LINER NOTES:THE EVOLUTION OF THE MIX-TAPE [1992-93]

No one would have believed in the last years of the twentieth century that the word 'mix-tape' would continue to resonate well into the next. The physical archetype practically obsolete, it has been superseded by the 'playlist', but the concept is the same and the term 'mix-tape' is understood as its equivalent.

There was nothing wrong with cassette tapes. You could record onto them from vinyl, compact discs, the radio, and from other cassette tapes. The point of engagement was controlled manually and so periods of protracted silence before and after a particular tune could be edited away. Volume could be regulated too, although you needed to have an ear for it. Finally, they normally came packaged with a J-card insert and a set of rectangular labels, allowing for a DIY aesthetic that other formats have lacked. Their weakness lay in a tendency to physically unravel, and the fact that you couldn't determine very accurately how much free space there was left to record upon; a song might cut out at the most inopportune moment. Some people might also cite a lack of audio quality, but I don't recall being too bothered at the time.

Cassette tapes were superseded, with respect to the making of mix-tapes, by the MiniDisc. People who used them remember them fondly. Their size – and of the MiniDisc players themselves when compared to portable cassette players – was conveniently diminutive. The MiniDisc could be edited with unprecedented precision. Track listings could be shuffled at will and undesired periods of silence retrospectively isolated and excised. You could delete individual tunes if you got bored with them and replace them with others.

The format’s only evident drawback was its packaging. The sheaves those 68 x 72 x 5 mm housed discs slotted into offered small room for manoeuvre, and it was often a challenge to annotate track listings of length, or those of groups and songs compromised of many characters. Another concern was the same that plagues all digital forms: once a disc or machine begins to play up, that's that. I’ve disentangled many a cassette from its player and, using a pencil hexagonal in section, wound the tape back around the spools. There is no equivalent remedy when faced with a malfunctioning disc.

The MiniDisc began to die off sometime during the first decade of the 21st century. The iPod was undoubtedly responsible, and the MP3 player soon became ubiquitous. This represented more than simply a change of format. In some sense the MP3 player is an entirely disposable device. Portable cassette and MiniDisc players were something to be valued in the same way that hi-fi systems once were (still are by people who take an interest in such things). The iPod and the MP3 player, while not necessarily unattractive, do not leave so much of an impression, their size being prohibitive to the variance in configuration bequeathed upon its forbears. They are utilitarian, mere conduits designed to be tucked away into a top pocket, to travel light with. Moreover, the absence of any external data storage device, to be manually inserted into your player, means that the mix-tape has become something that exists as a file in Your Documents, or as a playlist on Spotify. It is no longer a physical thing: it is an abstraction, a concept, and a malleable and fleeting one at that. The 21st century is not interested in permanence.

This elusive nature is not altogether a bad thing. Since owning a laptop and utilising MP3 technology, I’ve been able to create notional playlists to be manifested at will, as and when I acquire the digital information to satisfy them. The nature by which one obtains this data takes on many forms, none of which are as awkward as the real-time transference that recording on or from a tape or MiniDisc demanded. A playlist can be realised in a very short space of time, almost frivolously, and edited ad infinitum. Still rather have some sort of physical evidence that your playlist is more than a figment of your imagination? Burn it onto a CD.

This is what I’ve been up to. Not long ago I suffered a meltdown of my laptop and feared I may lose the playlists I’d pieced together since surrendering myself to the MP3 format. Fortunately, I succeeded in backing up most of my content before the laptop finally packed itself in. A piecing-together process ensued, and I decided I’d better get around to what I had intended to get around to years ago. The discs themselves aren’t so important. I may never even play them and will more than likely be able to transfer the material over to future laptops (or onto as yet uninvented data forms) by way of the memory stick.

The exercise is one of consolidation. Over the years, some of my playlists have become distorted, or have gone missing entirely, in between format changes and the migration of information. I have had to reconstruct certain arrangements from memory alone. In some instances, I am no longer certain they existed at all. They are the sum of many parts, but they do represent something or other: a time and place, a house lived in, a state of mind and affairs, or maybe a journey taken to a foreign land.

The autumn of 1993, and I'd not purchased a hip hop album since The Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde nearly a year prior. I sensed this purchase to be symbolically conclusive of something, or an indefinite cessation of affairs at least – a result of the fashion for ‘gangster rap’ that had begun to proliferate, which I wasn’t into. In the interim I'd enjoyed a dalliance with Acid Jazz, my father's collection of jazz proper (by no means exhaustive), and an incipient interest in 'indie' music that I was intent on developing.

