What the Hell is a Spitz Mix?

It’s like an old-fashioned mixtape, but with words… and no music… and it’s on the internet and not a cassette tape… so really, not like a mixtape at all. Sorry for the confusion!

There’s no faster way to age yourself than by bringing up mixtapes. 

I’m one of those jerks who still calls playlists “mixtapes.” This inevitably causes younger people to laugh and point out my mistake like I’m a doddering old fool asking where they keep their answering machine. I’m well aware there are no “tapes” used in modern playlists. But I’m an idylist, so when I’m listening to their carefully curated song cycles, I like to imagine it’s been recorded on a Maxell High Bias XLII, 90 minutes, Position IEC, Type II, High. (The gold standard.) And instead of a smartphone, I’m listening on my Sony WM-DD9 Walkman, held together with electrical tape and Blues Explosion stickers. 

I do this because I still believe mixtapes were the peak of human evolution.

The last time I made a mixtape in earnest, recorded onto a cassette the way God intended, was in 1996. It was for my then-girlfriend and future wife, prior to our first-ever date at a Soul Coughing show at Chicago’s Metro. Because I hoped our date would lead to sex — a carnal “Bus To Beelzebub,” if you will — I tried to impress her with my knowledge of Brooklyn hipster musicology by making her a Soul Coughing mixtape prior to the concert. This was entirely unnecessary, as the band only had two albums, Irresistible Bliss and Ruby Vroom. But this wasn’t an indie rock primer, it was romantic DJing. A mixtape, at its best, is an attempt to have an intimate conversation with somebody by putting songs in a different order. Every song sequence was teeming with significance. When Doughty sang about wanting to “grip her love like a driver’s license,” it might as well have been a direct message to my girlfriend, although I’m unclear what that message was exactly, other than that it sounded vaguely dirty.

The mixtape did the job. Obviously, because she married me. I still believe, almost twenty-five years later, that my mixtape is the reason she said yes. 

I miss that feeling, the naive belief that if you put the right songs in the right order, and create a musical collage that expresses exactly what you want to say but just can’t find the right words, you can change your destiny. It’s an easy lie to believe when you’re in your 20s and the harmonies are hummable enough.

Digital playlists don’t have that same magic. It’s just lazily plucking songs from a limitless cloud of files and throwing them together like a musical goulash. A cassette mix is more powerful because it’s about the limitations. They're reflections of our own mortality. How much can you squeeze into this short space before it all ends? Playlists are living with your head in the clouds, thinking it's never going to end. But a cassette mix knows it has to make every moment count.

There are rules, of course. Especially if your mixtape is a romantic overture. It’s all about subtext. Prince's "Forever in My Life" is way too obvious and needy. And Paul Westerberg's “You're my Latest Last Chance"? Too desperate. A great mixtape doesn't make statements, it asks questions. And it has to keep reinventing itself. Lloyd Dobler can’t keep showing up at Diane’s house with a boombox loaded with Peter Gabriel songs and expect the same reaction. “In Your Eyes” worked once, but dude, you were teenagers then. Diane is a grown-ass woman now. She’s probably had a few kids, buried at least one parent, had a few biopsy scares, felt despondent about her job, and had a long, hard cry over nothing in particular at least a few times in the last month alone. She needs more than “I wanna touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes.”

The rules can be crippling. I once had a music nerd friend who refused to put any songs on a mixtape that included keyboards. He adopted the rule initially to express his disdain for prog-rock. A lot of terrible songs lift right on when you ban keyboards. No more “November Rain” or “Your Song,” no “Come Sail Away” or “Free Bird” or anything by Steely Dan. You could live in a world where Aja ceased to be something that could happen to your evening.

It was anything but a flawless formula. The no-keyboard rule led to some painful omissions. The Hold Steady was off the table, as were Ben Folds Five. Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” was gone, and forget about the Goats’ “No Children” or the Mats’ “Androgynous.” No more “Baba O'Riley” or “Won't Get Fooled Again,” and you couldn’t even enjoy the Beatles’ “Let It Be” ironically while secretly getting all mushy about it because it made you think of your dad crying. In the end, the piano rule was too untenable. Not having to tolerate “Bohemian Rhapsody” one more time wasn’t worth the music lost.

So my friend changed it to no banjo, which was an easier rule to enforce, especially if you believe Mumford & Sons is a scourge upon the earth. That, however, only lasted a week, until he was reminded of “Rainbow Connection,” a song still capable of making him cry like his dad listening to “Let It Be,” and “All My Little Words,” a song on the album(s) not allowed to have detractors, that perfect document of human frailty set to music, 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields. 

“All My Little Words” contains lyrics that remind us that the things we try to express through music are always going to come up short. “Not if I could write for you/ The sweetest song you ever heard/ It doesn't matter what I'll do/ Not for all my little words.” Fucking hell. How dare a song make you feel seen while simultaneously mocking you for the futility of wanting to be seen with the husky crooning of a Brooklyn hipster in a pageboy cap?

Also, it had banjo. So fuck the banjo rule. It didn’t stand a chance.

By now you must be wondering, Is this what this substack is going to be? Just Spitzy rambling about music and never really finding a point?

Yeah, probably.

I don’t make mixtapes anymore, but I still want to connect with you. If it’s not with songs, then maybe it’s writing about songs. Spitz Mix—which, by the way, is the name I gave to every mixtape I ever created for anyone in my life, usually written on the cassette with Wite-Out—is my mixtape for you. It’s a patchwork of stories, essays, interviews, and half-baked manifestos. Absolutely nothing here is timely or especially relevant. It won’t give you secrets to losing weight or living longer, I have no insights about the future of our democracy or our species, I have no hacks for getting rich or investing in cryptocurrency (which I’m still convinced has something to do with the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt), and I absolutely won’t be reviewing new or upcoming album releases. 

This is a place for anyone who’s ever wondered, do you think Jimmy Page owns sweatpants? That’s a serious question. Because there are zero situations in which I could feasibly imagine Jimmy Page, the man responsible for the grinding riffs in “Black Dog” and “Communication Breakdown,” wearing sweatpants. Jimmy Page would wear leather pants to a colonoscopy. The hospital staff would be like, “Sir, we need to take those off. Was this really the best idea?” And Jimmy Page would just shrug because he’s Jimmy Page. It'd take a gaggle of nurses and a shit ton of talcum powder to pull off those leather pants, and they'd smell like sweat and Satan and 14-year-old girls. But he’s Jimmy Page, motherfucker. He doesn't wear comfortable pants.

If those sound like the issues that matter to you, please subscribe. It’s free (for now), and you’ll get more meandering musical musings like this in your inbox twice a month, usually on Thursdays. Just like the inside of my head, it’s guaranteed to be a hot mess.