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- A mix tape to me is an invitation
to enter into someone else's world.
- A mix tape is a set of songs that are designed
to evoke a specific set of emotions or a mood or feeling,
or something you're trying to say.
They're basically a letter from yourself to another person.
A mix tape is utilizing the finite amount of minutes
to define a musical, emotional environment,
where you can put it on and go through your past,
your future, your present, in a way that
is emotionally poignant.
- A mix tape is an instrument that you use
to show someone your coolness,
and the cool things and culture that you like.
And you put them all together on one cassette like,
your whole collection of coolness.
- Because of that, it's incredibly intimate.
When you know someone well enough to give them a mix,
it's almost like knowing someone well enough
to say I love you.
You're running that risk of rejection.
- I totally edited the mixes that people gave to me,
because no one does it better than me.
(laughs)
- A mix tape is the gateway to the entrance of your soul.
It's either like you're allowed in or you're fucking denied.
(laughs)
- You have to make great mix tapes if you're a music lover.
It's just a part of, you don't have to be a musician.
You just have to love music.
And that first track is so imperative.
- It's really about knowing what songs sync together,
what songs blend together, and having, like,
creating a feeling, and taking people on a journey.
- A mix tape is a traveling sound collage.
A full-circle experience.
- The entire day, spread out musically.
And if it's done properly,
you're gonna have the best fucking day of your life.
- A mix tape, to me, is an expression of songs.
- An expression of yourself.
- A communication of some feelings.
- Holds the key to your whole soul and being.
- Where I've been and where I am now.
- It's an incantation.
It's an invitation.
- It's a perfectly captured moment.
- You make it with great affection.
It takes time.
I put it in the tape deck, I'm like damn!
My hair stands up.
I get all gooey inside.
- A mix tape is an opportunity to express
through the collage of different artists, a story.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat rock music)
- Hazel was interested in getting a record player
for a little while.
And so I was researching online
and I found this record player that also
had a tape player built in.
I was like, well that's gotta be the one we're gonna get.
Got her a Beach House record, Death Cab record,
stuff like that.
And then I was like, oh wait,
I think I've got that box of tapes in the garage.
So I went and grabbed this box of tapes here.
And it's mostly mix tapes, including the mix tape
that I made for your mother when we first started dating.
And so we just kind of sat on the floor
and listened to a bunch of these tapes.
So you take the tape,
that's got to be on the left hand side, put it in here,
turn this on.
We need to plug it in.
(both laughing)
That's an important part.
- [Hazel] Yeah, that might affect it a little bit.
- [Robert] What was the first musical format
that you listened to?
Like, did you buy CDs or was it just digital music?
- No, I think I had, like, a CD player.
I'm sure it was pink or Hello Kitty, or something like that.
- Something, yeah.
- And yeah, I think I listened to some CDs.
I remember listening to Phoenix, "Listzomania."
I have like really distinct memories of that.
- Really? - Yeah.
- On CD?
- I think so.
- Did we have that CD?
- Yeah, I think so.
I remember putting it in, and like-
- It was probably a CD-R.
Do you know what a CD-R is?
- No.
- Should we talk about that? - This is a good start.
- All right, yeah, all right.
(upbeat music)
- Well, the first thing we had was 8-tracks.
We started out with a massive amount of 8-tracks,
and then my uncle had an 8-track player in his car,
so that was a big deal.
It was like whenever anybody got to drive that car
with the 8-track player in it,
they always went crazy over the 8-tracks.
- I hated 8-track right away
because it would break up one song on the side.
It would go,
it would be like la la la la la kkk-chunk,
then it would be la la la la la.
That's not nice.
They should never have done that.
- Vinyl was a big part of it,
because the record collections were all vinyl.
So it was like, going through those and looking
at the album covers.
A lot of albums I know I knew as a kid and knew
of them just because of the covers
had really dope artwork on them.
Or, you know, something on the cover that stood out.
- With my mom in Brookline,
I remember not necessarily what records she'd have on,
but I remember looking at her record collection
while she was gone, and picking from that
and seeing the record to
the Joe Cocker record, with his crazy face.
His like ahh face.
- If you were just looking at album covers
and being like, Who is this girl
with all this crazy makeup on?
And then you get home and it's like Nina Hagen,
and you're like, This is different, you know what I mean?
(singing in foreign language)
- I definitely remember falling in love
with a lot of imagery,
a lot of album covers.
And I felt like it deepened the listening experience.
The earliest thing that I can remember,
insofar is developing a relationship with music
or falling in love with music really comes
from my memories of sharing time with my father.
Listening to him spin records.
It was never a conscious thing that we did.
It just seemed like that was always the fallback.
- My mother was incredibly eclectic with music.
She has, in my opinion, pitch perfect taste in music.
While I don't have every record she had,
20 Barbara Streisand records I can live without.
However, she raised me, Miles Davis, Bartok,
Broadway show tunes, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles,
Bob Dylan, both Guthries, Pete Seeger,
and on and on, and on.
- When I really got,
I was old enough to get my own,
it was like a my first Sony type thing.
It had a cassette player.
It was portable.
Red with like big green and blue buttons,
probably for a little kid.
And I remember my mom allowing me to purchase "Purple Rain."
(laughing)
Which I used to know all the words to "Purple Rain",
and I had no idea.
Like, "Darling Nikki", right over my head.
♪ You could say she was a sex fiend ♪
- The very, very, very first record that I bought
was actually "Hang on Sloopy" by Jan and Dean,
because I thought that they were singing Hang on Snoopy.
And I was a big Snoopy fan.
♪ Hanging round the water fountain, playing the fool ♪
- My idea with the mix tape was putting a record
on the stereo, holding the single speaker cassette deck
with a condenser mic to the speaker and being real quiet,
and recording the song.
- You'd like listen late night, off the radio.
And at the time, like with the radio shit,
it's not like your CDs or your records where it records
at a certain level.
Like, however loud you got the radio,
that's how loud it's gonna record.
- Everybody would sit there with their finger
on the pause button, waiting for it to come on
and as soon as that show started on the radio,
you would record it.
And then if you had a dual cassette recorder,
you could dub that cassette and then give it to one
of your friends.
- There just wasn't a lot of money to go around
and to buy records, and the way that my friends
and I discovered new music was specifically
through creating tapes.
You didn't let your records go out.
You made a tape.
- I took over one of my parents' cars
and it had a cassette player in it,
and what I wanted was to be able to play whatever I wanted.
And I never really liked a whole album all the way through.
I always liked only certain songs.
- The mix tape was kind of like the equivalent
of your first bike.
Because it was like the first moment
where musical freedom was given to you.
- Let's put Iggy Pop with Guy Lombardo.
Or, I don't know, you could just do anything.
You could make a tape and that was, you know,
you were expressing who you were.
- The thing is that people don't realize between vinyl
and tape is the vinyl is already the classic record.
That Bowie record is a classic record.
The Metallica record is a classic record
and it's the mix tape is really a view
into what you like and who you are,
and how all these things relate to you.
- I really wanna tap into my inner feelings the most,
and look at it as a journal, like a diary entry as well.
This is what I'm feeling.
This is where I've been, and I'm sharing that in this mix.
- I like being able to take all of these artists
that you would never think would go together
and put them together, because it's about the groove.
It's not about the genre to me.
- You know, mix tapes are giving people a chance
to really remix the culture in a weird way, you know?
- One of the earliest memories I have of sharing music
for people was when a lot of sort of more salacious
and underground rap and hip-hop music came around.
It was a lot of music you didn't want your parents
to know you were listening to,
because they positively couldn't understand it
and it was ushering you into a world that you
had absolutely no frame of reference for.
- Like I see this one guy, he lives in the suburbs
but there's all these bands he doesn't know about,
and he's gotta hear them because these bands
are gonna save his life.
