Cassette Tapes

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Well-known member
MBTI
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With our technology of media being stored digitally, our lifestyle in consuming media is a very on-demand approach. We can get (download) new music any time we feel like it, and we can easily skip tracks if we don't want to listen to them. Not to mention all the space you save with only the need of a hard drive. All very beneficial things, but there are some problems that come with them.

Music is special
Some people might share a problem I have with media, and that is archiving it for future consumption. With disk space being virtually unlimited, it's no big deal to just keep everything you acquire. Maybe it's engrained into who I am to defer value of something. Have you ever listen to a song the first time, and think nothing of it, and after a few more times, it's your favorite song? My belief is that music has potential to be close to your heart. Though this belief makes if harder for me to discard music, some music just needs a one-way permanent trip to the trash can. I think it's ideal to keep music that is special, and cassettes made this easier for me to do. It's not easy to skip tracks, so just don't record crap.

Memorable imperfection
Imperfection leaves a mark that cannot be reproduced. Recording on cassette is an organic process that leaves hints, like the not-so-perfect radio signal, that song you recorded over, and how you felt when your radio ate your tape. The scars left of your salvage will be remembered every time you play it. The cassette - a playlist you can't easily change. You'll remember which songs come after another too.

So I want to see if I can restore something about music that was lost in my past. I want to start collecting a few of the old cassettes I once had, and play them in a way I miss hearing music. I actually still have most of the cassettes I ever owned.

Here are some cassettes I remember:

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Peppermint said:
I recorded songs from radio on cassettes only 10 years ago. :D
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Me too! I used to get excited when the radio played that one song you were dying to record, but would barely come on.

I still have quite a few tapes from when I used to record things/myself singing/myself playing.
 
I have the full BBC Radio version of Lord of the Rings on 13 double sided cassettes, all in all a very good production. Also, I have Sing-Along-Songs on cassette, my favorite being 'Down by the Bay':

"Down by the bay, (bay, bay,)

Where the watermelons grow, (grow, grow,)

Back to my home, (home, home,)I dare not go, (go, go,)

For if I do, (do, do,)My mother will say:"Usually follows some kind of variation on "Did you ever see a _____, _____ing a _____", with rhyming words, for example:
  • "Did you ever see a fox, hiding in a box?"
  • "Did you ever see a fish do a hula in a dish?"
  • "Did you ever see a snake baking a cake?"
  • "Did you ever see a cat, wearing a hat?"
  • "Did you ever see a moose, kissing a goose?"
  • "Did you ever see an ant, climbing a plant?"
  • "Did you ever see a whale, with a polka-dot tail?"
  • "Did you ever see a bear, combing his hair?"
  • "Did you ever see a mouse, building a house?"
..."Down by the bay." "Down by the bay." "Down by the bay." "Down by the bay!"
 
let's go to radio shack. mebbe they have cassette player. i can get called an ugly itch from ghettoville.
 
Okay, don't kill me when I say this. But what about 8 tracks? I liked those pictures of old cassettes [MENTION=2177]o_q[/MENTION] - NICE. Someone should make some visual art with those. Anyone have any images like those of old 8 tracks??
 
Heh
 
Apone said:
Heh… I used to have a lot of tapes and make mixes and I actually had a tape walkman as late as 2002, but now I think that they suck and are probably the worst format out there, except for maybe 8-tracks. They don't sound good, you can't find the beginnings and endings of songs, there's hiss, they're physically ugly and they get eaten up so easily. Those 120 minute tapes were the worst. Just playing them would sometimes be enough to pull the freaking end of the tape right off of the spool.

I can understand why people collect vinyl because it sounds great, looks great, and the album covers are like works of art. The CD re-releases of say, The Beatles catalogue were at least somewhat generous and sometimes came with essays and such, but with the tapes you'd get like a single one-sided insert with generic, identical fonts and absolutely no explanation… and even if there was artwork who cares because it's so small you can't appreciate it anyways. And don't get me started on the ugly plastic cases that cracked and snapped and ended up in the garbage… and trying to write out a huge list of the songs that you've just put on your 120 minute tape could easily give you carpal tunnel.

They deserved to die out… except for 8-tracks, they were the nadir of musical formats and I hope we never see anything like them again.
MP3 players are so much better.
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Too funny. LOL
 
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