Mick's Tape

Back in my youth, the mix tape was the ultimate display of affection for someone. Whether the relationship was based on pure, lust fuelled, teenage-angst or strictly platonic, the mix tape showed that you had invested some serious time and effort on the recipients behalf. Sitting with a massive pair of Ross Headphones atop my head and two fingers poised above the play & record buttons, is probably how I spent most of my teenage years and, undoubtedly, the main reason why my back is so completely and utterly shagged now. There were, of course, rules:

1: Both Artist's and Song names must be written on the cassette inlay card

2: The tape must have a title. i.e. "Summer Mix", "60's Mix" or "_ _ _ _ _ _'s Mix" (insert name of the person you were trying to kop off with).

3:The front cover must contain your own artwork.

Rules 1 & 2 were a breeze, but, Rule 3 was always a stumbling block for me. For, although I do consider myself an Artist (in the musical sense), my work upon canvas has always been, well, rather shite. So much so, that when I was assigned the task of capturing a classmates likeness during a Secondary School Art lesson, the end result was the best portrait of Peter Shilton that the school had ever seen. Suffice to say, that the classmate did not affect the bastion of all things tonsorial, circa 1979 - the "Man Perm" nor, to the best of my knowledge, did he endorse Sondico Goalkeeper's gloves! I guess now is as good a time as ever to apologise to anyone who received one of my photo-collage, adorned mix tapes - I am truly sorry and hope that the nightmares have now stopped.

I would like to think that I am neither a Luddite or a technophobe, indeed, my unhealthy love for my iPod should serve as testament to this. Nevertheless, when compiling a CD for someone recently, I was struck by how far removed from compiling a Mix Tape the burning process actually is. Gone are the agonising choices of what song should follow the previous one or the worry that half the song will be lost when the tape runs out. Instead, we can click on random playlists or music by genre, year, smell, or size of the lead singers boots.

So which one did I choose? None of the above, I just dragged as many folders as I could fit onto a DVD and burned the little f*cker....