This is the thread where millenials can ask old-timers music-related questions about the past.

For example:

In ye olde record stores back in the days of vinyl/cassettes, how long did singles stay available? Would they be taken off the shelves after so long.

I think this thread will be preposterous, but occasionally musical queries come into my head which require an answer from a contemporary of the times. Like, "what did you first think of rap when it began entering the mainstream?" "what was it like in the late 1970s if you didn't like disco?" "where were you when Lennon died and what was your reaction?"

I'm guessing/hoping some members are old enough to give me answers about these kind of things.

my questions:

When Hot 97 started, were you there?
When Rap City got started, were you there?
When KDAY got started, were you there?
When Jive Records got started, were you there?
When Yo! MTV Raps started, were you there?
When The Source magazins started, were you there?
When Cedric and Seda started, were you there?
When Biggie was doin his album, were you there?
When Tookie Williams was buried, were you there?
'73, Cedar Park, were you there?
One-twenty-three park, were you there?
You ain't tellin me the history cause were you there?

[Hook]
were you there?! (And where were you?) (Where were you?)
(And where were you?) (Where were you?)
(And where were you?) (Where were you?)
(Where were you?)

[KRS-One]
When Moe Dee challenged LL, were you there?
When that bus blew up in London, were you there?
When Death Row challenged Bad Boy at the Source Awards
In New York at the Garden, yup, were you there?
When Kwame Toure, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael
Was passin on, were you there?
When Nelson Mandela was freed from prison
And spoke out at Yankee Stadium in New York, were you there?
For all the births of my children, were you there?
When the Rodney King uprisings happened were you there?
These objective rap historians tryin to document
Hip-hop from outside forget it, were you there?

[Hook]

[KRS-One]
LOOK! The Jive Records label, were you there?
The Columbia Records label, were you there?
The Elektra Records label, were you there?
The Warner Brothers Records label, were you there?
The Koch Records label, were you there?
The Capitol Records label, were you there?
I know about they contracts cause were you there?
I wrote and rewrote most of 'em when were you there?
I ain't readin a book or recitin a hook
I am hip-hop itself cause yup were you there?
Y'all need to get it together with hip-hop's history
And get it right, cause yup were you there?

depended on the single, really. some stuff would always be available, other stuff would be around in the top 40 racks and never be seen again once it dropped off the charts

I think one independent store where I lived only had the top 40 rack for singles. I kind of remember larger 45 bins at Licorice Pizza where they stocked like Eric Records reissue 45s and stuff. I don't remember what the 45 bin was like at the Wherehouse.

there was also a thing where sometimes an older single by a still popular artist would be reissued: so in, say '84, you could get a double-A side of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough"/"Rock With You."

what did you first think of rap when it began entering the mainstream?

to me, rap entering the mainstream meant "the message," "white lines," things like that. i was a suburban kid raised on classic rock and infatuated with punk rock, and i absolutely loved it. and i wished it wasn't so hard to actually find the records, which, if you lived in the suburbs, it was.

where were you when Lennon died and what was your reaction?

i was watching "monday night football." patriots vs. dolphins. i was, and still am, a patriots fan. they lost that night. i heard that he was shot, as millions of others did, from howard cosell. i was crushed and confused. i don't think the idea of him dying occurred to me right away. he had been shot, and that was terrible enough. i'm not sure if i could process the news any more than that, or if i even wanted to. i don't remember if i heard that he had actually died from cosell or from the radio. that made me unbelievably sad. it was the first celebrity death that mattered to me. i stayed up late listening to the beatles on the radio (wbcn in boston), and not saying much. my memory is that they played nothing but beatles for several days. the next day i went to the boston common with my friend barry. there were vigils everywhere, little circles of people standing around piles of lennon photos and news clippings and burning candles. we picked one and stood there for i have no idea how long. it was extremely cold. there was a guy taking photos. we just kept standing there, staring into the fire in our midst, staring at our ground, staring ahead, staring back down at the ground. at some point we left, and that's all i remember, except for lennon and the beatles continuing to be all over the radio, seemingly every station, for days. the next week, barry and i were in the middle of a photo in the cover story in newsweek's lennon issue. my head is down and i look like i might be crying, but i think that's just my hair in my eyes.

where's the thread where i can ask millennials what it was like when Sic Alps broke up?

