I just pulled a box of cassettes from the bottom of my closet that really haven't been played in probably 10 years more than once or twice. Lots of time for them to deteriorate, I suppose. Actually, a lot of the real hippyish stuff is even older.
Check out what I pulled out:
Big Black : Atomizer
Sonic Youth : Evol, Daydream Nation, Sister, Confusion Is Sex, Goo
Butthole Surfers: Psychic , Powerless... and Double Live
Grateful Dead - Best of Skeletons in the Closet, Live Without A Net, Mars Hotel, Blues for Allah, Infrared Roses (I think I taped over this, though)
Phish: Lawn boy
Beck: Mellow Gold
Swans: Omniscience
Firehose: Flyin' The Flannel
Crunt
Julian cope: Jehovahkill
Ganggreen: King of Bands
Led Zeppelin: Houses of the Holy
Jimi Hendrix: Electric Ladyland
Voivod: Outer Limits
... and a bunch of mix or copy tapes...
I just put in the Dead's "Live W/out a Net" tape 1 Side A and it sounds just as good as a CD! I can't imagine I liked this old-man-sounding music when I was 17, but I did. I'll tell you, though, sounds even better to me now that I'm almost 30.
What I've noticed over the years is that certain labels and bands always had high-quality tape that both sounded great and lasted forever. Island Records was one label that had great-sounding tape, but the tapes were always eaten within a year or two. Why is that? Also, the white cassettes seemed nearly indestructible, compared to the fancy clear tapes, but the sound quality wasn't always so great. The tan cassettes seemed to get eaten most of all.
Do you think bands had any say in the quality of their tapes? Do you think record labels intentionally made tapes that would get eaten?
I've noticed that Grateful Dead tapes, whether white, tan or clear, seem to definitely last forever regardless of which label put out the product. Bigger labels like Enigma and Elektra seemed to put out indestructible tapes for their less popular bands, but the really popular bands' tapes sounded just as great, but often got eaten.
― Scaredy Cat, Saturday, 10 May 2003 15:35 (twenty-two years ago)
Old tapes are awesome, they are so cheap... the flea market is the only place I can afford to get "new" music and everyone dumps their stuff there so there's lots of good finds of obscure stuff thats great but people don't know- esp. 80's music- I found a Magazine album for a quarter last time! Salvation army too, 59cents- I scored some awesome Vapors, INXS that hasn't been out of the player for a month. Although prob. 1 in 4 or 5 of those tapes are screwed up in some way- you ever pop in a tape and hear that "fingernails on a chalkboard" tinny sound- when that happens the tape is beyond rescue. Some degrade to that point, it seems after about 20 years- but if you play them occasionally I think that preserves them. The ones that haven't been played in 20 years are the bad ones. More good stuff about tapes- there is so much great obscure music on tape thats too hard to find otherwise. Plus they are so easy to copy when you don't have the CD maker equipment stuff. Plus you can put 2 albums on 1 which is way more fun to listen to than 1 CD. Plus you can break them open & repair them if they break or snarl, but I haven't found anything that works for CD scratches short of paying lots of $ for resurfacing. Do any of those CD fixer machines work, I heard there was one that did, but they withdrew it from the market because dumb people kept melting their CDs or something. The kits are BS, they just sell you a rag and some rubbing alcohol ("magical CD repairer fluid") for $10. I love tapes.
― p_lake, Sunday, 11 May 2003 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)