Soup Lessons - Austin Kleon

Love is not a gadget

Thursday, February 6, 2025

This is the first mixtape I’ve made with my brand-new Tascam deck, which was not cheap, but is pretty wonderful after a year’s worth of mixtapes on a somewhat shoddy deck whose record function was quickly deteriorating. (I made the last mix on my old Sony boombox.)

I forgot how nice it is to have a counter that works and be able to punch in and out tightly on the tape and really control the levels. (Not that y’all will hear the actual tape — but it sounds really good!)

I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.

I’ve started really playing with Side 1/Side 2 constraint of tapes. Some of my favorite records sort of front load all the pop stuff on the first side and the second side is all the weird stuff that I really love and never get tired of. (See: Pixies’ Doolittle, for example.) Other records split a sound in two, like Dylan’s Bringin’ It All Back Home, whose first side is more electric, and the second side is all acoustic. (And side two was recorded in a single day?!? And the whole record was recorded in 3?!?)

Anyways, you’ll get the picture here:

SIDE ONE (LONELY)

Lou Reed & John Cale, “Nobody But You”
Purple Mountains, “Darkness and Cold”
Brooks & Dunn, “Neon Moon”
Little Anthony & The Imperials, “Tears on my Pillow”
Bobby Womack, “If You Think You’re Lonely Now”
Serge Gainsbourg, “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais”
(Bill Murray reciting French nonsense poetry from Groundhog Day)

SIDE B (LOVERS)

Sade, “The Sweetest Taboo”
Prince & The Revolution, “New Position”
Ginuwine, “Pony”
Michael McDonald, “I Keep Forgettin (Every Time You’re Near)”
East of Underground, “I Love You”
Frank Ocean, “Pilot Jones”
Georgettes, ”Would You Rather”
Zadie Smith reading Frank O’Hara’s “Animals” to an answering machine

Again, this funny thing often happens where I pick a song just for vibes and then it winds up having lyrics that mean something to me. It’s such an odd process.