Sadly Missed: The 90 Minute Mixtape

Those who have been folllowing / reading this blog for a while will be aware that I do, on occassion, use it to get random thoughts and ideas off my chest (and out of my brain) as well as for reviewing and sharing new music. Well, dear friends, this is one of those posts. A random collection of thoughts, musings if you will.

Without meaning to sound like an old git - I remember my own reaction as a teenager when someone went on about vinyl being better than these new fangled CD thingumajigs - I feel sorry for the kids of today. Not only due to the fact that they will (probably) never experience the life-affirming, coming of age joy of trawling through the racks of a proper independent record shop and picking a handful of albums based on cover alone (this is a subject I have already covered), but because they won't be familiar with the concept of making or receving a 90minute cassette (the TDK D90, above, was my weapon of choice) filled to the very last second with music - let's face it, doing this properly was an art form. Choosing the songs, not only for quality, but by length to ensure that you could fit the maximum number of songs on each 45 minute side.

The running order was all important too. You wanted the recipient to enjoy the compilation, of course you did, but more than that, you wanted to impress them with your musical knowledge and diversity, while all the time not coming across as a pretentious twat - it was an imperceptibly fine line, which I probably crossed frequently. You couldn't just throw together an eclectic collection of music that  had no flow. No, these songs had to work together, the ending of one song almost seguing into the beginning of the next.

Now, I have been thinking (careful now) and ignoring the dubious legality of it all, I want to try to revive this lost art. Who's with me? All it would involve is making a compilation, in two 45 minute parts naturally, uploading it to Dropbox or suchlike and then posting the link here.