This can also be that thread.

sadly, I do not know the band of which you speak. sorry.

sic alps broke up?

we got through it

still they can never take away from us the things we experienced at sic alps shows

the delicate harmonies; the perfectly-choreographed dancing . . .

IIRC, the night after Lennon's death NBC had a one-hour prime-time bio/obit special, and my parents surprised me by being willing to let me watch it instead of putting it on whatever else might be on. The memory is kind of hazy, I hope I'm remembering it right. I do have a clear memory of the show including the "Imagine" video and me thinking that the lyrics would be just the sort of godless hippie shit that would set my father off on a rant, but he stayed quiet.

I saw sic alps and was p underwhelmed

Same w Times New Viking live

Was in my room playing a board game and my mom came in and told me when they announced it on TV. Age 12.

do old people think of their lives as having two halves, pre and post-Rock 'n' Roll High School?

"what was it like in the late 1970s if you didn't like disco?"

Well there was tons of classic rock on the radio (hey, even the Stones were releasing good new stuff) and plenty of punk and new wave breaking through. As long as you avoided top 40 radio, you were safe.

Checking out the US top 100 in late 70s, there was lots of non-disco in '77 but by '79 disco had taken over the charts.

where's the thread where i can ask millennials what it was like when Sic Alps broke up?

― lisa 龜 (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, January 23, 2014 7:16 PM (2 hours ago)

I know a decent amount of backstory on this, but i'm not a millenial so

I wrote a very long and very poor quality poem about John Lennon when he died, maybe on the exact day but I don't remember.

I got the guy who shot Lennon confused with the guy who shot Reagan. I think I put "The Catcher in the Rye" on my books to read list

I remember my grandmother saying something like: why are people making such a big deal of this, he wasn't even a good person; then comparing him unfavorably to Bob Hope.

And yes, there was a lot around besides disco. Some time around 1979 or maybe 1980, I went from listening to commercial disco (or disco dominated) stations to suddenly just listening to college radio and being pretty puritan about it (but that opened me up to several genres or sub-genres I was completely unfamiliar with before then, and hundreds of artists).

I was consciously a bit bored with classic rock at some point around 78, or at least bored with hearing the same songs. New wave and punk seemed very new and exciting. I remember hearing the adds for Elvis Costello's Armed Forces and thinking how new it sounded. I already was interested in him because my brother knew someone who had a cover band that included "I'm Not Angry" alongside some Ramones. That would have been 1977, I guess.

I remember late 70s top 40 being like Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Styx, Cheap Trick -- like hardly any disco

I worked in radio in the late 70s. Our station was dayparted; Cheap Trick and Styx were only for later hours, but on my daytime shift in 1978 it was all Saturday Night Fever all the time. And Grease.

1. Shadow Dancing, Andy Gibb
2. Night Fever, The Bee Gees
3. You Light Up My Life, Debby Boone
4. Stayin' Alive, The Bee Gees
5. Kiss You All Over, Exile
6. How Deep Is Your Love, The Bee Gees
7. Baby Come Back, Player
8. (Love Is) Thicker Than Water, Andy Gibb
9. Boogie Oogie Oogie, A Taste Of Honey
10. Three Times a Lady, The Commodores
11. Grease, Frankie Valli
12. I Go Crazy, Paul Davis
13. You're the One That I Want, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
14. Emotion, Samantha Sang
15. Lay Down Sally, Eric Clapton
16. Miss You, The Rolling Stones
17. Just the Way You Are, Billy Joel
18. With a Little Luck, Wings
19. If I Can't Have You, Yvonne Elliman
20. Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah), Chic

I was 14 when Lennon was shot, I was crushed. I remember being super bummed out and my mom talking to me about how his legacy would live on etc. A year later I wore a black armband to school. I don't remember a whole lot about the coverage, but that xmas my mom bought me a whole bunch of Beatles albums and Lennon's Shaved Fish.

would love to babble about 1979-1980 radio but maybe later

What was your first response when the news broke on social media that the British had surrendered at Yorktown?