So he's gotta get a cassette of it.
And I'm gonna sit up all night and make this cassette
for him to make this C60 TDK.
It's gonna save his life.
(upbeat music)
- [Robert] All right, so what's our first step?
- I'll look through my dad's music.
So I'm picking some rockin' songs to show
that I have a rockin' dad.
- So, is there anything that stands out
from what you've looked at so far?
- I've seeing a lot of My Bloody Valentine.
I mean, there's so many to look through.
So the first one's gotta be good.
That's a lot of pressure.
So some of these don't even have like words on them.
So, I don't know.
I don't know what that is.
I know "Bizarre Love Triangle."
- Okay. - I like that one.
"Swap meet."
"Fake Empire."
We definitely care about U2.
Something from The Joshua Tree.
- Gonna put "Live Forever." - All right.
Definitely something from here.
He loves "Rushmore."
I have a Beach House CD.
The Beatles.
I'm not sure if I should do "Help," or "Let it Be."
Is it against the rules to put two songs by the same band in
"Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying."
"Arcade Fire."
Definitely is gonna go in there.
- Okay.
(upbeat music)
- My early days of making a mix tape.
This is back when I had this many records
and this many cassettes.
You have less of everything.
So everything is of greater importance.
I'm going to take the entire weekend and I'm going
to take this blank 90-minute tape,
that cost me about an hour's pay, and I'm going
to make a beautiful environment of music.
90 perfect minutes.
A sonic environment that you can live in and enjoy.
- You'd get a 90-minute cassette.
You know, a Maxell Type II, of course.
You can't do anything with Type I.
What's Type I?
It's gotta be Type II.
- My go-to mix tape were these,
these blank Maxells, XL IIs.
The 100-minute version,
just because I could fit a little more music on there.
- Never used the 120s, because the quality
is a little bit shitty.
But 90s.
An XL II 90.
- I think whichever one was on sale, to be honest
with you, man.
Like whichever I could buy a bundle
of three or five pack bundle.
- I would buy them in packs of five, right.
You'd buy the five pack.
for, I don't know, $10 or whatever they were.
And they were the gold ones.
- Now I didn't know what was the best.
It just had gold on it.
- It's gold, and so it must be good!
- You pulled that Maxell Gold out, people knew.
They's like, oh man he's pulling out the heat.
He's got the heat on that one.
- I don't even know what Type II means.
I have no idea.
I just assume it's better than Type I.
Like Type I is junior.
Or like Type I is like the entry-level or novice,
and Type II must be like expert.
So I just, you know.
Will we ever solve the mystery?
What's Type II?
I have no idea.
- I'm trying to remember all the brands.
It was like Maxell, Sony, Memorex.
And then the Memorex commercial where the guy,
was it Memorex or Maxell where the guy's sitting
in the chair and the wind's blowing?
And we all like, yeah we're going
to get those because that's good sound.
- I would never use Memorex,
even though the commercial is amazing.
(grand orchestral music)
I always get drop-outs.
And someone once told me, you're just magnetic.
And I just said that's bullshit.
No, I'm not magnetic.
These are shitty tapes.
- Memorex did this dicky thing during the '80s
where they had the one that had like pink triangles
and shit on it.
It looked like a fucking explosion
in a "Miami Vice" episode.
It was that thing.
Anytime I saw one of those, I was like I judged.
I was like, oh you ghetto mix-tape maker.
- When I joined the band Black Flag in 1981,
I became influenced by the great producer Spot.
Spot was a TDK man from day one.
And I bought TDK cassettes because he worked
with them in the studio and he said, they're reliable.
Batch after batch, that's my go to cassette.
And so I became a TDK guy.
- This is so fucking nerdy,
but I remember the box itself was kind of almost curved.
Where the spine had a little tiny curve to it.
So it kind of felt tactile.
Like in your hand, it felt substantial and the weight
was beautiful.
I think I actually have a couple like still in,
I think I might,
I have them somewhere here.
I have them in the,
I still have them in the packaging,
virgin untainted, never been recorded on.
- There was high bias and like all these weird codes,
what made it sound like you were getting something,
this is gonna sound good.
It all just sounded like the same tape!
It didn't necessarily sound any better.
It's a fucking cassette.
It's magnetic tape, it's gonna wear out,
so it was always weird to me that they always
had these BSAFF and LX.
So buy this tape.
It's the best, Memorex, it's gonna blow your mind.
I was like, mmmm, I still hear a hiss.
(upbeat music)
- There was a 45 a single that came out in the summer of,
I think, 1975 or '76 called Mr. Jaws.
It would play clips of songs as the answers
to interview questions.
- [Reporter] We are here on the beach where a giant shark
has just eaten a girl swimmer.
Well, Mr. Jaws, how was it?
- [Man] Dy-no-mite!
- [Reporter] And what did she say when you grabbed her?
♪ Please, mister, please ♪
- So I started doing that as a kid.
I would I didn't make a mix tape full of songs.
I made a mix tape of lines from songs.
- Basically like the mix tape started out
as something specifically put together as a presentation
of music, but like not necessarily
as one flowing mix of music.
A perfect example of what I'm trying to say
is like DJ Crazy Toones.
DJ Crazy Toones, his mix tapes are like movies.
So it's like you start out with an explosion.
- There was a lot of different acapellas
that DJs used to start off a mix.
So you knew who they were as soon as they started off.
Like, there used to be this Tarzan sound effect
that Farley would play on the radio.
(Tarzan shouting)
And you would be like, oh that's Farley.
- The first shit I really started getting was from New York.
You'd get these DJs from New York
and they'd drop these like mix tapes
with exclusive freestyles over samples
that hadn't been cleared yet or busting
over someone else's beat.
And those were the ones I really, like,
that shit really took off.
- Then we started making these things called pause mixes.
Everybody that was a kid in the '80s,
or mid to about '85, '86, is familiar with the pause mix.
Basically, you take all your favorite songs
and you pause them at certain points and then you throw in
another song, but you had to throw it in right
on beat so that it would continue and make a continuous mix.
- Some tape decks had a harder pause,
so when you let it go it automatically started recording.
Some of them had slower pauses so you couldn't really do it,
so there'd be a little lag.
- The number one thing you liked about the cassette machine,
not necessarily the Walkman, but the machine
was that goddamn pause button was so tight
that you would not make mix tapes the way that,
let's say, a love mix tape is.
Which is like here's this song, it goes into this song,
it goes into this song, and then here's a full song.
You would make it where it would be like,
I'm gonna take this verse and then I'm gonna put it
into the bridge of this song,
then I'm gonna take this song
and that's gonna be the chorus.
And you would just hit that pause button and you were able
to splice together everything you wanted.
- If you wanted to do it like seamless,
you needed to have a mixer.
And I have this, I had this old Radio Shack 4-channel mixer.
I think I have it back here somewhere.
Yeah, I'm gonna go,
hang on one second.
Yeah, so this is what I had.
This thing right here.
This was the mixer I had.
Left and right and then left and right,
so you'd put one cassette there and one cassette there
and there was the output.
And then there was another cassette player
recording both of those.
Either it was a turntable or another cassette player.
So this is my cool little Radio Shack Realistic mixer
that I used.
I was a little, I was a perfectionist about it,
so my mix tapes were fucking good.
(tapes scratching)
- So that's how you'd check to get your first beat,
when you're doing your blend.
Get it right there on the blend and...
(upbeat music)
- We'd take a week
and make a whole tape and then give them
to somebody else and trade them all out.
Every week it would be like,
let me hear what you made this week,
let me hear what you made this week.
- Pretty much mix tapes are either to make you look cool,
if you're going to blast them, love,
or you're trying to turn someone on to something.
