Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, on mix tapes:
In those days, tape decks were as essential as turntables. And they were as bulky as well. But right around this time, Sony issued the Walkman. These new Walkman players were all about hanging off the shoulder with headphones and bopping around the city listening to tunes. I suppose the record industry expected the consumer to buy cassettes of the LPs, and the consumer surely did, but hey — why not buy blank cassettes and record tracks from LPs and play those instead? Of course this is what every Walkman user did, and before long, there were warning stickers on records and cassettes, stating: HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC! It was a quaint forbear to today’s industry paranoia over CD-burning and Internet downloading.
If you youngsters don’t have tape decks, you can share your mixes at The Art of the Mix, or the iTunes Music Store.
Remember the “Home Taping Is Killing Music” stickers at Sam Goodies? Funny, I’ve spent the better part of the last 25 years ‘killing’ the music industry and it still stinks.
I don’t think kids these days realize how bad we had it and how bad the sound was on the mixed tapes.
Oh, I don’t know. We have a mix from some of the 33 and 45 rpm LPs from my childhood — Disney storybooks and that sort of thing.