Good Or Shit: Mixtapes

22 June 2014 | 11:44 am | Liz Galinovic

The mixtape - helping itches get scratched since, well, a long damn time.

“What other nice things did I say to you last night?” My friend asked me, the inference being that the only time he is actually nice to me is when he's off his face.

“You said I was smart...” I lied. “And funny...” A blatant lie. “That you'd like to read some of my writing...” A bald faced lie. “That you really want to know more about me.” A massive, massive lie.

He's never said any of those things. And he's laughing, because he knows he never would.

“And that you're going to make me a mixtape of your favourite songs...”

He's pissing himself.

“I would never, ever, ever, say anything like that.”

“I know.”

“A fucking mixtape! Now I know you're definitely lying.”

“Was that ever in doubt?”

“Making someone a fucking mixtape is the lamest shit ever.”

“Yes, I suspected – ”

 “I would never do something so fucking stupid.”

“I know you wouldn't.”

 “Rar rar. Angry angry. Ranty McRant.”

(That last one may not be a direct quote).

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter

My ex and I, when we were young 21 and 23-year-olds respectively, in the springtime of First Real Love, made each other mixtapes. We called it the Thought Exchange Programme (TEP), for self explanatory reasons. He got a whole lot of Antony and the Johnsons and I got a whole lot of rap, plus a few early Coldplay songs. As far as simplistic summations of who we were back then go, you couldn't get much more accurate.

“Yes, lots.” Was a friend's response when I asked her if she'd ever made someone a mixtape. “Most notably this guy I was obsessed with for years. We would title them all and look for meanings in the lyrics and just generally suffer a lot, lol.” Was it in order to get to know each other better? “Defo. And try to express something either unconveyable with words, or that we were just scared to say.”

Her reasons were very similar to my flatmate's, although his was more concise – “I fucking loved that chick, man.”

Other people made them, not as a means for communicating through song what they couldn't say with words, but simply to educate one another about uncharted musical genres. Like, Death Metal 101 the Mixtape.

As teenagers, my friends and I made them for each other all the time. We wanted to share music with likeminded people and, sometimes you found yourself in need of something particular. An itch that needed scratching.

I had several, each appropriately titled according to the itchy rash I had diagnosed myself with. The titles, using my hip hop inspired nickname – Chikita – augured a promising career in copywriting. Itching for new music – Chikita New Music. Itching with heartache – Chikita Tears. I would turn up at my best mate's house, brandishing a list of songs for him to download, and he would charge me $5 for the damn CD.

Mixtapes – or cheap burnt CDs that often died a mouldy death in the Sydney humidity – were how my mates introduced a little Blink 182-loving skater-groupie to hip hop. They were how my girlfriends shared compilations of the latest angsty woman music. And I'm sure there were a few 2Pac, Biggie, Ashanti and Shola Ama filled Chikita Party Time mixtapes getting thrown out the window of moving cars.    

What is so fucking lame about this practise?

Once again, I'm itchy. I want something, but I don't know what it is. In the last few weeks I've gone from Chance the Rapper's Acid Rap, to Chet Faker's Built On Glass, to Sharon Van Etten's Are We There, to Glass Animals' Zaba. Each time thinking Yes! This is what I need! But, I apply it liberally to infected area several times a day, and the symptoms persist. 

Given the time frames coincide, I suspect this may have something to do with my Man Diet. It's been four weeks since I cut out anything other than nutritional platonic male relationships with no pesticides, stopped carrying on like a boy-crazed psycho, and started focusing on serious things, like my career. And, I feel like I'm coming off crack. Erratic. Bored. Dare I say frustrated?

I'm craving adventure. Music be my methadone please.

I want something dark and sexy, I tell a friend. And she sends me Chris and Cosey, Walking Through Heaven. I respect her, but industrial electronic whatever the hell this is, doesn't make me feel like a prowling lion.

The designer at work has tats and Vans so I figured he must know something about dark sexy music. He sends me Cloud Control – I think he misread my clothing – British alternative rock band Vile Imbeciles, and when that wasn't right, the Deftones. By the end of the day I was reviving A Perfect Circle and rediscovering this duet Maynard did with Tori Amos 100 years ago.

I'm looking for music that will give me that sense of danger-laced, self-discovering-adventure that I'm not getting from my work-focused, love-life-less life.

So I'm making a mixtape for myself. One big playlist with single songs from an array of artists spanning an abundance of genres. New shit, old shit, upbeat, down tempo, stuff I can dance to, and stuff I can weep to. I'm gonna do something cray. I'm gonna have Frank Sinatra singing Moon River right after Banks sings Brain.

I'm gonna have Slipknot straight after Shamir's I Know It's A Good Thing and Bob Dylan right after Lewis Allen's Drugs in Her Eyes.

Every time the track changes it will be an exciting cultural and emotional experience. I'm taking suggestions. Come at me. The working title is – Fuck Off Arsehole, You're Making Me Itchy.