‘H/C’ by Thurston Moore
For fans of Sonic Youth, Joyful Noise recommends Talk Normal. Click the picture to get a free download of their single “Bad Date”.
In the future, when social scientists study the mix tape phenomenon, they will conclude- in fancy language- that the mix tape was a form of “speech”, particular to the late twentieth century.
— (Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500 quoted by Thurston Moore on p. 28 of his book “Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture”
At a time when, he couldn’t afford to purchase singles Thurston Moore recorded mixtapes in Dan Graham’s living room. Here is the story of one such mixtape quoted (again) from Moore’s Mix Tape book:
“[In the early 80’s] My love Kim would come home from work each day, which was at Todd’s Copy Shop on Mott Street or waitressing at Elephant & Castle on Prince Street, and I’d be playing hardcore singles all day. I thine she even wrote some lyrics about her boyfriend [me] doing this. I felt slight guilty, but I also needed to hear these records in a more time-fluid way, and it hit me that I could make a killer mix tape of all the best songs on these records–and since they were all so whort and they all had the same kind of sound and energy, the mix tape would be a monolithic hardcore rush. As we had access to Dan [Graham’s] apartment [ie. where there was a library of records, and equipment to do dubs], I went up there and did just that. I wrote ‘H’ on one side, and ‘C’ on the other side. That night, while we were in bed, and after Kim had fallen asleep, I put the cassette on our stereo cassette player, dragged one of the little speakers over to the bed, and listened to the tape at ultra-low thrash volume…. For my birthday that year, Kim bought me a Walkman with a speaker built into it. This allowed me to have the Walkman right next to my pillow and play the ‘H/C’ mix tape at an even more intimate range…”
And so without further ado, Joyful Noise has assembled and presents to you (a close approximation) of….
H/C Mixtape*