It was weird, I was like, I started eighth grade as a British subject and now I'm gonna finish it as... what?

lol

there was also a thing where sometimes an older single by a still popular artist would be reissued: so in, say '84, you could get a double-A side of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough"/"Rock With You."

This. Even in 1978 you could go into any record store and get the 45 of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" or old Beatles stuff, but they would be these reissues, not the originals ones (and not on picture sleeves).

I remember in the late 80s buying Led Zeppelin cassingles.

"what did you first think of rap when it began entering the mainstream?"

I liked it, but not as much as I liked soul/funk (boogie). I still feel like that about it. I've always had a preference for hearing someone singing rather than rapping.

"where were you when Lennon died and what was your reaction?"

I was at a shop in Bayswater, London, where I'd just started working, and it was announced on the radio. I don't really remember my reaction. I've never been a fan of the Beatles but his death was obviously a huge news story, so I was interested in hearing about it on that level.

In ye olde record stores back in the days of vinyl/cassettes, how long did singles stay available?

In the early-mid 80s I bought nearly all of my music at K-Mart. Living in more-or-less rural NE Ohio, it was the only retailer that sold music within 20 miles of my house. In their records/tapes section, they had a bin that contained all the 45s for that week's Billboard Top 40. Each week, they'd switch them out. If a song dropped out of the Top 40, you couldn't find it at K-Mart anymore.

"where were you when Lennon died and what was your reaction?"

I knew who the Beatles were when it happened (I had just turned 11 years old a week before), but didn't really know much about them as individuals or personalities so it didn't have a terrific impact on me personally. But when I first heard the news, my sister and I were in the car with my dad -- at a gas station, no less -- and he was pretty broken up about it. I knew about them at all thanks to his record collection, which included most of the Capitol albums plus Plastic Ono Band and Imagine.

"what did you first think of rap when it began entering the mainstream?"

My best friend at the time, Jeff Strauser, and I used to sit around waiting for the radio to play "Rapper's Delight," then we both bought the 45 and played it over and over and over. We loved it. Same thing with "Rapture." Couldn't get enough of it.

First heard rap, like many others, on "Rappers' Delight." That was a top 40 hit, so that's when rap entered the mainstream as far as I'm concerned. Thought it was different and amusing, but didn't see it as a whole new style about to take off. Some of the RD lyrics struck me as embarrassing, such as the one about "super sperm" which was weird to hear on the radio.

what did you first think of rap when it began entering the mainstream?

where were you when Lennon died and what was your reaction?

I used to sit around waiting for the radio to play "Rapper's Delight,"

I remember REALLY liking that one (and later "The Message") but some of the others not so much. I wasn't that keen on the faster "electro" beat (e.g. "Planet Rock", although that sounds amazing to me now).

I have no idea when rap came to Mississippi radio stations, and I wish I did. I heard "Rapture" a lot on the top-40 stations I listened to, but that was its own thing. By 1980 I was spending all my money on LPs and not listening to much radio. I also wish I'd spun the dial more when I lived in the OC 1970-75 -- all I listened to was "Boss Radio" KHJ, which was pretty cool, but I'm sure I missed out on a lot of mind expansion over on the FM side.

"The Message" was the one that made the biggest initial impact in my high school, I think I was in 10th grade art class when I heard it. Next biggest things I remember were all the Roxanne records and Chaka Khan.

I don't know how I missed Howard Cosell breaking the news about Lennon. I was a Miami Dolphins fan and surely would have been watching that game. Actually found out about it the next morning when my dad told me. It was very sad of course, and together with Ronald Reagan being elected the month before it felt like the forces of conservatism were winning.

"where were you when Lennon died and what was your reaction?"

Haven't a clue, I'm surprised people remember tbh! I remember the front cover of the NME but that's about it, for some reason I thought he died around the same time as Bob Marley in a sort of RFK/Warhol or Princess Di/Mother Teresa news double whammy but Marley died months later. The Beatles never meant anything to me because my parents were too old to be into them and my older sister (who was my overwhelming musical influence) was strictly Bowie/Roxy then Punk Rock and never bought a record that wasn't contemporary, like ever. However my Granny did have all the Beatles' singles! What I'm trying to say is that Ian Curtis dying was a much bigger deal in my house, when you get right down to it.

