15th
The Hipster’s Civil War
Format Wars.
The fight between to analogues choices of digital media.
A war between opposing spectrums that unite the masses of the people, leading to a would be blood bath that can darken even the most morally ambiguous soul.
It bleeds all over, crossing lines between entertainment and art.
So what’s left?
Mix Tapes vs Mix CDs
_________________
Of course I’m biased. I prefer the old analogue tape. I love the feeling of going through my record collection, hooking up my reel to reel, and capturing it on the plastic encased magnetic tape. Waiting for the 30-45 minutes to be filled with songs and samples. After the effort to make the perfect mix, I take out paper, and painstakingly craft (by hand) the perfect cover for my tape. After all that work its done. A piece of art hand crafted by me, given to the person of my choice.
It isn’t to say that a person can’t go through all those efforts to create a mix cd. God knows that my girlfriend would rather get one of those, but to me it seems that the effort has been taken out of the crafting. With cds you don’t have to worry about song lengths, you just make a playlist, and boom its done. It takes the effort out of work. It makes it easy.
But is that a bad thing? Like all technologic innovations it’s a mixed bag. I was once able to look around an old room, and find scatted CDRs everywhere. Tons of mixes dropped and scratched. Listened to for a few days or weeks, then forgotten and replaced.
Yet now, I know where all my mixtapes are. They are proudly displayed.
But maybe that’s because I’m older. I’m more prone to nostalgia.
But that’s the thing. Mixtapes last for me. They are something more permanent than a flimsy CD. They are more than just a loose collection of songs. Each one has a place in the tape. Even if you hand make the entire cd case, which I have, it still seems flimsy to me.
So am I saying that mixtapes are superior to mix cds?
No. Listening to warbly, fuzzed filled endeavors isn’t about listening to music. Its about listening to person who made it. What they were thinking at the time. What they are feeling at the time.
And that makes it something more that part of a format war.
Call me a hipster, but a mixtape is a piece of your heart.
-ChrisIs…
So for your viewing pleasure, here are a few pieces of my heart:
