtapes, queuing up the tape using only the << Back, Pause and Forward >> buttons, dropping the needle onto the proper cut and hitting the Record button at just the right moment to avoid odd snippets of the previous song or missing the beginning of the one you want. Such tapes were a labor of love, impossible to comprehend in today's Copy and Paste world.

On my favorite of these mixtapes from my Helvetic pal (pictured above) is exactly the kind of eclectic time capsule that made these so special. Now get yourself to YouTube and start listening!