Seems like it was a pretty big deal in the US though!

I liked Rapture a lot, but didn't realize at the time that it was anything other than a pop song with a fun spoken bit. It did not clue me in at all to anything new going on, I don't think anyone I knew realized that it was inspired by anything in particular.

I think the first rap song to really hit my school hard was White Lines.

We tried to get our history teacher to allow a moment of silence for Lennon, but she didn't really think of him as anyone important (older teacher) and wouldn't let us. 5th or 6th grade.

The Beatles never meant anything to me because my parents were too old to be into them...

Same for me. I remember the kids in the infants' school playground going around singing "She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!" and I had no idea what it was or why they were singing it.

Seems like it was a pretty big deal in the US though!

Yes, as I said, my immediate reaction was somewhat indifferent, but when I saw all the candlelit vigils in the U.S. on the TV, it began to sink in that it was a much more momentous event than I had thought.

Well I suppose he did get shot in NYC, btw I was there when George Harrison died and I was a bit, "Right, OK, good guitarist, wrote some good songs, a Beatle but..."

We tried to get our history teacher to allow a moment of silence for Lennon, but she didn't really think of him as anyone important (older teacher) and wouldn't let us. 5th or 6th grade.

this is so sad

It is?

Well I suppose he did get shot in NYC

True, but watching the TV coverage I could see it was a huge thing for these people that had grown up with the Beatles from an early age, and that it was kind of an end of an era for them.

Funnily enough, I remember being on holiday in the Lake District with my family and I somehow heard (perhaps from a radio in a pub) that Elvis had died. I think that made more of an impression on me than Lennon's death. Not because I liked Elvis (I didn't), but it seemed weird that it could happen. It seemed much more like a puncture in my idea of pop music being something bigger than ordinary life.

I was going to say, Elvis dying seemed more important at the time

But I think we all know by now that the US is batshit for Beatles

What did people who listened to/participated in punk in the '80s think about '90s punk revival?

because Lennon was shot within the same 6-mo. timeframe as Reagan and Pope JP II (and Sadat?), it seemed to me as a kid that famous people apparently just got shot all the time

if by "past" you mean "adolescence" or "college freshman" sure, but this writer is presumably a grown man and that's what's sad about it.

― brimstead, Wednesday, October 22, 2014 2:11 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i call bullshit

like i know we've all gone thru ilx-inspired come-to-poptimist-jesus moments but the real world doesn't work like that

and rockism is not the sole preserve of white males, it just happens to benefit them

it's like there's a whole message board about it or something

Loving something is not the same as being a tight-sphinctered pedant about it. I love(d) The Uncle Floyd Show.

but really what did the uncle floyd show actually say about how we're all puppets of the oligarchy

'happens to benefit' implies a passivity i dont really intend, but i feel like this conversation is missing the perniciousness of this stuff

Alright, (no sarcasm), i think i get your point now, d-40. I agree that sharing obscure tastes (in music/film/art) with someone is a good thing/icebreaker/bonding mechanism. But i don't think that attitude has to be so aggressively anti-pop. I hate modern pop music, I just don't feel the need to complain about it because who cares.

Or rather, i don't think lamenting the loss of "connecting with people based on mutual obscure taste" has to necessarily be in opposition to pop.

but really what did the uncle floyd show actually say about how we're all puppets of the oligarchy

D+

L-R: puppet of the oligarchy, Uncle Floyd

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YTJBDUN8iSE/SYpM6k2TysI/AAAAAAAABSI/sIgIUPHeQIw/s400/UncleFloyd.jpg

morbius do you listen to effectively wild because at least we can bond over that

o shit are you sam miller

no, i am not as big a dork as Sam Miller

bonding with you sounds unwise in these times of Ebola

shit sorry bruh

(my current display name is a SM quote, v inattentive on yr part)

ok now i don't know who's trolling who anymore because that's why i made that joke, jesus christ look what the internet does to bored people with office jobs

just confused cuz you asked if i listened to EW

i mean, i figured there was an remote possibility you'd thought of the phrase on your own in a moment of despair

*a, so i thought i should trust but verify

yeah gotta say brooks isn't helping himself any by writing a blog post to defend himself wherein he refers to himself in the third person. i mean, if you absolutely can't write something that makes you look sympathetic, at least you ought to be able to flame well.

