I'll make you a mixtape...

"I'll make you a mixtape that's a blueprint of my soul, it may sound grand but babe it's all you need to know, I'll make you a mixtape that will charm you into bed, it details everything that's running round my head" - Lyrics from 'Mixtape' by Jamie Cullum

Ah, the beauty of the mixtape. A little piece of yourself that you give to someone for a variety of different reasons. I was listening to Jamie's song recently and it got me thinking about the idea of creating a tape for someone and what it means when you do it. I asked some lovely folk whether they had ever made someone a tape and if so what was the purpose behind it. Here's what they said:

"Made loads for my ex when we were together and vice versa" - Helen @givesyouHel

"I have, many times, because I find it incredibly romantic" - Michelle @littlehotmess77

"@dave_d_i_s_c_o made me many when we started dating. Loved listening to them whilst travelling to visit him" - Suzie @sukisuzmorris

"I had a brilliant one made for me by a friend at school, I think I made one back for her. It had loads of cool songs on it and was my introduction to Beck as she included Sissy Neck and also a song by Corduroy which I loved. I did once make a mix CD for a boyfriend as well. Sad but true!" - Nicole

I think the resounding thing I picked up was the idea of making something romantic that you could give to someone you liked to show them how much they mean to you. And the beauty of a tape (for those of us old enough to remember the good old TDK 90 minute cassette) was that you could surprise them with a selection of tracks hand picked just for them. The hours I spent calculating how many songs I could fit onto one side of a tape was ridiculous. Making sure there wasn't too much blank space at the end before you turned over to side B was an art in itself. My friend Laura told me that sometimes she couldn't be bothered to work it all out so she just recorded it, and if it stopped part way through a song she'd just turn the tape and continue where it cut out. How she wrote out the track listing is anyone's guess...!!

Not one of mine, but you get the idea

Now I wasn't of the romantic school of thought I have to be honest. For me, it was more about making collections for mates to showcase how much cool music I knew about. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't being an arsehole about it. I just wanted to share my love of the obscure and the downright awesome with people to show them what they were missing out on. And it worked too. I once made a tape for an old friend and included a track by Radiohead on it. It was probably something off 'The Bends' I would think. She had never heard anything by them before and totally loved it. So much so that we ended up going to see them at the NEC in Birmingham and years later she said to me "if it wasn't for you Nic I would never have got into them". Point made and case closed.

My baby's got the bends

I do totally get the romance thing though. Reading the comments that people gave to me was very sweet and I think it's lovely that something as simple as making a tape could bring happiness to people. Sharing your love of music is a very personal thing as it says something about how you think and feel about things. It could also show what diabolical taste you have, but I guess that's a chance you have to take!

I was given a tape once by someone I worked with. Those of you that have read my blog before might recall a certain man I now refer to as bellend who incorrectly told me that the Bluetones were naff live. Yes him. Well, he made me a tape once. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I assumed he was just doing the 'I know more than you' thing, but I must admit I have been thinking about it a lot since writing this piece. My friend Nicole told me I should relisten to it and see if there were any subliminal messages in it. Doubtful, but it did have the song 'If I can't change your mind' by Sugar on it which I love. And it's because of this tape that I love it. In fact, I have the tape somewhere upstairs in my house and I can guarantee if I put it in the tape deck now and pressed play it would be queued up on this song. Bellend may not have made me a romantic tape (at least I don't think he did), but he did start my love affair with a lot of good music so take from that what you will.

I decided to write this piece as I find the concept of making someone a tape very interesting on lots of levels. In the film 'High Fidelity' John Cusack's character talks about the art of making a mixtape. "The making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all, you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing". 

He's right of course. If you're making a tape for someone you like you need to carefully plan what you want to share with them. After all, the hope is that they'll listen to it and think 'Wow. John really knows his music and he's put lots of songs on here that he knows I'll like. He's great'. Rather than leaving them wondering why you have given them a cassette with some nonsense on it that even the artist themselves won't ever listen to again. It's a tough call, but do it right and as the comments above show it can make someone feel all warm and tingly inside. Do it wrong, and that tape is probably now gathering dust in a box somewhere while the recipient tries very hard to blank it from their memory...

So finally to wrap up, here's the song that started me thinking about this whole thing. I tend to agree with the line about charming someone into bed, but hey, maybe that's just me and Jamie...

Going back to my roots...

I watched a very interesting documentary today about the rise and fall of independent record shops in the UK. It gave a great insight into how music has changed over the years and about the way in which we purchase and learn about new music. It's called 'Last Shop Standing' and if you haven't seen it you should definitely take a look. Find out more about it here. This film made me consider my own journey and how and why I became a music lover in the first place. I know I've touched on some of this before, but I decided to take a trip down memory lane and look into all the things that I remember that have shaped my musical taste, and especially the shops I spent time in.

My parents both loved music and when me and my brother were growing up it featured around us a lot. My mum was a Mod and my dad was a Rocker which made for a very interesting combination. Mum always loved the latest tunes and was a big fan of Cliff Richard and the Beatles. We used to have music playing in the house and in the car all the time and I think this had a big influence on both me and my brother. Dad was a bit of a DJ in his youth and we had a lot of vinyl in the house. I remember the hi-fi unit we had which featured a double tape deck with a turntable on the top and room at the bottom to store your LPs. It stayed with us for a long time and in the LP stack were things like 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd and 'Machine Head' by Deep Purple sitting along side various Beatles albums. I think the first time I heard 'The Chain' by Fleetwood Mac was when I pinched the vinyl of 'Rumours' and played it.

