Dust Bin Tapes ’n Tapes (and Tapes and More God-damned Tapes)
posted by on March 16 at 14:00 PM
Cassettes: They can be a reel pain in the ass.
I’m in the process of packing my belongings in preparation for a move to Orange County, California; I’m outta here March 24 (yeah, I’m happy to see me go, too).
I’ve moved many times and it never gets easier to choose what to jettison and what to keep. Moving is one of the most existential and emotionally exhausting experiences one can go through. Boxing up your possessions, you are forced to decide over and over the worth of your stuff and by extension the worth of your life (you may not be what you own, but you are largely defined by it, and your shit speaks volumes about who you are, he said with obvious obviousness). During this assessment, your past, present, and future somehow converge in the material goods you drag around this planet like a ball and chain that both nourishes and drains your mind. Repeatedly you have to ask yourself, “Will this thing from my past serve any worthwhile function in my future?” And you have to decide this now. This procedure becomes more excruciating when you’re an aging writer with tons of your work in yellowing newspapers and magazines from the pre-internet era.
With this latest move, I’ve been seriously pondering ditching my ludicrously large collection of cassettes. I rarely play them, nor even really think about ’em—until I have to move again. Now, I can deal with leaving behind the store-bought tapes and promo cassettes for albums that deluged me when I worked for Alternative Press magazine in the ’90s. What gives me pause (get it? PAUSE) are the hundreds of mixtapes I made myself, mixtapes in which I sweated the track selections and segues as if my life depended on them… and maybe it did, at the time.
Just glancing at the titles I gave to those tapes (The Wayout Sound from Far Too Deep, Leveraged Freakout, Blackening Yr Third Eye, Anything Is Impossible, Feeling Good About Feeling Bad, Alone in a Crowd, Drone of Blood, A Yearning Experience, Prepare Yourself for Delirium, etc.) zooms me back to the time of their creation and the circumstances of my life then. I even wrote the date of completion on each tape, as if I knew they’d eventually be treasured mementos.
So even though I want to lighten my load as I head south, I’m still torn over whether to trash my tapes or continue to lug them around with me like audio diaries that possess as much symbolic value as they do sonic worth—most of them anyway. Some of these cassettes date back to the ’80s and probably aren’t even playable, yet the thought of sending them to the scrap heap seems about as appealing as severing my ears. I’d like to think of them as eloquent testaments to a life well lived, but maybe I’m just a sentimental, deluded bastard.
In another sense, leaving behind my tapes could be liberating, a dispatching of old analog habits and a shedding of dead weight. Yet in another sense, it would be like losing a significant chunk of my history, an old-school version of having your hard drive wiped out. If this paragraph drove you nuts, then you have an idea of my current mental state—multiplied a hundredfold.
Is it only old motherfuckers like me who grew up in the analog era who fret over this nonsense, or are the kids nurtured on computers and cellphones just as attached to their possessions?
On another note, who wants to buy my played-to-death cassette copies of Jeru the Damaja’s The Sun Rises in the East and Kitchens of Distinction’s Strange Free World? I’ll cut you a sweet deal.
I never did the mix tapes for myself thing, although I did exchange them with many friends over the years, and as far as I know I still have all the ones that were made for me (and I hope the recipients of mine still have them . . .). But nothing like the volume it sounds like you're talking about.
I don't know, I say keep 'em - it's just another box, right? It would cool if you could actually digitize them (the ones that will play, that is) eventually, though; shouldn't be too hard.
Just went through this same dilemma myself not too long ago. Here's my solution: keep the cover art/tracklisting for each mixtape you created. If you should decide you miss one of the mixes in the future, you can pull together the mp3s, put them in the same order, and pop them on your pod. You'll have less weight to carry, need less storage space, and will have an easier-to-play version of the mix. =) Good luck!
dave, when i moved to seattle, i had my car broken into right away. they stole a shoe box full of the most prized cassette mix tapes of my life. i had just gone through that painful process of ditching stuff and had narrowed down my collection to just mixtapes that had meaning to me. after the tapes were stolen (seriously, wtf? they're worthless to anyone else) i didn't worry about the other shit they took. that was 8 years ago and although i've doubled the amount of music i own since then, the only thing i really want is that box of tapes. you love music. those tapes are more powerful than photo albums and diaries. keep your tapes. taking more than one pair of shoes? taking more than one pair of jeans? shoes and jeans and other shit can be bought and rebought. those tapes are irreplaceable.
MP3s? Pod? This is Dave Segal we're talking about...
Great post, Dave. Your thoughtful words will be sorely missed in Seattle.
I think you should take the mixtapes and deposit them around town in the places where people are going to miss you with a little note saying it's from you. You always feel better about getting rid of your stuff if it ends up with someone else.
I want some of your tapes. C'mon, give!
(though I have an iPod, I still love to rock my little lo-fi Walkman....)
and, YES, you're sure gonna be missed Sir Segal
-- i feel yer pain... i only ended up keeping about 10. the rest became art projects.