- It doesn't even involve me.
It just involves what I love.
And I think that's all I'm really trying
to do with my music, is to show people what I love.
Not because they need to love it, or it's important to them,
but because it's that five-year-old thing
of look what I made, and,
I think probably mix tapes are,
I think they're one
of the last ways we really let ourselves do that
before we become adults
and don't do things like that anymore.
- I think the first mix tapes
that I ever made were on a dual deck cassette player.
And I definitely remember how much labor went
into making these mixes.
- And then I got one with a CD player on top,
back when CDs were like $45 a piece.
And so you would have the CD player on top,
cassette tape there, so then the whole world was my oyster.
- You have to figure out first what was the purpose
of the tape?
Was it to inspire emotion?
Was it to turn somebody on to new stuff?
Was it both?
- It just depends what you're trying to say.
Because that's what mix tapes were.
They were letters to somebody, you know?
- [Robert] Okay, so what we're gonna do,
before you figure out
what order you want everything to be is,
is we're gonna write all the songs.
And then we're gonna look at it
and figure out what order they should go in.
And so we'll start with CD's.
We have The Cure.
The song is "Push."
And then New Order.
I believe you wanted "Bizarre Love Triangle."
- Mm-hmm. - Belle and Sebastian.
- "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying."
"Help!"
The Beatles, again.
- "Let it Be", correct? - Yes.
- Peter Bjorn and John.
"Amsterdam."
Let's do "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
"Fake Empire."
- [Robert] First Nirvana.
I believe you wanted "Swap Meet."
All right, one of your personal favorites.
- Mazzy Star. - You got that on vinyl.
- It's gonna be an interesting mix of songs.
- The first track on your mix tape
is the most important thing ever that you'll ever do
if you decide that you want to make a mix tape.
- Yeah, it's very important.
You've got to grab the person's attention immediately.
And I have to grab my own first.
Like, I have to be really into it.
It has to start from there or else it's kinda,
it's not gonna flow.
- It doesn't matter if you are a DJ, in a band,
doing a playlist, doing a mix tape.
The first song is what sets the tone for what is to come.
So when I DJ now, I always play "Gay Bar"
by The Electric Six.
♪ Gay bar, gay bar, gay bar ♪
- It really has to jumpstart that mix tape.
And if you fail at that, you will forever be a lost soul
in the mix tape world.
- I saw it as a whole.
The first track was important,
but I think so is the second, so is the third.
- You have to have a dynamic.
It can't just be this static line.
So, you know, it could be a pop song,
and then a really hot rock song,
and then a slow ballad, and then like repeat.
- A lot of the process was what kind of feeling you wanted
to convey, what kind of emotion you wanted to convey,
or a storyline you wanted to establish.
And so much of that was done with, you know, key.
I know your people who are watching this aren't going
to be musicians, but I think
that I always had a natural instinct for how
to tell a story through different songs,
and the placement of key in ascending and descending.
What instruments started off, what instruments ended.
- I remember I did
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking" into "Everybody Wants Some."
And so there's this saxophone kind of drum outro
to "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" and then this drum intro
to "Everybody Wants Some", and it just,
I was so proud of how it sounded.
- I don't know if this is an experience for others,
but there's songs that I describe like that song
sounds like what it feels like to be me.
- If you listen to a lot of my early mix tapes,
Devo and Buzzcocks feature prominently.
Also a song called "Life of Crime" by The Weirdos.
To this day, I hear it and go, man, I'm jealous.
I never did anything nearly that good.
- Every mix tape I ever made
had "Charlotte Sometimes" by The Cure.
It was non-negotiable.
- New order, "Bizarre Love Triangle",
The Smiths, "Unlovable",
and I would also have to say,
Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls."
- PJ Harvey, The Fall, Can.
- Fela Kuti would be one, Fela and Roy Ayers.
- I guess I would say that if I had to put one song
on every high school mix tape I ever made,
it's was probably "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince.
(laughs)
'Cause the beginning is like,
(vocalizing)
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today
to get through this thing called life."
Anything that starts like that, you should listen
to that man.
(laughs)
- I would often include the X-Ray Spex.
It would usually be right in the middle,
where it would surprise people.
Like, "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!",
of course, famously.
- I would make something so I could listen to it in the car,
and cruise around, and surprise people, like,
you'll never guess what's coming next.
And the process was always that.
It was always, like,
trying to do radical left-turns genre every time.
- There's songs that shouldn't be on mix tapes.
And I don't know what all of them are.
- I'm gonna drop some Dr. Demento' in here,
in the middle of like two love songs.
- I think a lot of them were like Dr. Demento songs.
I just hated to hear any Dr. Demento songs.
- I used to always put on monkey-wrench songs
that I knew that they probably would hate.
Like I don't know very many girls
who liked Captain Beefheart, for example.
But I love Captain Beefheart.
And it was like almost,
it was like a dare.
Like, I dare you to like this.
- Me and one of my old friends,
we'd always make mix tapes
and we always said there was always one song that killed it.
(laughs)
Whether it be It would always be on the B-side,
but there would be always one song
that just didn't fit and it just stuck out.
And I would always try to avoid putting that song on.
But for some reason,
it would always make its way onto every mix tape.
- Whenever they would say, "I don't like that song.
Why'd you put that on there?"
I'd be like you're crazy.
And, you know, next thing we knew we'd get into some sort
of ridiculous argument where I was definitely wrong.
- What I like to do though is based on the person
that I make the mix tape for, kind of feel out
where their edge might be and try to take them there.
- I always usually had a Pulp song on there,
and usually Radiohead.
Probably The Ronettes is usually on the majority
of my mixes.
The Cramps.
I usually like to throw in some Albinoni to throw people
for a loop, depending on the mood of what I'm going for.
Not for a dance mix per se, but maybe a moodier mix.
Oh, Portishead for sure would 100% go on there,
without any hesitation.
Serge Gainsbourg, 100%.
And maybe some like Astrid Gilberto.
Yeah.
And then maybe Ella Fitzgerald.
Sorry, I'm just making my mix.
(laughs)
I could keep going but I'll stop.
- Your gold tape.
- My gold tape.
- Here we go.
All right, so,
this is our recording side.
I believe this is Side A.
- [Hazel] How do you tell?
- Normally it says A and B on it.
These do not.
(laughing)
- Nice.
- I think it's usually when all the tape is on one side.
That's the, when it's all on the left,
I think that's I'm going to find out momentarily,
if it plays and doesn't stop immediately.
(upbeat music)
(indistinct)
(upbeat rock music)
Timing is essential.
- Yeah.
So you just let it play all the way through?
- Yes.
Believe it or not, we have to sit through the whole song.
(Hazel laughing)
That's how you used to make mix tapes.
- It became of the utmost importance to get all
of those 45s onto this cassette, where the outro
of the song is not cut off by the intro of the next song,
there's not too much blank space between songs.
- I remember rewinding and erasing and rewinding
and hitting record again many times.
I mean, it would take hours.
- Then you'd become a real pro.
And when you're working in real time, analog,
your mistakes are in real time.
So you play it back and you go, oh no,
I screwed up that song.
I have to re-do the last 23 minutes
of the A-side of this cassette.
And I've been sitting in this position in front
of the tape deck for like nine hours making it.
Ahhhh.
- But I think that's what made it so special
and so meaningful, when you gave a mix tape
or received a mix tape, especially if it
had homemade artwork on it.
- It's your personality.
Like the mix is a part of you, and so the art,
they should reflect each other.
- I did like a nail polish and white out art on it.
- I would cut out stuff from magazines.
Usually the title of the mix tape would be a quote
from one of the songs off the mix tape and that
would be like another thing for them to discover
which song it was.
