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Mix tapes

Mix tape sleeve notesYoung DisciplesFunky StuffMind & Body mix tapeMind & BodyWorn mix tape
AR90 TDK mix tapeRenaissance 1 mix tape

Mix tapes , a set on Flickr.

These are some of my mix tapes.

I’ve digitised these using the ION Tape2PC system, but I’ve found it hard to throw them away.

Anyone of my generation or thereabouts will remember how important cassette tapes were. The music, but also the object, that followed you through so much.

For instance, the Mind & Body mix tape followed me from living in Kew while I was at Sixth Form college, through university and some trips to California, living in the Netherlands for a while and on to the world of work, before CDs, mini-discs and then, decisively, MP3s edged them out and I had to specifically buy equipment last year to be able to hear and record them.

Looking at them now, I’m taken with the patina those years and much use left on them. Also it makes me think about their fragility. Some tapes died in machines, tangled up and beyond repair. Others were simply lost – at parties, one in a jacket at a club.

Realising how much they meant to me, I took these close up portraits. I think I’ll get them printed too…

Antony Mayfield

3 responses to “Mix tapes”

  1. PurpleCar Avatar
    PurpleCar

    Getting rid of old tech is difficult for me, too. It holds memories.

  2. steph Avatar
    steph

    It’s funny how cool “blank” tapes once were, so we can put what we wanted on them. How they begin as a part of us, and they become even more so when we carry them around. I think this is what makes them more precious than tapes we’d just bought off the shelf. Anyway, I still keep a portable little tape player/recorder around, and it still works.

  3. tnewbold Avatar
    tnewbold

    Those are awesome. I still have a bag of my old mixtapes which I can’t part with either. Check out 8tracks.com – those mixes can have a new lease on life. I recreated my first college radio show there, which was fun.

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