11.11.16

I made this mix tape for a friend. I thought I did a pretty good job making everything flow, then got to the end of Side B and perfectly timed the remaining space to a weird CHARLIE TWEDDLE track (as any tape maker knows all too well, timing the end of each side is key, and we always keep an arsenal of short, poignant numbers up our sleeves for mometnts just like these). Boom. It was about to be done. So I dropped the needle, I unpaused the recording and I went to pop open a celebratory beer...because a good mix tape is an accomplishment worth celebrating. And then an enemy known only as "auto-reverse" reared its head, and before I knew it, the first 10 minutes of the Side A had been replaced with the gentle crackle of a needle knocking at the matrix...fuck. Normally, I could have just recreated the first few selections, but I had started this particular mix with a self-edit of PHAROAH SANDERS' "The Creator Has A Master Plan" (a controversial tape making tool, but one I am comfortable utilizing when appropriate) and it would be impossible to nail that timing again...so I started over. Many of the same tracks found their way back into the program, but offerings by SCREAMING TREES, PTARMIGAN and BEHAVIOR didn't seem as appropriate to the overall vibe and were replaced with WAYNE NEWTON, THE BODY and BRUCE GILBERT. I am very pleased with the tape, and have listened to it many times since (re)completion. While it brings me pleasure to share this here, and I hope that it brings you pleasure also...nothing can compare to the feeling of packing up a tape to mail to someone far away. Imagining it reaching their hands and then filling their ears...it's why we do this. And sometimes it's our very reason for existence. 

11.11.16