The First Mix Notebook

I recently found a box of old notebooks and most of them were used for tracking my mixtapes and then later some for CD mixes. It was interesting looking through them and the oldest notebook was from June 1980. Unfortunately, that earliest notebook had some of the first entries written with a green pen that had faded considerably over the last 40 years. I could still read the song lists but barely.

The interesting thing about finding the notebooks was the insight into the thought process of making those early mixtapes and the ongoing progress and evolution over time as changes were noted on the pages. Some of the mixes look to have been created very quickly but most had ongoing edits. There were also notes about the mixes, their purpose, and comments concerning who were getting copies as gifts.

The first notebook starts in June 1980 with a mix called “Play Something Sweet”. Creating this mixes originally had specific purposes, for and event, a party, a wedding. It was also just after we had moved to Buffalo from Philadelphia and I was doing a lot of road trips back and forth. I really did not want to be chasing radio stations during these all day trips. I wanted lots of tapes filled with the music I wanted to hear and when I wanted to hear it.

From looking at these early notebooks I saw that at this time in 1980 I started naming mixes after a track on the mix as a title track. I was also at that time not against having an artist on a mix more than one time or even back to back songs by the same artist. It seems a little shocking to me now.

At this time I also started numbering my mixtapes and that Play Something Sweet mix was #1. The last mixtape in that first notebook was #66 and covered the time period of June 1980 to June 1981. That was more than one a week. The first several mixes in the book were played at our wedding in June 1980 so that must have been a particularly strong motivation to come up with some new mixtapes at that time.

It was interesting to look at that first year of serious mixtape making. I have several more of these notebooks but eventually began keeping track of my mixes on a computer using word processing documents and then spreadsheets. I got my first computer in 1982 but probably didn’t seriously one for mix tracking until 1983. I doubt I have those original files because they would be on a floppy drive somewhere.