- I would go out and take photos of you know trees
and water but make it intentionally blurry,
so then I would have all these photos that I'm sure,
like when I went to the Rite Aid to get these developed
they were like oh sir this whole stack of photos is garbage,
it's just blurry water-colory looking stuff.
I'm like yes, that's exactly what I was going for.
- I used to draw like these, they're like graffiti letters.
But it wasn't like actual graf.
It was like block letters but I made them in like bubbles.
And then I would draw like little things
inside like hearts or balloons, or stars, or whatever.
- I would do multi-colored magic marker things,
and arrows to this and that, and asterisks,
and you flip over to the back cover and duh duh duh duh.
I mean, it was just so,
(laughs)
- I couldn't draw to save my life.
I couldn't.
Just writing the names of the songs
in a way that was legible.
Being a lefty and dragging your hand across
that glossy sheet was a fucking nightmare.
It would just blur everything out.
There's a whole nother documentary
on being a fucking lefthander,
but being a left-hander and trying to write shit
on mix tapes.
(sighing)
- Can you imagine the whole process
I just showed you from tape to tape?
- I don't even wanna think about that.
- How about vinyl to tape,
like getting it between the songs?
- That would be torture.
That's just like a whole nother thing of anxiety
for like one mix tape.
- [Robert] But if somebody gave you one,
knowing that's what they went through to make it for you?
- Yeah.
- [Robert] Would you appreciate it more now?
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- The very first mix tape that I was ever exposed
to was a mix tape that my father made that
was called "Mood Pieces."
- [Robert] What was the inspiration behind this one?
- Just some music that you could kind of sit back
and get transported away.
To get you in a certain mood, if you will.
And I selected those with that thought in mind.
- [Robert] What's our favorite track on this Mood Pieces?
How long since you even looked or heard at it?
- We actually listened to a little piece of it
just a little while ago, but it's been years.
"Big Log" always jumps out.
Marianne Faithfull, "Intrigue."
"Times Square."
Some of the special ones.
- What it really brought to light,
especially because my father wasn't a musician,
for a non-musician making a mix tape I guess
is about as close as a non-musician can get
to using sound to construct something very personal.
- My musical experience is me and Ian MacKaye,
we've been best friends since we were 12.
We're now in our 50s.
We're still best friends.
We talk every week and our conversation often goes to music.
- It was incredibly laborious to find cool music
back in those days.
So what a lot of us would do,
or what I would do is I would go over
to a friend's house who had tons of seven-inches,
and he would just,
he or she would just play me seven-inches
and I would record the ones that I liked.
Oh, I like that, let's tape that one.
- I cannot overemphasize how important this language
was and is between Ian and myself.
And how the cassette, the mix tape was important
in maintaining and prolonging that conversation.
- Me and my sister used to do like mix tape club
where it's literally fuckin', it's like charades,
you put your hands in the box, you pull out a subject.
It's like mixes about fucking breakups or The Yellow Mix.
Where everything has to be yellow.
The Crazy Mix.
I pulled crazy for The Crazy Mix
and it's all either people that went crazy.
Like Nirvana, he shot himself in the head.
Or fucking Skip Spence.
He went fucking nuts.
Or like songs about being crazy,
like Black Sabbath, "Paranoid."
Daniel Johnston, he went fucking nuts.
"The Story of an Artist",
that's a kill yourself fucking song.
You see the ones with the dots
indicate the people that actually
lost their fucking minds too.
- I wasn't an idea guy or a theme guy.
That was masturbation as far as I was concerned.
Now you're just jerking off.
But, just make a fucking solid mix tape.
Because I think you get locked into the theme more
than you get locked into the flow, for me at that point.
So it was all about the flow and about a journey,
and about sort of making sense from one song to the next,
and making sure that you sort of
carried people through something.
So you were never jolted.
I never wanted a song to come on and be like, oh.
I wanted you to be prepared for the journey as you went.
- I had access to porno records when I was younger,
when they put porno on vinyl.
That was always fun to just throw into a mix tape
or at the very end of the tape, you know.
In my mind, I'd give a mix tape to somebody
and then the second side and they'd kind of fall asleep,
it'd be at night, and all the sudden like, porno.
- It just at some point it turned into a place
for me where,
yeah, where I could communicate.
Where I could communicate with people.
- The most important thing about the mix tape, to me,
was my cousin's introduction.
He started talking to me about bands and he said,
"You know what, I'm going to make you some tapes."
You know, these mix tapes were just like the Bible
for me as a teenager.
- I don't wanna go so far as
to say the mix tape saved my life,
but when you're 13 and everything is that real
and that important, and that histrionic, yeah.
The fucking mix tape saved my life.
- My high school didn't have,
it wasn't Nobody had good taste.
Nobody.
Only me.
I was the only person that had good taste
in my entire high school.
- When I went to Purchase,
senior, Purchase is where I went to college,
in '87, my freshman year, at some point I was,
I don't remember being given it, it just showed up.
This cassette showed up and I remember putting it in
and it blowing my fucking mind.
Because it was Siouxsie and the Banshees
and Killing Joke and China Crisis and Gene Loves Jezebel.
I'm pretty sure there was probably "Revenge"
from Ministry was on there.
So whoever made it for me or whoever made it
and left it accidentally in my dorm, was a cutter for sure.
So that introduced me
to like a whole other fuckin' darker edge.
Because I'm a Phil Collins fan and his darkness is
♪ One more night ♪
It's not actually cutting.
It's just sort of wishing you had the strength to cut,
for your pain.
Instead you just write sappy love songs about it.
Whereas Siouxsie is just like, ahhhhh.
♪ Now she's in purple, now she's a turtle ♪
♪ Disintegrating ♪
- I was as into making mix tapes as I was into making music.
It was the same feeling for me.
It was this feeling of creativity
and I made them all the time for everyone.
Yeah, for friends.
I can't even say girlfriends.
But for girls I wanted to be my girlfriends.
(upbeat music)
- To be honest, it was always about girls.
- I'm going to make you a mix tape,
and it's how I'm going to tell you, hey,
I really like you but I'm too shy to tell you.
Which is, shyness is, believe it or not,
always been a problem for me.
- I made her a mix tape with like "The Power of Love"
and fuckin' Peter Cetera.
Oh shit, I even put Robert Palmer's
"I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" on there.
That's how fuckin' ridiculously ballsy this was.
- I knew there were certain songs that I had to hit
because I was trying to let her know
just how much I loved her.
- When I first started working in record stores,
I remember the consistency of being asked
if we had Art of Noise, "Moments in Love."
And I had never heard this track when I was first asked
for it, but I noticed that the people
that were asking for it were generally men
and it was generally before they were going on a date.
And once I heard this song, I got it, immediately.
- The mix tape to woo the female, for me,
was this wonderful night of living in this illusionary world
of this is going to work out great because of this cassette.
This is how I can talk to this woman.
I'll let the Platters talk for me
I'll let Richard Berry and Johnny Otis.
- There's certain songs like Al Green, "Simply Beautiful."
For years, just goes on a mix.
I love that fuckin' song.
And it's not a typical Al Green song.
it's just vulnerable and sweet and delicate
and that shit plays.
There are certain tracks that it's like dude,
if you don't like that track,
I don't know if we can continue on.
- I always felt like it was important
to have a really good first side closer
and then a second side opener.
Like it makes you want to flip the tape over.
Something where it's like an ellipsis.
Like a dot dot dot.
You have to like, oh wait, what's next?
I have to flip this over and see where he's going with this.
How does he really feel about me?
Check out side two to find out.
- Oh, no! - Wait.
- We hit the end of Side A.
- What do we- - We completely miscalculated.
We failed.
(Robert laughing)
- But like, do we have to erase the song?
- Okay, we can either erase the last song,
so that it's clear.
Because that's about two, three minutes of white noise.
