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My all time favorite mixed cassette is one I received from a Brooklynite. We met at a concert (Patti Smith & Alejandro Escovedo) and began a long distance relationship. I still have the tape although the relationship ended long ago. As the ex-spouse of a rock band drummer, and dare I say, the ex of a long string of various musicians, I received my share of mixed tape all through the 80s and 90s. But this one holds the number one spot, because side A was all by famous and some unknown Texas bands, and side B was all by well known and obscure New York bands. It completely captures all the reasons why we wouldn't last. It also captured those obscure bands that went on to become famous.

My all-time-favorite mixed tape is a cassette that i gave to all my best friends back home in Switzerland in '87, to record one or two songs each before I was going on a trip to the USA. I didn't listen to any of it in between handing it to various friends, but put it in my walkman the moment the plane lifted of in Zurich. 22 years later and still in the US, I get choked up when I listen to it and connect the songs with the thrill and sadness of starting a life alone, outside anything I knew at 18.

Ah... a few months after college graduation small packages of mixed tapes started to arrive in the mail from a guy I knew at school. But I NEVER knew how he actually felt about me. The tapes said it all. He was smitten and I was clueless until that point. The tapes still (20 years later) make me giddy. Did we end up together? I'll keep you guessing... :)

Mix tapes became a ritual for new friends & crushes. I was able to add mementos from dusty LP closets, with Radio snippets, CD's and even my own voice. The cover was carefully constructed art, usually Elmer's Glue and a magazine design. The Tape name was always the first word of Side A and the last word of Side B's playlists. I long for the days of the mix-tape.

Back in the '80s I met a guy in Boston and we started talking a lot on the phone. He came to NY for the first time and met me at Exterminator Chili. We were talking at the bar and half listening to the music playing. I kept saying "that's one of my favorite songs!" and then "Can't believe they are playing "Crosstown Traffic" - another fave!" After a few songs, he smiled and said he had made a mix tape of all my favorites and asked the bartender to play it!

60 minutes, 90 minutes, metal, CRO2, TDK MEMOREX, Dolby. tapes were not cheap back then.

If you were a teenager growing up in the 70's/80's spending 3 bucks of a brand new cassette to make a mix tape for someone you had a crush on was a big deal. Compare that to the price of a blank CD, the price of which is an afterthought.

i am more a receiver than a giver of mixtapes. got them from most of the people i dated or messed around with seriously. two boys put one together for me, each took one side of the tape. another did a whole prince mix for me in college which i lent to someone and it circulated thru the whole campus cuz it was a getting ur groove tape for real. i didn't get it back for months and when i did the cover was totally gone.

C'mon you all sound old when you diss the playlist making. The love is in taking the time to consider what tunes you put on there!

Also, please never play the Shags again.

How about blog as an on-going, evolving mix tape?

There were many incarnations of the mix tape in my youth, besides the romantic.
A ski trip meant there were jobs to do. Someone was on beer assignment, another the mix tape. This would become an historical soundtrack immortalizing the event.
My friend and garage-band mate (and today tour-de-force leader of the Dennis Winge Trio) would copy albums of obscure classic rock albums for me, but also use the extra 10 minutes at the end of the cassette to add a few carefully-selected tunes. I eventually looked forward to these more than the albums themselves, like the prize in the box of Cracker-Jacks.

Stacy really has the more interesting outlook. She moved on from those Indie Pop songs. I also thought music was associated with cool and now my opinion of that has completely changed.

Especially DIY, Punk now makes me sick. But, the Vaselines, Stereolab,and Joy Division still sound pretty good.......for pop music.

Dave

At summer camp it was the norm to make a mix tape with all of your co-counselors. Everyone would pick a song and hand over a copy of the CD, and someone had the task of putting all the songs onto a master tape and then making dozens of copies.
I still love these tapes, they exposed me to lots of new music and remind me of the great friends and great summers.

In highschool, I made a mix tape of only one song over and over on both sides....the song was Don't Fear the Reaper. It was a dark phase

I think I probably made, roughly, 12 million mixtapes for my now wife in college. In addition to taking hours and hours to decide on songs and order, I also meticulously hand made fold-out covers to the tapes, which I feel somewhat contributed to my eventual career as a graphic designer.

The mix tapes that my high school boyfriend made for me in the 1990s made me feel special, and I listened to them endlessly, trying to decode the message of true love I hoped were encoded deep inside (although I don't think his sixteen year-old self had intended that) . Sixteen years later, I am pressuring him to put together a playlist for me to listen to as I give birth to our first child in March (and I expect him to need the next three months to craft the perfect mix).

