Mixtape paranoia

I worry that I put too much girl stuff on my tapes and I look like a big psycho riot grrl! Sometimes I sit there counting the different songs and it all gets too much for me. You probably already know I like the same amount of songs on each side. Maybe I should just start making riot grrl themed mixtapes it'd be a lot easier.

I haven't swapped tapes with anyone because I am paranoid of their INDYKIDness & so on - I mean, I have nightmares about giving someone a tape with dub & jungle & hip-hop & pop rubbidge, and them giving me a cool, frosty stare as return to their Zombies & Yo La Tengo & Sleater-Kinney & so on.
(Actually, I'm paranoid that all the indie I own is the stuff everyone else had years ago. Er, surely there's some other shoegazer types here eh eh eh?)

my main worry is that the recipient will think it's simply "ok." like that what i love more than anything could just be boring to another person. also that they won't appreciate older pop songs that i throw in, like roy orbison, buddy holly, nancy sinatra etc. or that they won't like long songs. lately, i've also had to worry about the sound quality, as all i have presently is a crap boombox.

Art Of The Mix has made me paranoid that other people are all raving genre-ists and will be righteously offended by having aforementioned S-K and Zombies and Yo La Tengo next to J-Lo or Red Snapper or the theme from Batman.

Also, i get paranoid that there's too much old stuff on my tapes ['50s big bands, 60s pop, new wave] and barely anything post-1995, and they'll have heard it all before. And all the old stuff is kinda cute and melodic and i'm paranoid of being dismissed as twee and ironic, which i'm not.

I'm paranoid my favourite beat-up bargain bin 7"s are too crackly.

But mostly i'm paranoid about putting Space Dust on anything, ever.

Oh, and i forgot the trusty ol' using the same song[s] on too many mixtapes in a row paranoia, the cutting off half the last song vs leaving too much blank at the end paranoia, the i forgot to remove the erase tabs paranoia, the using all the A material on the first side paranoia, illegible handwriting on the tape cover paranoia, the everyone-else's-covers-look-so-artistic paranoia...

don't be scared. variety is the spice of life.

cool car is a great song.

I get paranoid the tape'll come out sounding bad due to stereo fuckups, otherwise not much. I don't like the way my tapes never have new stuff on them. I maybe worry there isn't ENOUGH female stuff on them, actually I quite often do, esp as I've only ever done mixtapes for chicks.

Andrew, i love the way your tapes 'never have new stuff'. Put more Chiffons songs on there, everyone loves the Chiffons.

I'm paranoid that the tape I'm making will be the last ever, cause my crappy ghettoblaster is on its last legs. Also that the recipient will read something into my song choices that I didn't intend (especially that I'm secretly in love with them, for some reason). Oh yeah, and putting a song on that I've already given them on an earlier tape.

Hello, hope you don't mind me barging in, if you do I'll leave again.

I usually start by worrying that I don't actually own any tracks that the recipient will like that they don't already have, then I always worry that making a mixtape should be a major work of art and that my tapes are just messy boring hurried jobs with no thought about structure or anything, but then I'm not hugely into the whole mixtape making thing. I would love to be - that's why I started reading this forum - but I always feel like I'm just not doing it right and I end up worrying so much about what to put on it that I never get round to making it. Most of the time I do get round to it it's just to fill the other side of an album dub I've promised someone and then they always say, "Yeah, the album was great, and the rest was... er... ok." Weep.

Plus Poppy is very right indeed about the fear that they'll decide my choices either mean that I'm madly in love with them or that I secretly hate them and am trying to find subtle ways to tell them they're creepy and evil.

But...but...you say creepy and evil like they're bad things!

But yeah, underenthusiasm is scary. But it's usually their problem [from experience, indienerd snobbery or just crap taste] not yrs.

can i have that mixtape, ess kay?

I think my biggest worry is weather or not to break the tabs. If Idon't ,will the person think my tape sucks and tape over it??

Break those fuckers!

Miss Poppy, You really ought to start a Campaign For Broken Tabs thread. Spread the gospel of discarded li'l plastic squares!

I'm worried everyone already has everything I tape. Even Tocotronic. Nah, just worried that they either own or hate it all, thus making my tape completely useless. There's more than one type of eclectic, one's socially acceptable, no, make that cool, and the other one involves Blumfeld.

I'm also worried that people will read meaning into tapes where they're not meant to, and the other way round as well. It's happened before!

I'm also worried I worry too much.

Im worried that by the end of Side B- and after painstakingly choosing, ordering, and dubbing the songs, that I will look back and decide "this mix sucks" and throw it away or tape over it.. this happens way too much.

Second, I worry that most people dont give a shit what I send them

when i send tapes overseas, the post office nazis always make me sign huge important-looking customs labels declaring i am not an operative of the bin laden sonic terrorist underground, or something. i'm always paranoid that a few days later a bunch of rifle-toting frogmen will suddenly burst in down my chimney and arrest me for, like, the malicious propagation of bad perez prado or wendy carlos tunes, then take me out to some camp in the desert and lock me up in a razor wire cage for three years and force me to listen n*sync and nikki webster while they ride around on big scary inflatable kangaroos and beat my bare tender bottom with horrible fake plastic gladiolis.

oh, and i am a very naughty boy because i always, always forget to break the tabs on my tapes. that doesn't worry me, though, because i know someone out there will probably enjoy snapping them off even more than i do. oooooooh....*snap!*

I'm planning a bit of a mix at the moment but I have a feeling that it would be wrong to use two songs from a commercial compilation CD that I bought. Like I would be cheating because someone else already thought to put those songs together on a 'mix', as it were. Am I just being anal or is this a well-founded concern?

I am paranoid of radical level shifts, so much so that I rewind after taping each song and re-adjust the levels. This is one thing I despise about CD-R's ... can't stand them level shifts.

keith

Oh yes! this puts me off recording from records and CDs on the same mixtape! 'cause they're seperate units and i can't adjust the levels of the CD player => everything comes out too loud or too quiet compared to vinyl. Danged technological limitations.