Or we find a shorter song.
Or we leave it as is, but it's gonna be really distracting.
- We can't leave it like that.
I think...
- [Robert] I think we should try "Help!",
only because it's a shorter song and we might be able
to get that in there.
- So do we just go back and do-
- [Robert] Yes.
We have to manually go back and erase over it.
- Oh wow.
(light acoustic guitar music)
- What I was hoping for was Oh my god, you understand me,
I'm falling all over myself.
You are the one male I've ever met who gets me.
And it was always like, oh yeah, I played that tape
with my friends in the car, and we lost it under the seat,
and there's that really cool song
where there's that really nice beat.
And you're like-
- I'm incredibly selfish.
I don't listen to other people's mix tapes.
(both laughing)
I mean, I'd read the song list.
And I'd write a thank you note.
- Maybe my first mix tape
was from a boyfriend who was always trying
to get me like certain music that he liked,
and I'd always be like, that sucks.
I hate that.
- And so you must really enjoy the fact
that you're making it.
This is quality time you're spending with this person.
She's not in the room.
So it's a perfect relationship.
Nothing can go wrong because it's completely fictitious.
- The mix is almost like this litmus test,
like, are we going to jibe?
You know what I mean?
Like, getting a mix from somebody,
hearing what they like to listen to,
being exposed to new music, learning about that person.
And also judging them harshly too.
- It wasn't necessarily coming from the most selfless place.
It was coming from more of like a,
maybe I thought I was cool and I wanted them to be cool.
So it wasn't necessarily coming from an expression
of adoration.
It was actually more coming from a place of narcissism,
if I'm honest.
- To be real with you, I didn't even make mix tapes
for other people.
I made mix tapes for myself.
Fuck them.
I don't, like, fuck other people.
I'm like, I bought all these fucking songs,
I'm making this shit for myself.
- (sighing) I've made so many break-up cassettes.
(all laughing)
And like put them on and just like sat there
and howled at the moon.
- I really believe that one of the ways
that I achieved closure was making this mix tape.
There's some My Bloody Valentine,
there's some Verve, there's some Slowdive.
Actually there's a lot of Slowdive on this cassette.
- Why?
Because there's something beautiful about that misery.
- I do have many experiences
where a tape made me feel even more connected
with people for sure, with my boyfriends,
and my friends.
Especially I say boyfriends because if they're gonna write,
if they're gonna send you a love letter in a tape,
you're gonna feel it by the songs they're putting
on that tape.
- I had moved to California on my own at 19,
just deer in the headlights, like just going for it.
And I was lonely.
Like I didn't know anybody.
So my life for probably like two years,
before I really started getting like a lot of friends,
was work, music.
Those mix tapes really helped me out and made me feel good.
I remember I bought a car out here
and I could put it in the car
and I just had a good feeling of like someone, him,
being there.
And him taking the time and the love to do that.
(upbeat music)
- After you would get that mix,
you would check it on a bunch of things
and the number one thing you would check it on is the car.
And when you go into the car,
you would have 20 fucking notes,
'cause everything would slightly change.
You'd be like, oh the bass is way too loud.
Or like oh this thing doesn't go from left to right,
it goes from right to left.
We've got to change that.
And you would go back with 1000 notes.
- I loved listening to music in the car.
I do that to this day.
I check mixes in the car.
I would put them in order that I wanted, I would listen
to them in the car, I would drive around aimlessly,
I would get lost.
I love to drive around and get lost.
- And I had a really good Blaupunkt.
And I had a really good stereo.
I'm in my car right now.
Driving down the 405.
Coming home from Knotts Berry Farm
is what I'm doing right now.
- So apparently the best place
to test a mix tape is in a car,
so we found a car that I can play this in.
So we're gonna do that.
- [Robert] Where did we find it?
On Facebook?
- Yeah, we sent out a message on Facebook.
Like, does anybody have a car that can play a cassette tape?
So we found somebody.
- We got one. - We got one.
- We're going for it. - Let's go.
- [Man] All right, so let's do the car test.
- Where do I even-
- [Man] Do you remember what the car test is?
- Like, playing it. - Yeah.
- So, where?
- [Man] Okay, you need to start the car.
(laughing)
This is lesson one.
This is how you play it in a car.
- Okay, wait.
Okay, okay. - We're in park, right?
- I don't want to start rolling.
- [Man] Okay, it's in park, right?
Turn off the radio.
- Where?
How?
- [Man] Just press, I guess the volume button.
Press it.
Okay, well, we'll start there.
- Do I press- - Yeah, there yo go.
Put the volume up a little bit.
Now put the tape in where it says logic control deck,
see that?
But you have to put,
see how it's kind of shaped like a cassette?
- This way? - Yeah.
Go the other way. - Flip it around.
- [Man] That's how we used to do it.
- I feel like I'm doing something wrong.
- No, this is correct. - Okay.
- [Man] Now turn up the volume.
Can you shut that door?
- Oh, it's playing.
It's playing.
- [Man] There you go, there's your mix.
(upbeat rock music)
- Okay, so now we just listen to it?
(upbeat music)
- I remember working my job as a telemarketer
playing my shit for people in the parking lot.
And I remember Keith Murray just came out, so I'd be,
hey you know about that new Keith Murray?
And I'd be playing that.
And the crazy thing is that was me as a kid.
That was me as a kid.
And now that's my job.
- As a young musician, I recall making mix tapes
to express sort of the feeling of
where you wanted a band to go,
what the musical styling would be.
Music creates community,
and the types of music create community,
and the stories that music tells
moves forward through us all.
- We weren't trained musicians.
We were all self-taught.
So that's exactly how we would communicate.
It's the Coltrane area.
Or it's the Blues Explosion part.
We would explain our songs by describing that
using other artists to describe, or other songs
to describe them.
- When The Muffs were on tour,
everybody would have a little box with cassettes tapes
in it, and we would take turns playing stuff.
- I love mix tapes so much that there's a song
on the first Morningwood record called "Jetsetter",
which the full title is "Jetsetter Music Letter",
♪ This is a Jetsetter Music Letter ♪
Which was the name
of a mix tape that I made for my best friend,
and I liked the title and the intention so much
that I used it in a song that was on our record.
- When we did the first Left Rights,
it really was like a mix tape.
I mean, when we had so many tracks and wanted it
to flow a certain way, we literally,
I mean, it looked like a storyboard conference
or like a meeting, or like when someone in Homeland
is trying to connect the dots between who the killer is,
solve a murder or something.
We put up index cards of every song on a huge board,
plus songs that never made it,
and we just kept moving them around
to see what the flow was.
- In fact, I had an argument with our drummer Roy,
about which song should go first on our last album.
He really wanted the song "Weird Boy Next Door" to be first,
and I really wanted the song "Paint by Numbers" to be first.
And he won.
♪ He's a boy next door, what a boy ♪
♪ Do nothing what he's living for ♪
♪ He's a boy next door, what a boy ♪
♪ Nasty, keep away from him ♪
I realized he was right.
You know, there's a right way and a wrong way.
(laughs)
It's so sad.
- I think a mix tape is all about,
specifically it's about using these different songs
to create a dynamic.
There's usually the quiet part, then it gets rockin',
and you know then it drifts out.
That's the way I think of albums and even more than that,
it's kind of the way I think of my, you know,
my career as it were.
Because a mix tape is kind of a sloppy thing
but it's a really elegant thing,
that to make a good one takes thought.
- One of the reasons why I felt
that I could make a successful career for myself
as a DJ is because of my history making mixes for people.
- I think it's a good interaction to perform live,
especially to improvise.
It's a good challenge to feel the audience.
To be able to communicate with them
in the most natural way I know how, which is in the music.
- I saw DJing as a way to almost make a live mix tape.
