"Since Phillips launched the compact audio cassette at the 1963 Berlin Radio Show, our relationship with music has never been the same... By the early 1970s, we were voraciously recording music onto blank cassettes: LPs, concerts, tunes from the radio. It allowed us to listen to music in a new way, privately.  Artist and musician Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) looks back at the plastic gadget that first let us make our own compilations. Mix Tape shares the treasured works (and the stories behind them) of over 50 dedicated home tapers, including Elizabeth Peyton, DJ Spooky, Jim O’Rourke, Allison Anders, and Mike Watt. From the Romantic Tape to the Break-up Tape, the Road Trip Tape to the “Indoctrination” Tape, the art and text that emerged was of the mix cassette as a new way of resequencing music to make sense of our most stubbornly inexpressible feelings, a way of explaining ourselves to someone we love, or to ourselves."  Or so says the official publisher's release.  The best thing about this book is that it will encourage you to dig through those boxes at the back of your closet and dig out your own mix tape collection and give them the once over; whereupon you will be happy to realize that your very own tapes are much more meaningful (and better!) than those made by the celebrated contributors to this volume, interesting though they may be.  For those of our (younger) readers still active in the music mixing department, this volume should provide some inspiration for taking those mp3 CD mixes to the next level.