Websites bring 'mix tapes' into the 21st century

You can say "I love you" to your significant other, but only the Righteous Brothers and their "Unchained Melody" can help you tell that special person, "I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time." Even in bad times, when breaking up puts you at a loss for words, the Ting Tings can do it with zing: "Shut up and let me go -- hey!"

That's the magic of mix tapes, self-made song compilations that became popular in the '80s and '90s on cassettes, but live on today -- in spirit and even in name -- in MP3 playlists and homemade CDs. Several spiffy websites also celebrate their legacy.

Over the years, mix tapes have done the talking for a bevy of people now in their 20s to 40s who spent hours trying to find just the right selection of popular and less-familiar songs to let a loved one know just how they feel -- without, you know, actually saying just how they feel.

"The making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art," explained John Cusack's lovelorn record-store owner in the 2000 film "High Fidelity." "Many dos and don'ts. First of all, you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing."

No website captures that concept better than Cassette From My Ex (www.cassettefrommyex.com), which launched earlier this year. The site is the brainchild of Found magazine cocreator Jason Bitner, and it collects the stories of past relationships and the unique soundtracks that accompanied them via the gift of a mix tape.

Take the case of Chicago writer Martha Bayne, whose college boyfriend once made a tape for her titled "Black Flag, Death of Samantha, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull." The cassette had none of those bands on it, which kind of sums up their communication problems. But it did have a collection of 27 songs that she says were "loud, snotty, cynical, depressive, angry, noisy," yet still recall a time of occasional "magic sparks."

While you read her story, you can listen to the actual mix tape -- all 90-plus minutes of it -- via streaming audio. Like a cassette, each side of songs is presented as one continuous audio file with no indexing for each track.

Only Cassette From My Ex's featured stories -- about 18 so far -- include audio of the mix tape. Anecdotes contributed by users, in a section called "Your Mixtape Stories," often include track listings to go with the memories, but no audio.

That's where other newer free sites such as Mixwit (www.mixwit.com) and Muxtape (www.muxtape.com) come in handy. They let you create virtual mix tapes and are a snap to use.

At Mixwit, you search for songs from online music providers and then add them to a playlist to create your mix. You can add graphics to your creation, right down to an image of a classic home-recorded cassette tape with a customized label. Then you can share your virtual mix tape with other users, on your blog or on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Muxtape works much the same way, except you upload your own prerecorded MP3 files by your favorite artists-- thus getting around Mixwit's limitations of using only songs that show up in its search. There have been questions over the legality of Muxtape in the six months since it launched, and, in fact, the site shut down Monday night, saying, "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA." (Similar troubles with the Recording Industry Association of America have shut down sites such as the guitar-tab archive OLGA.) The GoodStorm Music (music.goodstorm.com) has a similar setup as Muxtape's but has avoided controversy because it stresses uploading users' self-produced MP3s.

Not sure where to begin? Besides checking out the track listings at the above sites, you could try the Automatic Mix Tapes Generator (www.tinymixtapes.com/-Mix-Tapes). Simply submit a theme -- "I'm bipolar. A mix to reflect my brain's chemical imbalance," one user recently requested -- and, if selected, the site's music editors will compile a pertinent playlist.

I've made many mix tapes in my day, although I called them variety tapes. There was one college girlfriend for whom I made dozens. They had utterly compelling titles such as "Ballads #2" and "Variety #11." While Cassettes From My Ex focuses on relationships that never worked out, my mix tapes seemed to do the trick. Laura and I have been married for more than 20 years, but I no longer need Billy Joel to help me say, "You're my home."