- That was exactly the same feeling
as making a good mix tape,
because you're sort of,
you're taking an audience on a journey.
You know, you'd start with an idea
and then you take people on a journey
and bring them down and bring them back up again.
- I brought my records,
and basically I just went through my record collection
and found all of my favorite records.
It's records that were all my jams,
stuff that I liked to party to.
Put them in a crate, put them in BPM order,
and took them to the party.
And started playing.
- It really just came from the heart though.
It wasn't about beat matching, which again I beat match now,
but it was more coming from my heart and telling a story.
And I really don't know where I'm gonna start.
I kind of have to take a look at what's happening
on the dance floor.
And that kind of dictates where I wanna start.
- As much as I want it to be about me
and the songs I pick and how great I am at it,
I really do try to look at the crowd
and just check their body language, see who,
how they're talking.
- There's so many people that have been like,
yo, you remember
when you did your set and you played that song?
That was my first time hearing it.
Now it's like one of my favorite songs.
Or I played it at my wedding.
Or It's me and my wife's song now or something like that.
- That's pretty cool where you can play a song
and it translates and, you know, it's the feelings
that the people get from the music.
The screaming and the hollering and people jumping
and just clapping, and the smiles that you get
from people playing these different songs.
It really keeps it going.
It keeps me going.
- The great Dierdre O'Donoghue, the sadly passed away DJ,
taught me everything I know about making a radio show.
And I would go sit with her and watch her in the '80s
as she would do her Snap show on KCRW,
where I do my radio show now.
And so I'm listening, she's playing Philip Glass,
which is kind of out there for an evening listen,
and then she'd play Prince.
I go, okay, that's eclectic.
The pairing.
Why'd you do that?
She goes, you're bringing in a marlin.
You take some line.
Philip Glass, they've got to work for a few minutes.
This is a seven-minute cyclical avant piece.
Seven and a half minutes they have to sit and listen.
No singing.
So you're taking a line.
You're dragging the marlin to the boat.
They've been very good.
They didn't turn off the radio, so you give them some line.
Good boy.
Give 'em a Prince song.
Give 'em a "Little Red Corvette."
Like, "Oh I love that song."
Give them some line, they can rest.
Then you give them something that's new.
It's the new Go-Between single.
Okay, a little bit of tautness on the line cause it's new.
Poppy, but it's new.
And then you make them work some more.
She said, "By the time the show is over,
they're in your boat.
You've got them."
(upbeat music)
- So now here we are in present day,
people are making mix tapes that are on CDs
and it's basically just like your mix.
It's basically just you playing music
like you were playing at a club, but the art
of people making that specific, you know,
special combination of stuff for a mix tape is gone,
along with the actual physical form of a cassette is gone.
- Sometimes to capture the moment
of hanging out with someone,
a Polaroid picture of it would be a mix tape.
And this is me hanging out at Ian's bedroom
at Discord house in November of 1997 and I'm just,
this is "At Ian's."
And it's just me making mix tapes.
And so here's rare Bad Brains.
There's the cassette of the second ever Bad Brains show,
of which I have the master.
The vocalist gave it to me many years ago.
"Chump Rock."
A girl I was going out with hated my taste in music.
But she had a stereo so I'd make mix tapes at her place and,
oh, look at that, "Shaft", "Kung Fu Fighting",
"Rock Your Baby", "Multi",
the song about the one-armed drummer,
I got that from Chuck Dukowski.
This is some of Chuck Dukowski's single collection.
♪ Liar, liar, pants on fire ♪
"You're Gonna Miss Me."
This is killer.
"Kick Out the Jams," MC 5.
This would be 1982, this tape.
And so I called it "Chump Rock" because she
thought I was a chump for liking these songs.
And there's how I used to sign my name
in the Black Flag days.
Wesley Willis, that's Jello Biafra
making me rare Wesley Willis tapes.
That's Jello's writing, of unreleased Wesley Willis.
I used to live in a tool shed, in Black Flag,
and this was music I used to listen to in my shed.
"Birthday Party."
Ravel doing "Bolero."
Die Haut, the German band.
True West, some LA band.
Richard Berry, who wrote "Louie Louie."
The Bad Brains, Lydia Lunch and her album "Queen of Siam."
My old punk rock band, UK USA Number two it's a copy,
it's on new TDK media.
Ian MacKaye and I were driving once in his car years ago
and he has a cassette in his tape deck.
And I'm recognizing it.
I go, wait a minute, I know this cassette.
He goes, "You made it in 1979,
and it's just been sitting around ever since."
And I said, well let me copy it.
And so he kept the original, I kept the copy.
So this is one of the first mix tapes we ever made.
As I get older and older, my affection
for the cassette and the mix tape ritual putting analog
to analog, you know, going LP or single to magnetic tape,
it's a beautiful thing and if we lose it'll be a real loss.
People will really lose a joyful, wonderful thing.
Because when you listen to digital, you are not listening
to music, you are listening to a bunch of numbers.
- It was a lot of work making a mix tape, I'm not gonna lie.
It was hours of excruciating pain and patience.
Like it was a gift, you know what I mean?
When you got a mix tape from somebody you knew
it was they took their time,
because there was really no way around it.
- A mix tape should be a tape, a cassette tape.
I mean if you want to make an 8-track tape,
that would be cool too.
But it has to be a tape.
- This cassette, called "Long Island Iced Tea",
and it was made by an old friend of mine, DJ Espiritu.
His name was Joe Espiritu.
Unfortunately he committed suicide a few years ago,
and I had totally forgotten that he made me this tape.
He titled it "Long Island Iced Tea"
because he told me a story he called himself Joey Two-Drinks
because it only took two drinks for him to get wasted.
Except the night that he had a Long Island Iced Tea,
and it only took him one drink to get wasted.
So.
I had totally forgotten about this.
Definitely something that you cannot, I don't know,
just a burned CD would not carry the same,
have the same gravity emotionally to it.
- CDs still had a lot of love in them I think.
There's definitely a generation of kids from the late,
mid-'90s to the mid-2000s who grew up
with the same mentality as, you know,
I spent a lot of time making this CD for you,
my sweet please be my sweetheart type of thing.
- Once the CDs started happening, it was a lot better.
It was a lot better.
Cassettes are annoying.
I don't care who thinks they're cool.
They're dumb.
Nah, they're, see, ah, cassettes.
God.
Such a bummer.
- This is tedious.
(Trey laughs)
♪ I can't see where I am going ♪
We still got a,
a ways.
- How do you think it sounds? - Terrible.
Awful.
Like-
- Can you lower it all the way down
and let me ask you again?
- How do you think it sounds?
- Terrible.
Like, why?
- [Man] All right, pull it up
so we don't miss the transition.
(upbeat rock music)
- There we go.
(laughing)
- Good transition. - There you go.
The power of the pause button.
(laughing)
- So is that like a quality transition or-
- [Robert] Yes.
It's pretty good.
- My Dad approves.
- And I preferred actually making mix CDs
because I had much more control over what you could do.
And it was easier to make the flow happen, to control,
like you never had a song cut off halfway through.
- The downside is sometimes you want to fucking get out
of that song earlier than is allowed,
and it's kind of a pain in the ass to do
unless you have the right equipment.
Like, it took me forever to figure out
that I could end a song early on iTunes,
so I'd just have to play that bitch out.
Like, damn I wish that would have ended two minutes ago
but I really want that song on there, so here it is.
- My daughter has literally never owned a CD.
In middle school, I guess, she'd have an iPod in the car,
and a song would come on that I would like and I'd,
oh what's that song?
And she wouldn't have any idea what the, whose song
or anything, because what she would do with her friends
is trade what were iPods, like 40 gigs?
20 gigs, 40 gigs?
