Mess + Noise #4 had this fantastic piece on mixtapes which I really enjoyed. At last it is up on the web on the author’s blog!
[sidenote: I still don’t understand (free) magazines that don’t put the entirety of their content up on the web if they have a website – its not like it is going to hurt your ‘market’.]
On a global scale, the technology of mix tapes is still far more accessible and democratic; as my friend Ryan put it, “tape decks are the stuff of junk piles and jumble sales.” Although ‘the CD-R revolution’ has brought a million laptop twiddlers and weekend noise bands into the realms of wider distribution, the mix tape still plays a crucial role in genres such as hip-hop, bhangra and grime, where enthusiasm is high and purchase power low. Ryan noted the connections between then and now, looking back to the 1970s. “Punk was in, unemployment was up, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots was getting increasingly wider – and very little has changed. The mix tape is a refusal of blatant BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, MORE consumer culture.” So stick that in your iPod and shove it.
I promptly went out and bought Susan Stewart’s book On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection
