THIS IS A NOSTALGIA/RANT WARNING.
I just wrote all this for some reason...
Audio cassette's eh? What were they all about? They're rubbish.
I've tried to ignore mine for a long time, sitting in a little plastic
suitcase-shaped storage box, always in the van every time I've
moved since college. Over the last few years I've rebought CDs
of stuff I have on vinyl, and now I'm minidiscing my old
audiocassettes. The sound quality is awful. In these modern
interweb days when I tut about mpeg compression artifacts, it's
just not on. The buzz and hum, and it's not the equipment I'm
using -- alright, maybe it is to some extent, but was even vinyl
this bad?
But the audio cassette is an icon of my middle-youth, not just
home taping off the Top 40 and later making compilations for
gurls, but the early computer geek me had all those tape-to-tape
pirates of Spectrum games on C90s and those finger-tiring mag
hex-code listings saved messily here and there. (I wrote my own
stuff too, OK.) There was even the WHSmith C15 specially made
for saving computer stuff on. What a rip off. (At the other extreme
the C120 would be a dangerous place to save your precious
code, cos they always wound too tight and ended up spooged in
a looped ball of brown ribbon, or festooned across the keep left
signs of central reservations.)
Anyway, listening to the Pet Shop Boys in the dark last night I
was transported back (courtesy of a bottle of chardonnay) to the
time when I first started buying albums and they were all MC. I
didn't actually do this til I left home for college in 87, when I was
still taping stuff off the radio. But with my little ghettoblaster (ho
ho) I started to spend MY money, my ill-deserved govt grant, on
music for the first time. (Well not exactly the first time, but that's
too embarassing to relate here. Maybe another time.)
And now a pointless list of stuff I bought on MC, in no
particular order, warts and all: Pet Shop Boys, PWEI, New Order,
Jesus and Mary Chain, Mission, Swans, Waterboys, Howard
Jones, Janet Jackson, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division (those
massive factory purple boxes, with little postcard album covers
inside). Some have conveniently vanished from move to move
(Janet Jackson), and some I have attempted to replace with
CDs. Annoyingly, the CD of New Order's Substance doesn't have
some of the stuff on the cassette version.
The ads used to say "Buy the LP/MC/CD". MC? Magnetic
cassette? pff. I suspect if you tried hard you might still be able to
buy MCs of new albums, but even the MD albums are
disappearing from most shops. Have you even seen a cassette
walkman recently? MD and MP3 players, and the huge chunky
CD walkmen, but not cassettes. I admit I'm still using cassette's,
occasionally recording books on to several c90s for my mum,
but I'm determined to move her on to MD -- it's cheaper, it
sounds better, and you get 5 hours out of them for the love of
mic.
Right, thanks for listening, sorry about the buzzing sound in
the background.
― Alan T, Wednesday, 10 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
I enjoyed reading this, Alan. Tapes have a place in my heart as the
first format I heard a lot of great music on via comps and taped
albums from friends' vinyl, even though as a medium they're totally
crap. Did 'Home Taping Kill Music' ?
Can't agree with :
**but was even vinyl this bad?**
This is nuts - vinyl sounds, and has always sounded GREAT! Sorry.
― Dr. C, Wednesday, 10 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
I can empathise with this. I have 2 or 3 large boxes filled with
tapes. I used to buy everything on tape before I bought my first cd
player in about 1991. The first thing I bought with my first grant
cheque was 3 Beatles albums on cassette. I also used to get loads of
vinyl and cds out of the library and tape those if i liked them. I
now wish that I had been buying things on vinyl instead since tape is
such a crappy format.
Still use it for comps for friends though even if they do have MD
players. Its also classic for the in-car comp.
Don't think I would MD my tapes though. If I did the only stuff worth
doing would be the radio sessions I've recorded off the radio.
― mms, Wednesday, 10 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
MC = musicassette.
It is possible to get pretty great sound on cassette, but not, I
think, quite up to the quality of MD. Indeed, the one true
audiophile nutcase of my acquaintance (who owned three or four high-
end tape decks in his 20s - not necessarily all at the same time -
and bought all his music as an undergrad on tape) got himself a Sony
MD portable in '97, and was so impressed he promptly sold his
Nakamichi DR-2 and took all his tapes down to Vinyl Exchange in
Manchester (where he must've got all of 30p a shot for them).
Like Alan the question is - where to put the buggers? Mine (90% of
them illegal music-industry-murdering dubs off friends) have sat in
the same cardboard box for around three years now. It currently
resides underneath a dresser unit in the bedroom which has *just* too
little clearance to allow the box to be easily accessed. Tape always
did require a bit more effort.
Even more of a strictly sequential-access medium than vinyl (at least
with LPs you can see where to drop the needle for the next track; I
was always warned against utilities like 'Music Scan' as they
ultimately knackered the tape), it probably has a tiny purist
following for that reason.
[I would like to point out that I still love getting tape comps off
people, so don't anyone stop].
― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 10 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)