The Tape: Missed by No One

New school opinion: Tapes suck

As we've discussed before, old school, Nirvana is best enjoyed on an audio tape (I prefer Maxell, but Dennon or Sony is acceptable as well), however like the late lead singer of that groundbreaking band, the audio tape format is dead and unlike that late lead singer, no one is falling all over themselves with nostalgia over bringing it back.

Rip. Mix. Burn.

Technology has rendered the third phrase of Apple's slogan (from earlier this decade) obsolete, but it is undeniably easy, convenient, and so much more time efficient to take a few minutes to put together a 50-song customized playlist and throw it on an ipod (or zune, if that's how one rolls). It is so simple, it would make the most professional of mix tape makers marvel at the wonder and relative ease of the process and curse their parents for conceiving them twenty years too early.

It is true, that it is difficult to share a playlist with a girlfriend, fiance, concubine, or other meaningful individual, but perhaps it's one of those shared experiences that has been lost into the ether of time, like being part of a dungeons and dragons club with friends in junior high school, or skating hand-in-hand during the couples skate to a Boyz II Men ballad. Sometimes you have to grow up and move on, old school.

Yes, the romanticism of making a mix tape is forever lost by not creating a physical tape with a list that is hand-scrawled, each track carefully picked out and agonized over. Maybe, however, you can take the time saved to write your loved one a poem (I prefer the haiku format), or to pluck fresh wildflowers from a sunny meadow and carefully wrap them in butcher paper that you have painted by hand. There are plenty of other ways to show you care.

Even in Portland, a hotbed of nostalgia and ironic enjoyment of eras long past (actually, mostly just of the eighties), I've not once seen someone with a wall of their collected hand-recorded and pre-recorded audio tapes. I've not seen stores that deal exclusively in vintage-era tapes. I've never seen anyone walking down the street with a bright yellow Sony Sports Walkman.

The tape is dead. Tape quality sucks. No one except your high school girlfriend really miss them. And unlike the Reebok Pump, they're not coming back.