The New Mix Tape

I've always been a big fan of the gift of music. Not
the buying of music products so much, though I did
give Scott Baker a copy of Def Lepard's Pyromania for
his 13th birthday shortly before he sabotaged my love
for his sweet sister, Linda. WHY SCOTT, WHY?!

No, I refer to the act of buying a 90-minute TDK or
Memorex tape (whatever was on sale and of suitable
quality) and compiling a list of songs and bumps,
putting them together in the right order and
presenting them to that special someone. It might be a
girl you dig, a buddy who needs your musical influence
or a teacher looking to get updated.

CDs could be burned in the same way, but at the exact
same moment in history it became possible to burn 15
WAV tracks onto a disk it also became possible for me
to burn 23 hours worth of MP3s and WMA music files
onto a single disk or to e-mail one to three songs at
a time across the ether.

It was a clear spiritual directive, a way of
communicating who and what I am and what people mean
to me one byte (or three million bytes) at a time. I
could do more than just string a few Cure songs along
with a Peter Gabriel track. I could give people a
collection of deep 80s grooves culled by me from my
collection and the net. By sending tunes as I found
them one at a time to friends, I gave them the ability
to create not only a single soundtrack of Greg, but a
sort of radio station of tracks that could be played
randomly as if chosen by the Lord to signify some
deeper meaning.

It's like the advent of stuffed crust pizza. That was
like discovering a new dimension of cheesy flavor
where previously one had not existed. It was kind of a
mind blower. Sure, we take it for granted today, but
at the time... wow.

So make a mix for your crew and send it out over the
net for to played on shuffle and at full volume. It
will be the soundtrack of your life.