The Importance of Mix Tapes & Reference Tracks
I know I’m old. I’m a young Gen X’er. I find myself, more and more, saying, “Man, things used to be so much better than they are now.” Some of that is just middle-age rearing its ugly head, but some of that is true. One place where I wholeheartedly believe it is true is when you compare mixtapes to playlists.
A common theme in conversations I’ve had with Paul Mahern, beginning with our first phone conversation in the Spring, has been musical references. It’s also been a consistent theme in the conversations I’ve had and the research I’ve done surrounding my book.* In early November, while discussing the topic at Paul’s home studio, he said, “I learned that from Mellencamp.” In a way, that’s true. A great anecdote from Paul Rees’ Mellencamp is, prior to Scarecrow, John made the band learn over 100 songs from the 50’s and 60’s. When they came together to record, they spent the first couple months doing nothing but these cover songs. Only once the band had these songs down where they could play them in their sleep did he introduce the songs he’d written for the album.
See, the point of it was, John had this vision for the record. It can be really hard to communicate that vision through verbal means. Even if you say, “think Van Morrison here”, do you mean “Gloria” or do you mean “Into the Mystic”? In a moment of genius, John went to the genesis of the thing. Instead of trying to work backwards to get the sound, he went to the beginning, knowing, or guessing, that then the sound would just come out naturally. I was a young child at the time and not privileged to have been a fly on the wall in Belmont, but I think the results you hear on Scarecrow speak for themselves.
Returning to Paul for a moment, I know what he means, but I think he would agree with me that saying it better would be that the idea crystallized, or congealed with Mellencamp. I think he understood the importance of this already, maybe just not to the degree he believes it now. In 2017, when talking to Tony Philputt on his The Wrecking Yard podcast, Paul mentions two important things from the early Zero Boys years:
When he joined the band at the ripe age of sixteen, the guitarist, Terry “Hollywood” Howe, made him a mix tape with the Stooges and other “proto-punk” bands. The idea was to expand Paul’s musical foundation to include the sounds of what Terry was aiming for with the Zero Boys. Paul had heard the Sex Pistols and Ramones at this point, but had not yet been introduced to some of the bands that came before (one of the down sides of “the good ol’ days” was this stuff wasn’t available to you mere seconds after discovering the Ramones).
When they went to record Vicious Circle, Paul knew that producer John Helms had no experience with punk rock, so he brought him a copy of the Germs’ GI as an example of what they wanted the album to sound like.
For music fans, this same principle holds true in its own way. When you made a mix tape for a friend, it was to introduce them to new music. When you made a mix tape for a love interest, you were saying, “this is who I am” or “this is how I feel about you”. Playlists cannot capture this same magic because the effort going into it is not the same (usually). Before computers, when you were actually making tapes, you’d have to listen to the song yourself as it recorded tape to tape, or CD to tape. Once the tape was done, you probably listened to it yourself a few times to make sure it flowed the way you wanted it to from track to track. Much like a band creating a set list, wanting to take the listener on a journey that you curate yourself. Now, when I introduce people to new music, I take five minutes to put together 100 songs. Like, “Here’s Shit You Need to Know 101”. It’s still good to introduce people to good music that’s new to them, but it is definitely not the same as it used to be.
Whether you’re going for a sound in your own music, or just telling someone through song who you are, like most things in life, context matters. When I say I like Nick Cave, a lot of people will say “yeah, me too”, but if their only knowledge of Nick is “Where the Wild Roses Grow” and “Into My Arms”, they might be a bit shocked to hear “Stagger Lee”.
For those of us musicians and music nerds, it can be a bit frustrating to be misunderstood in these ways. Personally, I know that in my non-music inner circle, very few people understand where I’m coming from because they don’t understand my influences (and I wear my influences on my sleeve). On the other hand, it’s very refreshing when I start to explain something and the person says, “oh yeah, I get it, you’re referring to…”. That moment, while often unspoken, a connection is made between us through art. We’re on the same page, at least for that moment.
I have yet to figure out how to extrapolate that out into the rest of the culture, but damn, if it’s not one of the many things I love about art. If nothing else, if everything external is different, we know that somewhere deep down, in our heart of hearts, we’re the same. As I referenced in the previous blog in the Gaslight Anthem, “we’ve been cut up the same” and “that’s my favorite song I’ve been crying to it since I was young.”
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At the beginning, Paul asked me to make him a playlist of reference tracks. As we didn’t know each other much at the time, he asked for “What you think is amazing and what you’re trying to do.” So, I referred to this as my musical DNA in less than 25 songs. This is not the playlist he gave to Shannon, Heidi and Devon, but he pulled from here. In fact, when we all showed up to Primary Sounds, the reference tracks are all they had heard, Paul did not share my acoustic demos with them. So, pieces of this are the musical foundation for what we’ve done over the last six months. What’s Amazing & What I’m Trying to Do
The mix tape is also a great way to explore the musical family tree. More on that another time.
*These blogs are a way for me to begin to synthesize some of these themes I’m seeing before they become full-blown, well-researched essays on the topic.