Love Is A Mix Love Tape Summary

Love Is a Mix, Love Is a Tape. Rob Sheffield’s impressive first novel focuses on the tragic romance between himself and his first wife set on a back drop of an unrelenting stream of indie rock tracks which have been carefully and painstakingly organized into mix tapes. Music is the heart and soul of this book, it is the spark that ignited the relationship between the author, Rob, and Renée and it is the driving force that informs both of these people’s lives. Music sets the pace for this book, each chapter is coupled with a mix tape that chronicles a specific time in the life of the author and the musical tastes age and grow along with the author. It is said a person is most often judged by the company in which he keep, I believe this novel …show more content…
Each chapter, aside from the opening that focuses on a mix made by the authors deceased wife, is related to a mix tape that reflects a certain aspect of the author’s life as it developed. The second chapter is focused on tape that contained nothing except for a customized mix of the last few minutes of the seminole McCartney crafted hit Hey Jude. The author uses this odd mix tape as both an opportunity to explore his relationship with his father, his role model for being a man and husband, and to expand on the reasons why a musics fan living in the end of the 19th century would create such a personalized item. The fourth chapter tells the story of Sheffield’s time at summer camp where his counselors and buddies were just as into the exploding world of rock and roll as he was and spent weeks studying the works of classic rock gods. Later chapters are written along side the tapes Sheffield used to both get over breaking up with a girl and to woo her successor. Each chapter, and is corresponding mix tape, shows an incremental change in the character of the Sheffield. There is never a drastic change in the approach to the creation of these tapes nor is there ever a large, glaring, change in the genres included on these mix tapes but you can see the subtle changes that the author goes through in his life represented in the musical choices he makes in the mix tapes he provides us. Looking at the way this book …show more content…
I have heard talk that a playlist will always feel polished and clean and intentional and that they will never have the gritty, in the moment feel that a cassette mix has. My response to that claim is that about 1/3 of the files contained on my personal playlists are either leaked or live recordings of unreleased material. In the same way you could go and buy a nice clean album on a cassette in the 90’s I can do the same online today, so why would I take time to include a common, and easily found file on a unique playlist? One of the comments Sheffield makes about why he likes a mix tape is that its a very active process, you have to be actively listening to the radio and ready to hit record to get the song you want. I have no equivalent in my modern playlisting habits, the process has changed, the challenge has changed. Instead of having an single, tiny, microscopic feed of music on the radio, I have the entirety of all the music, sound clips and pieces of dialogue that have ever been uploaded to the internet at the tips of my fingers. In my opinion this is a much more romantic proposition. If I were getting a bouquet of flowers I would find it much more touching if that person hand picked each flower from a massive field of flowers rather than just grabbing the first bunch of appealing flowers