With such fanciful technology as CD burning and now the mighty iPod, many people of today have forgotten the magic of the mighty mixtape. Sure, you can burn any song you want onto a CD or make your own giant iPod play list, but there’s something more organic, to me, about hunkering down at the clunky tape deck to construct a mixtape. I haven’t done it in years, but there was a time when I made far more than necessary; it was almost an art form to me.

It all started when I was a freshman in high school. After years of exclusively listening to Michael Jackson and then Bon Jovi, I discovered more and more music. Many of the upper classmen were into Led Zeppelin, who really rocked my white socks off with their bombastic epics of Valhalla and rocking and getting some as only a rock star can. Really wacky, heavy stuff, and I was down. Unfortunately, CDs were too expensive for me at the time, since my first part time gig, bagging groceries, wouldn’t happen for another year. Luckily, I knew a fella named Josh Remy who was into the Led as well as Queen, who were having resurgence thanks to that Mike Meyers movie that doesn’t feature a British spy. I asked if I could borrow a couple of his CDs to copy onto a cheap blank cassette (as CD burning was still a thing of the future at the time), and he suggested he pick the best Led and Queen songs, his favorites anyway, and make a mixtape. Intrigued, I gave him the blank cassette, and the next day, I had side A packed with Led and B all opulent with Queen. He even listed every song and doodled a little logo on the cassette sleeve. His selections remain some of my favorites of both bands, and I suddenly was enamored with the power of making tapes with only songs I liked.

No more having to fast forward through the crap for the gold! I could make a tape that was ALL GOLD!!!

Around that same time, I was writing an epic story about me and my friends as detectives saving earth from alien cockroaches. Seriously. It was all “wacky” comedy, the type of crap I’d been writing since I was 10, but we had fun with it. I’d actually handwrite the stories into notebooks, length of the story sometimes actually determined by the number of pages attached to the spiral. I was creating an epic this time, though, actually typing it up, doing artwork for it -- the whole nine. These were one-of-a-kind creations, as I didn’t have the scratch or moxie to make copies, so I’d actually often read them out loud to a group of friends, doing voices for each character (often impressions of the friends to whom I was reading). It was really fun for me and seemed to get laughs. For this typed epic, however, I wanted something special. I decided it needed a soundtrack.

Not really concentrating on the specifics of the story, I wanted to basically pick some songs I really liked that could set the mood and maybe be something to listen to as I wrote. Taking a cue from Josh, I’d list all the songs and even do a little art for the sleeve. I’d put songs on tapes before, but this time, I had to really pay attention to the order of the songs, the space in-between them, and the actual length of the collection, as I couldn’t have a song getting cut off after the 45 minute side was full, but I wouldn’t stand for too much space at the end of the side, either. It was a daunting process, and I was way too into it.

One of the biggest challenges was not putting too much space between songs while making sure I had enough. I also had to compete with the dreaded “pop” that could appear at the end of the preceding song or when I hit “play” and “record” for the next one. This “popping” sound became my enemy, and I wouldn’t stand for it assaulting the listener and taking away from the enjoyment of hearing Blood, Sweat, & Tears’ “When I Die” following “Girlfriend” by Matthew Sweet. Also of note is that, unlike the quick burning of a CD off your computer, making a mix tape on a regular deck like mine could take a couple of hours, as you had to gather all your music around you, put everything in order, and sit through every song, often more than once for playback. Quite the undertaking.

So, the soundtrack was a hit, and when I wrote the inevitable sequel to the story, I made another one. When my friend (and basis for one of the funniest characters in my stories), Nate Burkitt, got a car, into the snazzy tape deck went the soundtracks. Often with several other friends, we’d rock out as we sped home after school in Waverly, Ohio, loving almost every selection I’d made, from “Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band to Smashing Pumpkin’s “Geek USA.” Actually, that Pumpkins tune offered me one of my greatest ever mixtape challenges. It was a kind of long song, and I was running out of space. I wanted to include it, though, as it rocks hard… except for a bit off mellowness in the middle. I don’t mind that part of the song anymore, but at the time, I deemed it completely boring and, therefore, expendable. Using my in-between song anti-popping training, I decided to play editor and just cut that part out, enabling the song to be included while keeping it rocking all the way through. It had to be smooth, though, and not sound like I’d taken a chunk out. It took some tries, some heartbreaking “almost” moments, but I finally got it. It did indeed ROCK from start to finish with nary a blip or pop.

I’m not sure where many of my mixtapes are anymore. I think I have a few, and maybe some of my friends do, too. They were a big part of my high school years and even throughout, eventually becoming a way to impress girlfriends with my song selection and popping sound-free production values. I can whip up songs on a CD for anyone now, but the order is easy to change, it takes no time at all, and the challenge of defeating the pop is gone. It’s convenient, but all too easy.