Just trade an iPod with someone.
Just a whole musical library and world.
- For me, the most important thing is the song.
You know, it's not the thing that carries the song.
- I love change.
I welcome change.
I think that people need change to grow.
I also think that, you know, everything always too
comes full circle.
So, as you can see, LPs are coming back
and now cassettes are starting to come back around again.
So I think the mix tape is ever-evolving.
- I think that cassettes are back pretty strong.
The first one that I put out with a label was 2009,
and I had no idea that they were on the rise since then.
There's a bunch of labels, and then even some
of the mainstream labels have put out cassette versions.
- Nothing's really changed at the end of the day.
At the end of the day, people you trust mention something
or play you something that you think you would like.
The process of how that happens just kind of has a new face.
But at the end of the day, it's always people
who have like minds sharing music.
- I feel that anytime a human being gets to be creative
is an important thing.
And I understand there's nostalgia and I understand
that people want to hold onto what they've had in the past,
but the past is the past and we need to embrace new stuff.
Making a mix tape is a creative expression.
But I also think making a playlist is a creative expression.
But I also think, you know, looking somebody in the eye
and telling them I love you is as significant
as handing them a mix tape.
(upbeat music)
- The last great mix tape that I made was for a girl
that I started dating named Jennifer.
After we went out on a couple of dates
and I'm like okay, now it's time.
I must make the greatest mix tape of all mix tapes.
- I knew already that I liked him very very much,
but I was not able to express that to him,
so he was very unsure.
But he gave me the tape and I loved it.
And it said "Songs for My Friend Jenn",
and I was disheartened.
Terribly disheartened.
Because I didn't want him to be my friend.
So I went for a drive with my friend Mike G and we listened
to the tape, over and over and over again.
We broke apart every word of every song,
trying to decide if he was giving me a secret message
that actually said I love you and I want you
to have my babies.
- So I think there are two contenders
for what could be the song that locked it for me.
There is, one of them is a cover.
It's Belly, featuring Tanya Donnelly,
covering a song from The Jungle Book called "Trust in Me."
Which I think was sort of like a message
like I'm a good guy, I'm not a bad guy, you can trust me.
And then there's also a song
by a British band called Revolver
called "Painting Pictures."
- Have you heard that song?
It's by Revolver, "Painting Pictures."
It is beautiful, something like you're painting pictures
in my mind again.
And I just fantasized that I was,
that he would sit around and think about me
and that he would have the same feelings
for me that I had for him.
So, but it was the Belly song.
It was Belly for sure.
- We dated for three years, got married in 1998
and we'll celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary
in May of this year.
So it worked.
- I did have a preconceived notion when I heard your music.
It was the first time in my life I ever
thought I'm old and I don't understand.
- But when did you first hear it?
- Right before we were going on tour with you.
- We met on tour.
- Yeah, we met on tour and so they were
like you're going to open
for this band Mindless Self Indulgence.
I'm like let me go to MySpace and check this out.
And I went and heard "Bitches."
♪ Bitches love me cause they know that I can rock ♪
♪ Bitches love me cause they know that I can rhyme ♪
I don't understand music anymore.
I guess I'm officially old.
- At 22. - 22.
And I was like there we go.
- I'm an old lady.
- And then I saw him perform and I was like,
well, first I met him and I was like,
this guy is exceptionally nice and outgoing.
And then I was like, and he's an incredible performer.
And then we hooked up in a stairwell.
And it was- - Yeah.
- I remember when I started working in record stores,
I thought, I'm gonna meet my wife in a record store.
One day I am going to just turn around
and this beautiful girl is going to be standing there
and she's going to be holding all of my favorite records,
and that's how our romance is going to begin.
And 21 years of working in record stores,
I can tell you that moment never arrived.
But one thing that hit me later on was realizing
that the only way that a relationship would work
between myself and someone that loved music just
as much as I did, or do,
is if we liked exactly the same thing.
And if I found myself in a relationship
with someone that loved black metal or jazz
or other things that I don't listen to,
it wouldn't be a successful relationship at all.
So I'm very happy that I found a partner in Marcie,
someone who is willing to go along for the ride with me,
and in the process fallen in music with me.
- You grow up your whole life thinking
that your partner has to like the exact same things
as you and, when you're a teenager,
you're like he's doesn't like that band,
I'm going to break up with him.
- Idiot.
- But then when you get older I appreciate,
I don't hate anything he likes,
but it's not what my number one choice
would be to listen to.
So-
- Our kid is gonna be fucked up.
- Yeah, they are gonna be an issue.
- Because they're gonna be listening to old school hip hop,
new wave, upbeat '60s. - Upbeat '60s.
- Classical music. - Classical.
- A lot of Pink Floyd. - Pink Floyd.
- Enya. - Enya.
- Big Eyna.
- So it's gonna be-
I don't know what that artist is gonna be-
- Come back to us in like 20-some odd years and talk
to our future child, yeah.
- When we got the box out and we're looking through,
and Jen pulls a couple tapes out and she's like,
oh wow our friend made some really nice mix tapes for me.
And I'm like, hey Jen, I think he wanted
to be more than friends with you.
She's like, "Really?"
I'm like, oh, you think?
Just look at the track listing.
You look at all the artwork.
To be fair, to be honest- - That's a lot of work.
- He put a little more effort into the artwork than I did.
I mean, maybe my simple plan worked out better
but that's, you know- - Quality over quantity.
- A for effort.
- Seriously, that's a lot of work.
- Yeah.
- [Jenn] But, I mean it made me smile.
- I incorrectly thought that perhaps James
and I went on a date to the Metropolitan Museum
and made mixes and traded and walked around.
But maybe I did that with somebody else.
- That might have been someone else.
- But it was a great experience.
If only I could remember who was on the other end
of that mix.
But just know- - I gotta go.
- It didn't last. - It didn't?
- Yeah. - Oh thank God.
- Just so you know.
So that's one I can think of, incorrectly, in my mind.
Well, I'm just going to put your face over that memory.
- Yeah, just put my face on that memory.
It'll just be little cutout pictures.
- We have a lot of great memories at the Museum of Nat,
at the Metropolitan Museum.
It's where we got engaged.
Because of our great moments like making mixes
and walking around.
(both laughing)
- But he is now married with two kids
and I guarantee you he made for his wife mix tapes.
for sure.
I'm sure if you asked her, she would have a mix tape
like this and be like, oh this is the clincher, right here.
- I maybe about five or six years ago,
I just kind of had a craving to as closely
as we possibly could
from a long distance recreate the experience
of me sitting with you in the stereo room
and you playing songs for me, that meant a lot to you.
So I asked you to make me this mix tape of deep cuts
from different artists that you liked.
And not only did you do that for me,
you also included these handwritten notes about
what the songs mean to you.
- Some of them were obscure,
like the song "Jay" by Grace Slick.
I never hear that on the radio.
I don't know if I've ever heard that on the radio,
but it was always special to us.
"Emperor of Wyoming", Neil Young, which I think
is just a brilliant instrumental piece.
Always evokes memories of a different time and place.
And I wanted Chris to hear things that kind
of moved his old man as a younger man.
- The most interesting and weird part of being a dad
is I started off with like my duty
to give my son a musical education,
and now he gives it right back to me,
which is weird, but great.
Remember the first mix I made you?
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah, because it's right here in front of you.
Handy!
- I was in kindergarten when he gave that to me.
So that was pre-9/11.
So I was like five, like four.
It was right before Clay was born, my little brother.
So it's "Barracuda", "Better Living Through Chemistry",
some Queens of the Stone Age, "Highway Star",
Deep Purple, "We Will Rock You", "We Are the Champions",
they like have to go together, you know "Lust for Life",
Iggy Pop, the best, then "Fox on the Run", "Killy Kill",
which is Rocket from the Crypt
like one of the weirdest bands.
