As this holiday week gets into full swing, I am thankful for classic rave mixtapes being hosted and posted all over the internets. Don't get me wrong, I still have hundreds (?) of actual mixtapes in a box in my lab, and occasionally pop them into the odd boombox to relive past glories, but there just aren't that many cassette decks in my life anymore. So I'm always stoked when I find online homes to some of the dopest mixtapes I own (and even more than I heard but never dubbed, or lent to someone never to be seen again, or lost in an afterparty parking lot, or heard about but never actually listened to).
These tapes represent so much more than music (though they ARE amazing sonic time capsules of a particular time and place in underground dance music through the years). Keep in mind that the first commercially available web browser debuted in 1994 (Netscape), so the internet, and all the far-reaching, social networking potential it brought with it, did not exist in anywhere near its current form. We had to improvise in a decidedly "analog" fashion. In much the same way that hippies that collected bootlegged Dead concerts built around them a loose network of likeminded souls that used the collecting and trading of these tapes as a vehicle to interact and socialize with other bootleggers, rave mixtapes and the "retro" distribution systems that sprung up around them were like precursors to the message board or genre-specific listserv/forum.
Sometimes you'd cop a mixtape from someone wandering the floor of a rave with a backpack/suitcase full of tapes. I always set aside extra money when I was hitting a rave far from my stomping grounds (the northeast) because I KNEW there would be tapes there from DJs I had hear ABOUT, but never seen live. An added bonus was that you usually had a shitty car-ride home the next day, and 4-6 hours of sleep-deprived Sunday driving was ALWAYS better with a couple of new mixtapes.
One fellow to take the "raver with a suitcase of mixtapes" thing to the next logical step was Raymond Frances, who, in addition to throwing the Bassrush parties and introducing British jungle to American raves, also had a mixtape catalogue distribution business. You could just browse his selection (usually a faded, photocopied and folded "catalogue" that was just an alphabetized list of dj mixes and live sets), and then send him a note via snail mail with some cash in an envelope, and if you were lucky, you'd get your mixtapes in a few weeks. It was like some sort of underground, slo-motion iTunes. Goddamn if you weren't stoked when your Fusion Productions package arrived.
Sometimes you'd cop a mixtape from a record store (remember those?), and those were usually representative of that particular city's most prominent and/or prolific DJs. I had a few friends who went to school in DC, and I always tried to cop a new Scott Henry or Feelgood tape from the old Modern Music store in Georgetown, or try to catch a party at Buzz or Fever when down there.
Most of the time, though, you'd cop a mixtape from one of your buddies, eagerly dubbing the mix onto whatever blank tape you had lying around (I always kept a fresh stack of blanks handy, as you never knew when the opportunity would arise). I remember coming home from college on winter break or for the summer, and trying to dub as MANY of my buddies' mixtapes as possible before I had to leave (praise be to highspeed dubbing!). And it was always dope when someone you knew came back from San Francisco or Orlando or some other techno mecca, becuase you KNEW they'd have lots of regional gems you couldn't find back east. Hell, I remember a few times in college where I'd commandeer multiple stereos on my dorm floor just to maximize my dubbing potential for a friend's weekend visit!
So, in the spirit of old school rave mixtapes, I invite you to spend the upcoming long weekend raving down memory lane at the following mixtape sites, where you can find such classics as DJ Dan's "the Scratch the Bass", Terry Mullan's "New School Fusion" mixes, or any of the live at Fever Scott Henry/DJ Feelgood classics, among many, MANY others.
Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect!
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