The Lost Art of The Mix-Tape

I'm going to date myself here and tell you, I'm a child of the 80's. There were many great things about the 80's and none of them include mall bangs, wearing two pairs of socks at the same time or biker shorts. The list of good things is long, but at the top of it for me is the mixed-tape.

For those of you youngins that read this blog, a mixed-tape is one of those marvels that is a lost art. Nowadays, you can make a playlist 500 songs deep with a general theme and then hit shuffle for the perfect blend of songs anytime.

A mix for moods - Blue, happy, angry, love, fun. A mix for occasions - running, driving, cleaning, sunshine, rain, party. A mix for people - Mom, Dad, Kid one, two or three.

But this all began with the mixed-tape. So what makes the mixed-tape such an art form?

First, you had to have the right equipment. Either a tape to tape or eventually a CD to tape and then eventually you could make a mixed-CD. Second, you didn't have a hundred songs to get your point across. On a tape, five to six, sometimes seven per side if you got the long playing tapes. Twenty or twenty-two on a CD. You had to not only find the songs with the right sentiment and lyrics, but also you had to consider the length of each song and how they fit together to maximize the amount of songs.

You weren't just making a statement, you were making an audio scrapbook, a moment in time. A music album is called that for a reason. It's a set of pictures you can hear.

Then there was the order in which they were placed. And you had hard choices to make over which song really conveyed what you wanted to say, what you needed to hear. I mean one Led Zeppelin song, while conveying the right thoughts, would take up the place of two or sometimes three songs.

Lastly, the cover art. Did you list out the songs? Draw a picture and let the recipient be surprised as your genius was musically revealed? Use all the colors in your scented marker pack? So many choices.

Now of course, I make playlists for all my books and characters. I have all those playlists listed above. But once in a while, I long for the days of the perfect mix of ten or fifteen songs.

What does this have to do with writing? What finally makes it into your book is your mixed-tape. You'll have a hundred ideas and side plots and little things that go through your brain and maybe even into your first draft. But in the end, you revise and whittle it down to just the perfect mix of words, thoughts and ideas to convey the perfect story. Then you put it in order and find the perfect cover to hold it all in.

While the art of a literal mixed-tape is soon to be completely lost, at least writers are keeping those ideas alive with their stories, their playlists and the influences music will always have on the written word. 

Until next time, love and music notes, Angi

10 Questions with...Tripwires

With Tripwires fantastic debut album, Spacehopper, out today in the U.K. and hitting North American store shelves June 18th, we are ecstatic to have the U.K. psych-rock band on A.T.W.N.

10 Questions with...Tripwires

What was it like, being from the small town of Reading in England, recording your debut album in Brooklyn?
Recording in Brooklyn was great for us. We wrote the album in the comfort of our homes, but recorded it in an alien environment. Sometimes it’s easy to get too comfortable recording demos in your own practice space. I would definitely say going to a crazy new place influences the way you approach things. When recording this album we wanted to make a little world, stepping out of a place that you are used to into a new environment certainly helps this process.

What are some of the lyrical influences that show up throughout your debut album Spacehopper?
There’s a lot of snapshots of youth, growing up, songs built from little experiences. In terms of themes, loss and the feeling of being lost appear quite a bit.



One book, and one band…
Book – The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky.
Band – Aphrodite’s Child

Favorite Neil Young track?
There really are too many. They change every week. Currently I would say ‘I believe in you’ off of After the Goldrush.

Does what you read have an impact on your songwriting?

Photo Credit: Carl Sagan

I can’t say any particular book has ever had a direct influence on our songwriting. It’s nice to appreciate a different way of expressing emotion though. I wouldn’t say lyrically we are much of a ‘story telling’ band, perhaps a little more self-conversationalist.

Star Wars or Star Trek?
Neither. Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ everytime!!

What was it like working with Nicolas Vernhes, who has produced albums for Animal Collective, Bjork and Dirty Projectors?
It was pleasure to work with Nicolas. He has recorded some amazing stuff with Deerhunter and Animal Collective previously, and the opportunity to work with him was something we couldn’t pass on. All of his stuff has great texture to it, and like us, he is a sucker for adding weird noises over the top of quite nicely constructed pop songs.

 What are the reading habits for the band like on the road?
I’m currently reading ‘The wind-up bird chronicle’ by Murakami.
When we were away earlier this week, I had it in the van and it started getting read by two others. You could say that book currently has 3 bookmarks in it.

Is there an author/musician you would love to see at one of your gigs?
Neil Young and Thurston Moore. Hand in hand, that really would be something.

Is there a band that played the Reading Festival that really inspired everyone?
I guess the Nirvana performance in ’92 still gets talked about today. We hadn’t even started school then, so didn’t see it. The DVD looks quite something though!

***

Thanks to Tripwires for taking the time to stop by ATWN this week. Tripwires debut album, Spacehopper, can be ordered through Frenchkiss Records, or iTunes.  If you would like to connect with the band, check them out on Twitter and Soundcloud.

As a treat, the band is offering up a free download of their atmospheric track, ‘Catherine, I feel sick’ from their debut album which you can buy from the links above.

I'm a Bust A Move Kind of Writer

I'm one of those people who's wanted to be a writer since I was old enough to understand what it meant. Throughout my childhood, I wrote story after story and shared them with everyone I could. 

And then I stopped.

I mean, I wrote all sorts of dramatic emo journal entries and some pretty terrible, angst-filled poetry throughout my high school years. But stories? No way. 

It's not that I didn't have ideas. Characters, plots, and settings were constantly tumbling about and weaving themselves together in my mind. But nothing seemed big enough. I was convinced that if I was going to write a book, it had to be amazing. It had to be absolutely life-changing for every single person that read it. People would read my book and WEEP. They would share it with their friends. It would be studied in schools and quoted in daily conversation. Hemingway? Steinbeck? Faulkner? Chumps. 

Whatever I wrote had to be a masterpiece, and if I couldn't achieve Nobel Peace Prize Level Greatness, I was wasting my time.

I quit creating stories for years. YEARS. I kept reading, of course, but I gave up on writing completely. Why even try to live up to the kind of pressure I was putting on myself? 

Then one day, it hit me--sometimes, it's enough just to be entertaining.

Think of it this way: 

Does anyone think Young MC was trying to create life-altering art when he was writing Bust a Move?

It's a song about a guy who tries and tries to get a girl and fails because he can't dance. There's no deep,  hidden message there, but come ON. It's Bust A Move. It was a huge hit. Young MC won a Grammy for it and and people still love it, over twenty years after its release. 

Compare that to John Lennon's Imagine.

This song challenged listeners to imagine a world "with nothing to kill or die for." It was a message of peace, asking all of us to look past our differences and come together as one. It's listed as number three on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

One is fun and light, the other is a poetic, political statement. The two songs are different in nearly every way possible, and people loved them both.

There's just as much value in writing an entertaining story that the reader can escape in as there is in writing the Next Great American Novel. Every book should be entertaining and engaging, but not every book is going to make the reader feel all the feels and end world hunger.

That's it. That one, simple realization changed my life, you guys. I gave myself permission to tell whatever kind of story I wanted to tell in whatever way I wanted to tell it, and BETWEEN was born.

Trust me. BETWEEN is of the Bust A Move variety, not Imagine.

Writing is hard enough without putting unreasonable expectations on yourself. Whether or not you're the next J.K. Rowling, your writing still has worth. You'll never know if readers will connect to your world, your characters, or your prose until you finally take the plunge and commit to your story. Don't give yourself excuses to quit--look for reasons to keep going.