Reviews for Romantic Europe 2004 Calendar

The average rating for Romantic Europe 2004 Calendar based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-10-03 00:00:00 joseph bolino i had high hopes for this book, because i am a devotee of the mix tape even in this age of the ipod, but ultimately, i was disappointed. why is it that every publishing project thurston moore touches is sullied by his involvement? at least he has more of a legitimate claim to being into mix tapes than punk houses. moving on. what i was really hoping for with this book was that maybe it would be a kind of history of the mix tape--how did cassette tapes supplant 8-tracks? what was the motivation for blank cassettes coming on to the market? how did this culture start up, of people making tapes & swapping them around to their pals? what are the different kinds of mix tapes & the cultures/traditions that surround them (ie, the road trip mix, the new romantic partner mix, the you-gotta-check-out-this-band mix, etc)? i thought maybe contributers would swap a few especially pognant mix tape stories (example from my own life: the first time i ever heard "smells like teen spirit" was when my dad played me a mix tape that included it--the tape was from a friend in the music business in chicago who had gotten ahold of a promo copy of "nevermind," so i heard "smells like teen spirit" a month before "nevermind" was released, & it definitely captured my attention). instead, the book took a kind of weird art book route, with lots of photos of mix tape collages & shit. dude, what the fuck? the text meandered & said nothing of consequence. & the book was so porly-constructed that the cover fell off after about two days, so i couldn't even sell it back to the bookstore. bah.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-19 00:00:00 Ashley Allen Visually stimulating, highly entertaining, and deeply nostalgic is how I would describe Thurston Moore's book Mixtape. Moore and his crew of 30-odd friends gather to share their mixtape stories and photos of mixtapes given and received. They are a generation (or two?) older than me, so I enjoyed Moore's introduction on buying a cassette player for the van while Sonic Youth went on tour in the mid-80s. The player took 16 double D batteries and took up space equal to another band member. I didn't start making mixtapes until the mid-90s and even then, I was just recording songs off the radio. In high school, I began to make real mixtapes, lots of them. I was selfish with them though. I never gave them to friends or boys, as many do in this book. I played one or two mixtapes for Luke a couple of months ago...it was semi-embarassing/ super awesome. Anyways, my favorite mixtape contribution is "Goodbye's Too Good A Word" from Daniella Meeker. (She's comically tells us why Black Flag makes her sentimental.) Anybody who remembers what a joyful pain it was to make a mixtape should read this book.