{"id":1989,"date":"2012-08-25T09:53:30","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T13:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/?p=1989"},"modified":"2012-08-25T09:53:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T13:53:30","slug":"my-musical-evolution-240-roach-days-revisited-dawn-of-mix-tape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/2012\/08\/25\/my-musical-evolution-240-roach-days-revisited-dawn-of-mix-tape\/","title":{"rendered":"My Musical Evolution – 240 Roach Days Revisited Dawn Of Mix Tape"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"maxell<\/a>What comes to mind when you look at the image over there –>?\u00a0 I have over 100 of these. Some look exactly like this one. Over the years, I’ve made mix tapes mostly on TDK, Maxell, and Memorex cassettes. I eventually settled into Maxell MX 110 as my cassette of choice. At just shy of an hour per side, it just seemed right.<\/p>\n

If you have been following along since the beginning, you might have noticed how technology and the media available dictated how I listened to music.\u00a0 A few posts back, I was talking about listening to entire ablums because on vinyl, shuffle was not an option. I’ve come to the realization that mom’s 45’s andThe Scratchy 45 Dayswere all about shuffle.\u00a0 It may not have had the random aspect of true shuffle but the results were quite similar.<\/p>\n

As I began to purchase albums, I felt compelled to listen to at least entire sides. Who wants to get up and swap out albums after a single song? The practice continued on 8-Track and and cassette. That barely functioning auto-skip feature hadn’t been invented and when it was, it didn’t work well on the cassette deck I had.\u00a0 It wasn’t until The Roach Days<\/em> that I really began to create mix tapes.<\/p>\n

It started out with WILD Wild 108 FM, <\/em> my fictional radio station. I stole that idea from Aric who had made a few WES tapes.\u00a0 WILD <\/em> was basically a metal only station that would feature my favorite songs from The Metal Years, <\/em>fictional concert promos for metal bands, and interview exceprts that I was able to record off actual radio or MTV.\u00a0 WILD <\/em>didn’t last long and was soon changed to WIRD Weird 108 FM.<\/em> This was a better reflection of My Musical Evolution<\/em> it featured all kinds of music and any bizarre bit of audio that I’d create.<\/p>\n

It was necessity that mothered the mix tapes of The Roach Days.<\/em>\u00a0 The mix tape allowed me to be both co-host and DJ.\u00a0 In the days leading up to a party, I would meticulously craft the music for the entire evening.\u00a0 I’d usually make up 4 or 5 tapes that would be played in a particular order giving us around 7 hours of non stop music. It would be a mix of music and humorous elements, often movie quotes like George McFly breaking\u00a0into the middle of a song to say\u00a0“Hey you! Get your damn hands off her!” \u00a0or Chipmunk Punk<\/em> type tracks. Since I was the architect, I knew when to watch the crowd for the response. I also built in cues to tell me to get ready to switch tapes. The playlist was\u00a0engineered to generate a response. The songs were often suggestive and aimed at that promiscuity button. \u00a0The goal was to steer the night with the perfect music.<\/p>\n

The Champs – Tequila\u00a0<\/em> Pee-Wee Herman made this popular, hard to believe that movie is so old. There was one party where we had so many people doing the Pee-Wee dance that I could feel the floor bouncing and thought that it might cave in. We did a lot of dancing at our parties.
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