“How did we find new music back in the day?” This question was making the rounds on one of the social media sites the other day, and it got me thinking. Partly because of my own return to purchasing music directly over the past year, and partly due to our ongoing engagement with nostalgia culture (which we talked about at length last summer – see the Nostalgia Curve series).
And of course, as with all things millenial and younger on social media, “back in the day” is some combination of “before the internet” and “last century”.
Rude!
The answer is a little simpler though: papers and zines, word of mouth, and mixtapes. The print media still exists, even if it’s not nearly as influential or dominant as it was in the past (and we can get into a bit of the history of the local magazines like Vox or Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, and how they were foundational for the various scenes in the 1990s), but the mix-tape seems to have fallen largely by the wayside.
Of course “mixtape” is a term that encapsulates the platonic ideal of what was shared. A lot of mixtapes were compilation CDs (above) and LPs (below) too. Often this was arranged by the label, to feature singles of as much of their talent as possible*, as with the Epitaph “Punk-O-Rama” series, with Volume III shown above. But pre-internet (or at least, before music on the internet became widely accessible, and 1998’s Punk-O-Rama III was right on the cusp of that), it was one of the reliable ways for a young lad to check out a lot of bands, or even just get a single you were looking for. Distribution wasn’t great “back in the day” either, and a lot of times you were stuck with that you could get your hands on.
And what you could get your hands on was wildly erratic. Witness 1984’s Rock Sizzlers, from Polystar above. A mix of top 40 hits, movie soundtrack singles (Flashdance apparently being popular back then. You can tell by the inclusion of – you guessed it – Frank Stallone), some rock singles, and some pure pop. Modern English, Kiss, Soft Cell, Agnetha Faltskog, and more). That is as eclectic a mix as has every been dreamed up by the writers for a SCTV spoof sketch. Often the mixtapes would be more on theme:
…such as 1978’s Nutty Numbers, by Ktel, a collection of comedy and novelty songs with a cute cartoon cover. (I may have overplayed this one more than is healthy for a young developing mind. However, I’m sure modern parents that are all too far aware of Bluey can understand.)…
… or 1974’s Canadian Mint, also from Ktel, a collection of early seventies singles from what I imagine are Canadian artists. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure, as while I recognize BTO and Chilliwack and The Stampeders from the mandatory replays on Canadian Classic Rock Radio, many of the rest I’ve never heard of at all.
Regardless of the source, the Ktel records shown here shown at least the hints of a theme, of a selection criteria at work, and so are examples of what I like to call “commodified curation“. (We will be talking more about that in a month or so, so right now that’s a bit of a placeholder). This curatorial aspect is key, “back in the day” as it is now. One of the things lamented and lost in this era of algorithmic delivery of content tuned to your interests and needs is that “human touch”. And though this may occasionally allow for moments of serendipity and discovery, more often than not it feeds us more of the same, “variations on a theme”.
Of course when it comes to mixtapes, the actual mixtapes represented one of earlier forms of social media – shared and spreadable between friends, or traded via PO boxes and mail envelopes through addresses listed in the back of the aforementioned zines. Or perhaps the mixtapes are simply the last of the analog social media, along with the other tape traders – both VHS and Beta – of Wrestling and Anime and other more salacious content:
Regardless, the mixtape era represent something lost, something concrete and knowable, a discrete snapshot of a time, place, theme, or choice, plucked out of the endless river of our culture, and fixed in time, as opposed to the eternal now of the digital streams.
There are signs this is changing however. We’ll follow up on this soon.
*: Which makes me think of record labels in terms of wrestling promotions, and hmm, I’m sent. I’m not going to let this analogy die. I need to dig into this one further.