How I learned to use my CD burner

I can’t remember the first CD I bought, but I think it was something by Elton John and I think I still own it. These days my CD rack is too small and there are growing piles on all sides. I’ve listened to all of them at least once—some of them just the one time. Generally, I’ll buy a new CD and listen to it over and over and over and it will be a regular listen for several weeks until something new comes along. Every so often I have to remind myself to listen to something old—something I’ve had for a while and haven’t listened to in a long time. Sometimes you have to rediscover artists and particular albums. Sometimes you need to take a break from your favorite band.

With the ubiquity that is the iPhone and the sudden renaissance of vinyl, I think I am in the minority by still listening to CDs. I own an iPod—a 3^rd generation iPod Touch that is something like five years old. It has no camera, no apps, and all 32gigs are filled with a wide variety of songs. I mainly use it when I go to the gym or on long car rides like to Cleveland or Cedar Point. Or sometimes just cruising through the Logan County countryside. Sometimes when you cruise you want a variety of songs, not just one artist. Sometimes you want to hear a shuffled playlist.  I still make playlists. And mixtapes.

Mixtapes are a lost art. When I was a kid, CDs were starting to become less expensive and more widely available. But it was still long before CD burners and MP3s—the former of which is becoming dated even now. If you wanted to make a mixtape you had to pop a cassette into the player and hit record when your favorite song came on the radio. This could take several attempts—maybe you missed the opening chord or maybe something caused the station to cut out halfway through. If you had a stereo with both a CD player and a cassette player you could record the song directly from the CD and get the best sound. Your car didn’t have a CD player, so a mixtape was ideal. My brother always had a good collection of mixtapes we would listen to his car. Some I liked more than others. I didn’t like the ones with heavy metal, which was a lot of them. I think my favorite one was “Songs for Monkey Love Making II”. I couldn’t tell you any of the songs on it, though I think it included Tenacious D’s “Fuck Her Gently”. I remember those mixtapes and the belting out of Jack Black and Kyle Gass’ comical lyrics being a source of bonding. It is where my appreciation for both music and cruising with the windows down find their roots.

Cassette tapes are more or less obsolete now, though I have heard Sony experimenting with the technology for back-up systems. Now you no longer have to hit record on the boombox, but instead click “Download” in iTunes. Or whatever… “other means” you prefer. A mixtape is no longer a tape but instead a CD-R or a playlist on YouTube or your iPhone. A lot of people will say the mixtape doesn’t exist anymore, but still does—just in a different form. And so long as there are people listening to music it will always exist in one form or another. I make mixtapes fairly often—for friends, mainly. I give them to them as gifts. Sometimes I will write an haiku in the “booklet” or a quote that fits the theme of the mixtape: Songs for Baking, Love Jams NOT from the ‘80s, Baby’s First Mixtape. I actually give my friend’s son a mixtape every year for his birthday. That’s kind of how I rediscovered the lost art.

If I, or anyone, give you a mixtape, you should know that it doesn’t mean we think you have a terrible taste in music. Instead, it means that we care about you. That we took the time for find songs that we think you would not just like but be able to make an emotional connection with and associate with us.