A long, long time ago in a.... sorry, lapsing into Star Wars.
During my teenage years I used to create 'Mix Tapes', recording tracks from LP's (yes, vinyl) and CD's onto cassettes. I made hundreds, and over the years since they have been lost or simply discarded. I don't even own a cassette player now, so why hang on to them?
Well, during a recent cleaning spree I came across one tape that I had held on to. It was a compilation of chilled out, mellow, tracks and I used to listen to it on a regular basis. The original cassette is a BASF Chrome 100 (quite rare, as most tapes in those days were 60 or 90 mins) and the insert listed the tracks, as well as the creation date: November 10th 1992.
Since I don't have a cassette player I decided to track down as many of the songs as possible and recreate it on CD; easier said than done, some were quite obscure.
As of tonight, I have finally accomplished my mission (with thanks to iTunes) and the collection is complete. This has been a labour of love and has brought me right back to my heyday.
The full track list is as follows:
Side 1.
1. The Cure - Prayers for Rain (Disintegration)
2. Depeche Mode - Waiting for the night (Violator)
3. They Dance Alone - Sting (Nothing Like the Sun)
4. Hide and Seek - Howard Jones (Human's Lib)
5. Welcome to the Machine - Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here)
6. League of Nations - Simple Minds (Sister Feelings Call)
7. Jennifer - Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams)
8. Who Wants to Live Forever - Queen (A Kind of Magic)
9. Do You Know, Do You Care - Phil Collins (Hello, I Must Be Going)
Side 2.
1. Vigil - Fish (Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors)
2. Things You Said - Depeche Mode (Music for the Masses)
3. Private Investigations - Dire Straits (Love Over Gold)
4. Woman In Chains - Tears for Fears (Sowing the Seeds of Love)
5. Mandolin Rain - Bruce Hornsby (The Way it Is)
6. Any Second Now - Depeche Mode (Speak and Spell)
7. Big Sleep (Live) - Simple Minds (B-Side: Kick it In)
8. On the Turning Away - Pink Floyd (Momentary Lapse of Reason)
9. 91 Steps - Erasure (B-Side: You Surround Me)
The problem I have now is that the total running time of these tracks is over 100 minutes (when the tape was created I faded in/out some tracks to shorten them to fit). I can't burn it on to a CD, as they take a maximum of 80 minutes! I know I could remove some tracks to get it to fit, but then it wouldn't be the tape I originally created :(
For the time being I am going to have to settle for listening to it as a playlist on iTunes, and on my MP3 player.
After locating all the tracks and creating the playlist I decided to publish it as an iTunes 'iMix'. The details of which you can see below. Strangely, although all the tracks are available on iTunes, some of them don't appear in the iMix, but I am working to fix this (just some naming differences between the album names between my library and that of iTunes - I have some organised into the original ablum, or single - whereas iTunes has them in compilations), so once it is sorted I will update the mix to contain all 18 tracks.
This was a very worthwhile and enjoyable venture and I would advise any of you out there who used to create many 'Mix Tapes' to rifle through your old vinyl (I am sure you haven't thrown them out, if you are anything like me) and track them down to create your own 21st century MP3 playlist.
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