Helen Bach: Mixtape - will young people even know what one is?!
There's a new BBC drama called 'Mixtape' - it's very good, particularly if you're a similar age to me, i.e. old enough to remember the Thatcher Years, Band Aid and Live Aid, and the rise of Stock, Aitken and Waterman who dominated the charts in the late 1980s!
I'm only one episode in though, so shan't/won't drop any spoilers for those yet to see it.
Central to the story is the idea of sharing your love of music with close friends/somebody you care for/have hopeful romantic intentions for/possibly are in love with, etc. There was a line in the first episode which actually brought a tear to my eye - 'You never forget the boy who made you your first mixtape'.
Watching the programme I was transported back to my childhood bedroom, with my prized tape-to-tape machine purchased from Dixons/Curry's on Kettering High Street, making mixtapes for friends and/or potential romantic prospects.
The amount of time and pocket money I must have spent back then - I was a regular in Argos, filling in the little paper form using their tiny pens, and purchasing multipacks of blank tapes!
Do you remember listening to the charts on Radio1 on a Sunday evening, and taping songs while trying not to get the DJ talking over the song itself? (Obviously for personal use only, probably a grey area with regards to copyright, but we were kids with very little money just trying to listen to the latest hits, not master criminals trying to rip off people!).
There's something quite personal about compiling a mixtape for somebody - you're revealing your musical tastes, maybe linking them to a particular song, hoping to attract their attention, or just sharing your love of music with them.
I'm guessing the modern day equivalent is creating a playlist or something? I don't know, as I'm still buying physical copies of albums by artistes I like.
But even though I believe that cassettes are having a bit of a revival, I also mused, do young people even know what a mixtape is, and the joy of giving or receiving one?