Welcome to the dark side

As much as I heard a lot of music growing up, I didn't begin to buy my own until the late 80's when I would've been around 11 years old. I tended to buy 7 inch singles from places like Woolworths for the latest chart music and I was into the likes of Kylie and especially Rick Astley. I still have Rick's first 2 albums on vinyl, although sadly they are not currently in my possession. When I left London and moved to the Midlands over 10 years ago they didn't make the journey with me. In fact, I am not actually sure where they are. In storage I think. One of my tasks is to be reunited with them at some point soon.

Anyway. I come from East London and grew up in a place called Chingford. You've probably never heard of it, but the most famous person to come from there is probably a little known footballer called David Beckham. Nearby we have Walthamstow (the end of the Victoria Line on the tube) and also Highams Park and both of these places have produced the high quality musical stars (ahem) East 17 and Blazin' Squad. Top class entertainment...

East 17. Who knew one of them would one day manage to run over himself whilst driving his own car

We had a few independent record shops where I grew up which we spent a lot of time in. I had to text my brother earlier to ask him the name of one of them as I couldn't actually remember what it was called! In Highams Park we had a very small shop called 'Master Blaster'. It sold mostly vinyl I recall and I think this would've been where I bought my Rick Astley LP's. It was a tiny shop which had a section of vinyl in the middle and it was very tight to actually move round someone who was looking through the racks. The only other memory I have of buying something from the shop was getting a cassette of 'Some Fantastic Place' by Squeeze as it was an album I didn't have. I still have the cassette somewhere actually.

Chingford is sort of split into 2 main areas for shopping with North Chingford having Station Road and South Chingford having the Mount. Both locations had a branch of a record shop called 'Turntable' which I spent a lot of money in. The one at the Mount was slightly larger and we knew the staff in there quite well. In fact, we went to school with one of them. They didn't stock everything, but you could order stuff in and they would usually be able to get it for you within about a week or so. As far as I know, the shop at the Mount went first during the decline of people buying records in the 00's and was followed by the Station Road branch a few years later. My brother bought some of the storage racks from the Station Road shop when they were having a closing down sale. He also got me a Semisonic mug which they had for the release of the album 'Chemistry' and it's the one I always use for a cuppa when I go home to see my mum.

Chingford. It really is the end of the line.

Walthamstow is larger than Chingford and has a street market which apparently is the longest in Europe. We used to shop down the 'Stow on occasion and it was a treat to visit there as they had a McDonald's and of course a pie and mash shop called 'Manzies' which was amazing. On the high street there was a record shop called 'Sounds Familiar'. It would later change it's name to 'Cavern Records' and this was the place I remember visiting. It was a fairly large shop and had lots of vinyl, and Cd's and you could spend a long time in there checking out the stock. I don't really recall what I bought from there, but it would have probably been some cassettes or CD singles. It's gone now which seems to be par for the course for independent stores. There was also a shop called 'Record Village' which I think was further down the high street, but I don't remember it as well as Cavern.

Meanwhile, down the market...

Another place I bought vinyl from was 'Mike's Record Shop' which is in the indoor market at Wood Street in Walthamstow. It's actually still there I believe and has lots of second hand rare vinyl. I bought some Queen records from there in the mid 90's including the rare 'Queen's First EP' which cost me over £10. Of course you can now pick this particular EP up online for just a few quid, but I'm glad I got my copy by sifting through piles of records and finding a little gem for my collection in a proper record shop rather than faceless online purchasing.

My other half comes from Liverpool and I asked him about buying records where he grew up. He told me that the first record he bought was 'Dancing in the Dark' by Bruce Springsteen on 7 inch vinyl. To be honest though, bought is a bit of a lie. Now, hang on a cotton picking minute here. Do not go stereotyping please. The story is this, apparently when you purchased a pair of shoes from Clark's shoe shop they gave you a voucher for Woolworths to go and spend on a record. He used his voucher to get the aforementioned Springsteen single and thus started his collection. His vinyl now mostly comprises of 90's dance tracks as this was what he was into at that time. Compared to my britpop and rock albums it does make a rather interesting talking point.

Hey baby!

I still have my 7 inch singles somewhere (probably in the same storage place as my albums I guess) and I got some of these from a newsagent in Chingford Mount. It was a typical newsagents with magazines and sweets etc, but for some reason in the middle of the shop there was a white carousel type thing (the kind of stand you find greeting cards in) filled with vinyl singles in white sleeves. They had all sorts of stuff from chart hits to slightly older singles and all marked up from 50p to £1. We would spend ages in there getting in everyone's way while we hunted through to find a bargain. I believe this is where I got my single of 'We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off' by Jermaine Stewart. It never actually occurred to me as to why this shop was selling records as it's kind of strange when you think about it. I just knew it was somewhere else that I wanted to go when I was at Chingford Mount.

Another of my posts talks about the decline of record shops so I won't go into that again, but let's just say that when I think back to when I was younger and visited the places I've mentioned above it now makes me sad. I grew up visiting those shops and now none of them actually exist anymore. It is comforting to know though that more independent shops are appearing and that youngsters are visiting them to purchase music. I think Record Store Day is a massive help and I am looking forward to this year's day on 18th April. Check out what is happening in your local store and join in and support the local retailers. Go on, you know it makes sense!