CarrollBlog

"I believe that when you're making a mix tape or CD, you're making history. You ransack the vaults, you haul off all the junk you can carry, and you rewire all your ill-gotten loot into something new. You go through an artist's entire career, zero in on that one moment that makes you want to jump and dance and smoke bats and bite the heads off drugs. And then you play that moment over and over.

A mix tape steals these moments from all over the musical cosmos, and splices them into a whole new groove. We music fans love our classic albums, our seamless masterpieces, our BLONDE ON BLONDES, and our TALKING BOOKS. But we love to pluck songs off those albums and mix them up with other songs, plunging them back into the rest of the manic slipstream of rock and roll. I'd rather hear The Beatles "Getting Better" on a mix tape than on SGT. PEPPER any day. I'd rather hear a Frank Sinatra song between Run-DMC and Bananarama than between two other Frank Sinatra songs. When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free."

Rob Sheffield, LOVE IS A MIX TAPE