When I was a kid in the early and nineties, my big brother dated a girl who was maybe a little too cool for him. She made him several mix tapes that were kind of lost on him, but I loved them! Mostly stuff Weezer, Pixies and the occasional silly Muppets song.

I still have the mixed tape my boyfriend gave me after I broke up with him. I only remember "Thinkin' about your Body" by Bobbie McFerrin and a Tony Rice bluegrass song. The rest are trapped on the tape because I have no way to play it!

It is a melancholy memory of a sweet guy and me behaving badly.

We have managed to maintain a friendship, though.

Back in college in the late 80s, I made a tape simply called "Mark and Kathryn's Excellent Song Tape." Not exactly romantic, but in years since it has taken on an iconic meaning. It was copied and shuttled around my group of friends and every couple of years, or so, I get an email from someone asking if I remember the tape or, more importantly, if I still have it so that it can be digitally reproduced. Even though there is a plastic milk crate in my parents' garage full of my old cassettes, I have never been able to find it. I ocassionally come across a random and long-forgotten track that makes me smile, and reignites my search for that one memorable cassette. Nostalgia for a time twenty years in the past, absolutely!

In fact, I'm still looking for tracks that were on mix tapes. Some Marc Almod duet with Jim Thirwell I can't find...

I LOVED my mix tapes!Memories are flooding back of a boyfriend I had while in school in Amherst, Mass. He TYPED the song titles on the little insert and it was George Winston and James Taylor and all terribly romantic what with the Mass Pike nearby and the Berskshires and the pretty New England fall and early snow....but my best mix tape was a gift from a VERY hip friend from Long Island - called The Mad Birthday Tape - I still have it and she introduced me to WLIR with The Smiths and New Order and Haircut 100..my husband and I still mention The Mad Birthday Tape, which is 23 years old!

This cold weather is making me wish I was nine and dancing in the mirror to my collection of tapes consisting of weeks of Rick Dees and the weekly 40, I had taped off the radio.

I LOVED my mix tapes!Memories are flooding back of a boyfriend I had while in school in Amherst, Mass. He TYPED the song titles on the little insert and it was George Winston and James Taylor and all terribly romantic what with the Mass Pike nearby and the Berskshires and the pretty New England fall and early snow....but my best mix tape was a gift from a VERY hip friend from Manhassett - called The Mad Birthday Tape - I still have it and she introduced me to WLIR with The Smiths and New Order and Haircut 100..my husband and I still mention The Mad Birthday Tape, which is 23 years old!

The Smiths played heavily in my Mixtape past. And Love Will Tear Us Apart was also in my past - there was always at least one guilt ridden song on those mix-tapes saying I'll never love them enough...but the mix tape always worked.

I LOVED my mix tapes!Memories are flooding back of a boyfriend I had while in school in Amherst, Mass. He TYPED the song titles on the little insert and it was George Winston and James Taylor and all terribly romantic what with the Mass Pike nearby and the Berskshires and the pretty New England fall and early snow....but my best mix tape was a gift from a VERY hip friend from Manhassett - called The Mad Birthday Tape - I still have it and she introduced me to WLIR with The Smiths and New Order and Haircut 100..my husband and I still mention The Mad Birthday Tape, which is 23 years old!

The Smiths played heavily in my Mix-Tape past. And Love Will Tear Us Apart was also in my past - there was always at least one guilt ridden song on those mix-tapes saying I'll never love them enough...but the mix tape always worked.

I was born in '69 and I think every single flirtation from age 12 to 22 involved a mix tape!
(we didn't believe home taping was killing music as the recording industry in the UK tried to get us to not make tapes!) Mix tapes used to include songs off the radio among our own 45s. Good times!

The book The Perks of Being a Wallflower has some of the best writing about mix tapes ever.

Half my favorite songs from mixtapes are now songs in car commercials. Its killing my nostalgia. Damn you Mercury!

What about CD's? My boyfriend (now husband) gave me a CD wallet with some of his favorite albums. That is how I got to know Billy Bragg, F, American Music Club, etc. Coming from Latin America, I was never exposed to some of his favorite music. Now our kids ask to hear some of those CD's.

I have several mix tapes from old boyfriends in the 80's. The songs and the handwritten playlists bring back very vivid memories of a very different time in my life. Some have become so much a part of the personal history of my life that I have recreated them as playlists for my MP3...

I have mixtapes from some old lovers that I cannot listen to without choking up. So many memories, good, bad and in between...

Please don't forget to talk about the way "the mixed tape" has been idolized and sentimentalized by artists who were never constrained by the linear limits of a mixed tape. ie: Jack's Mannequin- "The Mixed Tape" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI5h5UD3BUY&NR=1