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Raise your hand if, having surpassed the "anta", you've never recorded your favorite tracks from your favorite albums onto a cassette. All homemade, from vinyl to tape, turntable, and double tape deck, so you could even copy the cassette secretly passed under the table by your scarce rock-loving friends.
I had a few, about ten or so, recorded in collaboration with my beloved big brother. I'd fill mine with plenty of punk, while he'd add the shameful stuff he listened to, so it could happen that after that terrifying bore of a track by Van Der Graaf Generator, the Stiff Little Fingers would come on to shoot my mood sky-high. And those cassettes traveled a lot, in the walkman and in the car stereo.
Today there's the CD and the MP3, Spotify and SoundCloud, the smartphone and the tablet, the USB and Bluetooth, and it's a lot less romantic. Vinyl and cassette tapes have disappeared from circulation, what you find now is only meant to squeeze blood from a stone, and as if I'd spend thirty or more euros for a vinyl or buy it at a newsstand, no way.
Aside from the rambling, there's this guy Jesse Dayton. He's not that well-known, until a few months ago I had the faintest memory tied to collaborations with two of my favorites, X and Social Distortion, but also Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and other big names from the American folk scene, as I recently learned: so, putting two and two together, Jesse's in that melting pot known as cow-punk.
Having passed the "anta" himself, naturally, Jesse made cassettes too. And he still does.
«Mixtape Vol. 1», from the cover itself, is the celebration of this practice and at the same time a tribute to all those who, like me, were and are accustomed to it. Only Jesse, this time, plays and sings his favorite tracks from his favorite albums; he doesn't just transfer them from vinyl to cassette: to put it simply, Jesse's sentimental-musical education is (almost) all in here and, who knows, in the volumes to follow.
Also because, ten songs are hardly enough to explain why you've reached your fifties like this, as wide as the space they cover is, not so much in terms of time—almost all tracks are from the '60s and '70s—but in terms of genres. In short, just like in the cassettes shared with my beloved brother, there's a lot of diverse stuff here, from Jackson Browne to the Clash, from Neil Young to AC/DC, from Gordon Lightfoot to ZZ Top.
And the best part is that, listening to the whole album, I didn't get bored for a second, I didn't even skip Elton John's "Country Comfort" because yes, he's in there too, honored in this album.
Then, of course, when Jesse ups the ante and especially the tempo, it's a great listen, like when after VDGG the SLF came on, between a scream-worthy "Whole Lotta Rosie" that resurrects the ghost of the more boogaloo John Lee Hooker and a "She Does Right" that even Jason & The Nashville Scorchers couldn't match in making merry in some rundown pub on the outskirts, not to mention the one-two punch of "Bankrobber" / "She's a Heartbreaker", Clash / ZZ Top; then, on the spot, I don't remember versions of "Bankrobber", but one this good surely doesn't exist, one that doesn't make you miss the original too much, and I'm talking about "Bankrobber", for me one of the most unspeakable tracks by the Clash. The Clash, to be clear.
But even the more "calm" things don't sound bad at all and have their reasons, from the aforementioned "Country Comfort" to "Redneck Friend", which opens the album in the best way and forced me to go searching for the (to me) unknown original by Jackson Browne (by the way, beautiful, always useful to learn something new).
Then, I know what they say about albums made entirely of covers, the stasis, the regression, the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. Well, this time it seems very different to me, in this "Mixtape" I hear freshness and passion, a way of making music like it's not done anymore. Instinctively, I highly recommend it.
Hoping all the links I've linked work properly, down with technology, long live vinyl, long live cassettes!
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