: |
I just kept the ones of old Zappa and Pink Floyd bootlegs and shows taped at early/mid 90's Seattle of my friends bands. Unfortunately none of the bands went on to be famous despite being very good to great; Medelicious, Micheline Impossible, Third Door Down, and Dickweed.
I wish I had a tape of Love Battery at the Crocodile when Straight Freak Ticket came out. Dayglo is still my favorite album the the 90s.
You have to keep those tapes. It's part of your history and, yes, you are defined by your history. One day your kids (or somebody in your life) will go through your things to learn a little more about you in the same way we dig up our grandparent's old letters. The letters are historical documents and so are your tapes.
dave..
keep em.. just keep em.. you're looking at em now and they're a dilemma. in a day or so you're gonna want to throw everything away. but two moves from now ( even though i don't know you i just sense that oc is still two moves away from where you're going to really settle ) you're going to rediscover them in a totally different light and it'll be like christmas. you're gonna sit somewhere in the sunshine maybe next to a river with one of them old yellow waterproof panasonic walkmen and you won't even glance at the tracklisting and the mix will speak to you in a way they couldn't even five years ago.plus there's something about a mix that's organic enough to have a lasting uniqueness about it that just can't be replicated. if somebody else chose and sequenced the songs in the same order it still wouldn't be dave.
and may i add my voice to the chorus of gratitude for having your voice around these last few years. you almost singularly raised the bar for music appreciation around these parts at a time it verged on stagnation, sucessfully building bridges that needed to be built and lighting a fire under a couple that needed the heat. thanks for the love. we needed it.
.. and should you get rid of a cassete or two MY yellow waterproof panasonic walkman still works..
just sayin..
love - or something very much like it..
Wow, everybody, thanks for all the kind, helpful responses. And here I was expecting an avalanche of hate and bile... Well, there's still time for that, I'm sure.
I like Ari's idea @5.
Eric @4 knows me too well.
Riz @10--I am truly moved by your words. I will pick out a couple of cassettes for you and try to get them into your hands before I leave. Please hit me with an email at segal@thestranger.com so we can work out a plan.
"The Wayout Sound from Far Too Deep, Leveraged Freakout, Blackening Yr Third Eye, Anything Is Impossible, Feeling Good About Feeling Bad, Alone in a Crowd, Drone of Blood, A Yearning Experience, Prepare Yourself for Delirium"
Dave Segal, taking into consideration the titles of your mixed tapes coupled by the fact that they were made by you for yourself....I'd say TOSS THEM ALL OUT NOW. You are a fully grown man...let it go.
Dave, I can't tell you how many times I've faced that same dilemna. Each time I move I reorganize them and they take me back to another time. I can't remember the last time I actually listened to them, but the box is still there, sitting in my basement as I type.
Every time I read something you write, a blog in Line Out, a post on Division or an article in the Stranger, I'm reminded about how gifted you are. It's been such a pleasure. Please keep in touch so that we'll continue to have access to your work, even if from afar.
Dave! Don't sell your tapes!! At least not your mix tapes. Seriously. They aren't that heavy and you'll regret it!
Dammit, Eric beat me to it.
And I'm with Recess.
Dave, I'm 17 years old right now, and I've been making (get ready to feel old) mix CD's for a few years now, I have hundreds, they're stashed in a drawer in my room, and I rarely listen to any of them. But I can't bear to throw them away, because of the memories attached to making them. Now, of course I didn't sit next to a cassette player, and manually press the red dot and play at the same time to record just one song, I just dragged and dropped. I'll be going off to college this summer, and your post has made me think of how I'm going to feel when I have to leave those behind... so the solution... don't.
Those mixtapes are essentially part of you. They represent you going through a shitty breakup, or a great romance, maybe a fight with your parents, or it could be the first mixtape you put into your first car.
If you throw away your tapes, you're throwing out your soul.
Allow me to add my voice to the chorus of "Keep 'em," unless you have an adverse reaction to *both* the music and the person who compiled the tape for you. Otherwise, you're never getting any of them back. I rarely listen to my collection, but I'm thankful it's there. I "mixed" most of my tapes while working at Cellophane Square. I'll never see some of those rare 12"s again. Also, you'll definitely be missed. Seattle becomes a much poorer place whenever a good writer leaves, so I'm sad Ann Powers left, sad you're going, but glad Matos came back. P.S. I recently noticed a Viv Akauldren release ("Witness") among my cassettes. I bet you're one of the few people in Seattle who even remembers them--mostly because they were from Detroit.
Thanks for the kind words, Kathy.
Viv Akauldren--wow, haven't thought about them since the late '80s. Saw 'em play a few times in Detroit. They were pretty special--and better appreciated by Europeans than they were by Detroiters.
I'm going to keep most of my tapes, even though I have an aversion to the guy who made the majority of 'em--me.
I went through this before moving to seattle and decided to easter egg them all. They went in shutters and mailboxes of houses/ apartments I liked, others were stealthily slipped into friend's bags or between their sofa cushions, some i wrapped in ribbons and hung from tree branches or the balconies of some of my favorite haunts. It was liberating and also leaves you free to guess if those who found them appreciate and love them as much as their maker.
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