Then there's side B, "Have a Drink on Me", "Crazy On You",
"I'll Stick Around", first Foo Fighters album,
the best Foo Fighters album, "King of the Road",
which introduced me to my favorite band ever, Fu Manchu.
- I did not know what kind of can of worms
I was opening giving him Fu Manchu.
Good God.
- The stoner rock.
- The one song that I remember listening to
and really being moved by was "Oh Well."
And I remember we had a conversation about that
and you said,
this is the sound of Peter Green losing his mind.
And that is exactly what it is.
It's a song that recreates a psychotic break.
And every time I hear it, I hear your voice kind of
talking me through it.
And yeah it's an amazing song.
- I was pleased to hear HAIM do a version of it.
- Yeah.
- I love "Oh Well", I think it's an incredible song.
And I thought they rocked with it also.
- Wow.
But they leave the ambient part out,
the ambient part is the best part.
- Chris prefers the ambient part.
- Yes.
- Which is a fine piece of music also.
- Yeah, because I mean it's just charging
through this rocking blues riff,
and then all of a sudden it just turns into mist.
And that's the most powerful part of the song for me.
- It's a great contrast.
The electric explosion, and then segue into that-
- That somber instrumental.
Yeah.
- I mean, this mix tape just made me who I was.
I don't really care for curating playlists anymore.
The last one I did is for my girlfriend,
that's pretty much a version two of this thing.
I don't think I've shown you before, but it's pretty rad.
I should give it to you.
- Well, I mean, you don't have to share
the mix tape you gave to your girlfriend with me.
- I mean, it's a good mix tape though!
(both laugh)
- I remember really looking forward to those moments
where we could be in the room together,
listening to music me asking you to put on certain songs,
you putting on certain songs that meant a lot to you,
that now mean a lot to me.
But yeah, I mean, sharing music with you
is by far the most cherished memory that I have.
- My little bro Keenan, who is married to Leslie,
drummer of The Red Aunts, Leslie Ishino,
he now makes crazy bizarre old comic books.
He's got this one called "THE HUMANS",
about an ape biker gang, and he made a mix tape for it.
He invited a bunch of bands to do stuff just inspired
by the comic, and each issue
at the back had a link to download the songs.
And then they put it out hardform on cassette.
Smelly Tongues is one of Lesley's other bands.
She is a prolific musician whose played
in other bands like Alaska and now Red Aunts.
So Smelly Tongues is one of hers.
They still crank stuff out on cassette,
which is awesomely retro and weird.
But yeah, it's always been a family thing.
- When you open the box, you're like wow.
It's really fun to remember,
to reminisce about those times and what they meant,
and what you felt when you made them,
or when you were given them and when you listened to them.
I mean, that's what it's all about.
It's about inspiring emotion.
It's about making somebody feel.
- I previewed some of them this morning,
and it just takes me back to that spot of being 14
and awkward and having fun with this friend,
being careless, listening to mix tapes
and not having a care in the world.
- My cousin just sent me shout out, thank you,
Danny sent me all of these old tapes that he and I made.
And it brought me to a time that, you know,
we were just like, we were just some country-ass kids
in a fuckin' town outside of Detroit, like, with nothing.
And it's like 20 years later,
and I don't see half those kids anymore
and I'm out here in LA.
And like, it's like, damn,
came a long way from government housing.
- I'm not a sentimental person.
I don't want to be young,
I don't want to live in the past, but it's so great
to be able to put on a 30-year-old cassette
and have it work.
You put on a certain song, you go back to that last year
in high school, all the sudden you are there.
You start sweating, your breath dries up.
You put on the song
that you remember a certain relationship you had from,
and all the sudden you get moisture around the eyes.
It's nice to take that trip now and then.
- A movie is an hour and a half,
a short is 15 minutes, but a song can be two minutes
or five minutes,
but it's still these little
compact hyper-dense emotional moments.
That moment that you have when you hear a song
and it makes you fuckin', your skin suddenly feels
like the place you were at when you,
that's a fucking physical reaction.
That's actually happening.
That's not magic.
- I think there's a good argument that there's
nothing more iconic musically
that crosses more sort of genres and cultures
or whatever than mix tapes.
- [Robert] How did she react to it?
- She thought it was really cool.
She was like, what are all these bands?
I don't know anything.
She was a total like Black Sabbath
and Rob Zombie kinda girl.
And she didn't know half of these tracks.
And I'm like, how do you think you know what music is?
- You don't know "Nebula?"
You don't know nothing!
- Seriously.
(all laughing)
- [Man] This is peasant music.
- That's why I don't go outside and meet people anymore.
They're lesser.
(laughing)
- Oh, I've made a monster.
Jesus Christ.
- Okay, so,
all day the guys have been actually
helping me make a tape for you.
Wait, you've been what have you been doing all day?
- I've been making a mix tape for you.
- Okay.
- So here it is.
- Aw.
It's gold.
- It's gold.
So, we have all the songs that are on the mix tape.
Then we just like went through each song
and decided what would go where.
So we just like numbered each.
We knew at the very beginning
that the two Beatles songs were gonna be
at the end of each side.
- Oh, I like that.
It's thematic.
- So that was already set in place,
and we kind of just worked
around that, to figure out what came when.
- Is there like a loud-quiet-loud thing, or just a-
- It was just,
I mean, I guess. - Kinda.
- Kinda?
All right, let's take a listen.
(upbeat rock music)
- That's a good one.
(vocalizing)
- [Man] It sounds decent on this.
It's good.
- Dad.
- Sorry.
♪ Something ♪
It's a good song.
Really good.
♪ Filled up my heart with nothing ♪
♪ Someone told me not to cry ♪
Do you remember playing this song?
- Playing it?
Yes.
- At the talent show. - Yeah.
Our family learned this song
and we played it at a school talent show when I was like-
- Seven. - Yeah.
August, what did August?
- He played guitar. - And you played drums.
- And I sang.
- Uncle Justin played bass.
- Yeah. - That was good.
- Yeah.
(upbeat rock music) (vocalizing)
- A mix tape is
how you get laid.
Right?
That's the correct answer?
- Yeah, kinda.
♪ Hold your mistake up ♪
♪ Before they ♪
- I wonder if people will ever get nostalgic about CDs,
and make a documentary about mix-CDs, CD-R mixes,
stuff like that.
Is that the sequel?
That's the sequel to this.
Maybe. - Let's finish this one first.
- You're not feeling it so much.
- Digital Love? - Yeah, Digital Love?
Yeah, you never know.
- [Man] Give it another decade.
(upbeat rock music)
- I used to go to museums
and listen to mixes all the time,
and I loved walking and listening to mixes in New York.
- Walking in New York.
- Walking in New York and listening
to your putting your headphones in and walking super fast.
- So, you put headphones in.
I had a little cassette.
- What, you'd walk like this?
- I was like a guy from the '60s,
but with industrial music on, walking around.
- What a dork.
- A lot of it is just me.
Rollins Band.
Just when you go live,
there's just tons of examples of,
we would tape every night.
And so you do that for enough decades
and you end up being the steward of, it's heavy stuff too.
The analog media is literally heavy.
In the Black Flag days, I'd have all these cassettes.
I'd have to find someone I knew who I could trust and go,
can I put your stuff, my stuff in your mom's guest room
for like a year?
These would live in boxes in milk crates
for like 12 months at a time.
A smaller version.
The Black Flag era collection,
which would be the Birthday party stuff.
About half.
But it would live in boxes
at my one normal friend's mom's place,
and between tours I would go over to her place and go,
hi, I'm your son's friend.
Can I go in that room?
She's like, "Yeah.
Weirdo."
(upbeat electronic music)