It was an odd period of my life. From 1988 through to 1992 I’d listened almost exclusively to hip hop, which lent itself to the compiling of compilations, but now, in this transitory phase, almost none – or nothing that was not already in my possession. Had I ever put something together to represent 1992/93 – my A-level year, the year I turned 18, an enjoyable year – it could have run something like this:

1. Besame Mucho – Wes Montgomery
2. Far More Blue – The Dave Brubeck Quartet 
3. Poova Nova – The Dudley Moore Trio
4. Afinidad – Erroll Garner
5. Call Me – Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery
6. Hercules – Aaron Neville
7. Grounded – Gloria Taylor
8. The Girl Who Was Death – Corduroy
9. BNH – The Brand New Heavies
10. Riot On 103rd Street – Mother Earth
11. New World Order – Galliano
12. Retro-Active – Too Darn Hot
13. Atlas – The Robin Jones Seven
14. Little Green Bag – The George Baker Selection
15. Hounds of Love – Kate Bush
16. Shallow Then Halo – Cocteau Twins
17. Dusted – Belly
18. You Are the Everything – R.E.M.
19. Someone Keeps Moving My Chair – They Might be Giants
20. Weirdo – The Charlatans
21. So Young – Suede
22. Rid of Me – PJ Harvey

This list chronicles a more enthused excursion into soul and jazz than I’d cared to remember, but it explains how I must have got by on not adding to my hip hop collection. A couple of these tracks resurfaced on future compilations, and around the turn of the millennium I would explore the genre in much greater depth.

The inspiration in the first instance was hip hop, especially those acts who sampled jazz and funk. This was compounded by the discovery of a club night called Jelly Jazz taking place every Wednesday at the Quay Club, a small establishment overlooking the Barbican in Plymouth. My forays into nightclubbing had been generally disappointing up until this point: Ritzy, the Warehouse, house music all night long, and the spectre of violence. Jelly Jazz provided an alternative outlet and broadened my musical palate to incorporate soul, funk and Latin music. I'd go there with a few friends, wearing a Brand New Heavies T-shirt, but also a pair of Dr Martins because I had yet to discover the desert boot or old school sneaker. The crowd that gathered there were eclectic bunch, so it didn't really matter. I don't suspect drugs were particularly prevalent, although I’d have been oblivious to it regardless. There was certainly never any fighting. Some local cat used to stand around wearing flared jeans, a roll neck jumper, Chelsea boots and a leather jacket. My friends and I thought he was really cool but didn't have the confidence to plagiarise his look. We wouldn't have known where to pick up those threads anyway.

Acid Jazz was a strange phenomenon. Groups such as Corduroy and the James Taylor Quartet took their lead from the swinging sixties – E-Type Jags, Michael Caine, the Hammond organ. The Brand New Heavies and Mother Earth erred more towards the funkier, seventies end of the spectrum, with soulful vocals thrown over the top of their retro wig-outs. Corduroy and the James Taylor Quartet wore their hair short, were clean shaven, almost beatnik in appearance; The Brand New Heavies and Mother Earth were more hirsute – especially the latter – and wore beads and flares and Cuban heels. It was all very retro before retro became the thing, before the independent music scene appropriated it.

Acid Jazz was also a record label that as well as releasing records by current artists re-released material dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s. Taking the the Acid Jazz compilation Totally Wired 6 as an example, of the nine tracks that comprise it only six are contemporaneous. Interestingly, of the three that aren’t, I’ve included two on my notional compilation: Hercules by Aaron Neville and Grounded by Gloria Taylor.

Looking back, it's hard to know when and why I started listening to indie music. I know where I got the stuff – off my friend Dan, at his discretion – but what was it that piqued my interest? It certainly wasn't anything to do with ‘grunge’ – Nirvana held no sway – and the prevalent vernacular among my comrades was dance music and rave culture (although there was probably more interest in alternative music than I observed at the time).

It could have been this: Sheffield Sound City 1993: "One Week of Music Live to the Nation on Radio 1". I chanced upon it, an incidental sally into uncharted territory. I recall hearing Weirdo by the Charlatans, which was great; something by the band Kingmaker, which begged indifference; and Glam Racket by The Fall, which bewildered and intrigued in equal measure.

This was after 'baggy' and before 'Britpop'. These were the years in between when indie bands didn't tend to bother the top ten and being into this kind of music could invoke the rancour of those who weren't. Youth culture was clearly demarcated, and even a fondness for something as ostensibly benign as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers could attract negative attention. If you were into The Levellers you'd better watch out (I liked neither).

What was it that drew me in? What was it that made me buy the April edition of Select magazine without knowing anything about the band names featured on the cover, and what was it that I could have possibly got out of it other than the free Reservoir Dogs poster? Did in fact my desire for a Reservoir Dogs poster inadvertently determine the course my record collection would take over the years that followed?