It was weird but again I think he was trying to make clear that he is only using text already in the original article to defend the quotes Holden was isolating.

hard to argue in favor of his response post on a board where the poster hall of fame is the zing thread

d-40 I find some of your posts on this piece pretty otm but do you know this dude personally?

Dan Brooks is the drummer for Gay Dad.

I think a piece like this was always going to get a lot of backs up around here. It made me cringe a bit myself, mostly due to my ILM-trained aversion to un-selfconscious displays of rockism. However, I thought it was interesting more because it described a particular experience in a way that I haven't seen written about that much. I'm more interested in the social history than in the musical opinions (which are pretty superficial). Also because I'm old too and can relate to that feeling of suddenly having received an untold bounty of musical riches - far more than I ever dreamed was possible - and yet feeling occasionally a nostalgia for all that other stuff that you weren't supposed to care about - and that frankly was usually an enormous pain in the butt - but that sometimes made the experience, I don't know, somehow richer and more meaningful. That sounds trite, and no, I wouldn't go back to the way things were even if you paid me. But I guess it's just that feeling when the world suddenly passes you by, you get a glimpse of your mortality I guess, which can be the basis of interesting writing.

d-40 I find some of your posts on this piece pretty otm but do you know this dude personally?

― The Complainte of Ray Tabano, Wednesday, October 22, 2014 9:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah i've just been reading his blog on & off for about a year & find it really pretty well written & would consider myself a fan of his writing

I still think there's a huge amount of disingenuousness about an average ilxor's past propensity to judge someone for their musical choices. Like a reaction to corny indie fuxx mentality that ones sees in themselves

― deej loaf (D-40), Wednesday, October 22, 2014 11:24 AM (Yesterday)

I totally agree with you! It is one of the things that fascinates me about ilx.

i feel like it's much easier to argue in favor of the original post by far. while it rubbed me the wrong way, i can see why others wouldn't be bothered by it/would agree with the social-currency-of-music ideas he's talking about - and i wouldn't say that people with positive feelings about it are LOL DUMB INDIE-ROCKISTS and/or sexists by default.

the second piece is just pure unmitigated smarm and mansplaining. like some vicious, dipshitty hybrid of chuck klosterman and like, charles krauthammer.

o.nate's post is totally OTM

So one day in the 80s I walked into a chain store, and heard the manager telling a clerk (not customers), "All the records are going back tomorrow." Bought what I could, and sure enough, when I went back a couple days later, it was all tapes and CDs: they had both been peripheral, now they were both in the main aisles, the LP bins, both in longboxes (nice art on those). Both were smaller than LPs (singles were gone too), so more in the same space; both were cheaper to make than LPs (I read), and CDs were more expensive than LPs, even when on sale, which was most of the time. Friends mentioned the same thing happening at other stores, so seemed like the great transition wasn't entirely voluntary.
Although: cassettes were very handy, and more reliable than 8-tracks, as long as you kept your player clean. Another motivator, before the records went: there were even cassette-only deals, like a friend had two Grateful Dead albums on one pre-recorded tape: pretty sure it was Working Man's Dead/American Beauty; how's that for range? What got me were the CD-only albums, especially jazz, especially Gil Evens' There Comes A Time, very different from the already very different LP.
But right before that (around the time the new LPs disappeared), was an interview with an engineer, who said, "A really good stereo will still sound better than a really good CD player. But a cheap CD player will kick the ass of a cheap record player." OK, cheap is real, I'm in.

Gil *Evans*, even

haha I remember that engineer quote

just wondering
October 22, 2014 at 6:30 pm
So re that Poetry Prof bit, were you being tongue in cheek in calling her gutless for leaving only a Malkmus cd out? Maybe she just likes him (he is fond of poetry). If everyone is misinterpreting you, perhaps you are being less than clear.

Also, you are in your thirties now, haven’t you realized that some people might like both Kesha AND the Slits? Or maybe Kesha and Miguel and blues and other non-rock? Or maybe just books, and yes no music. Shocking …

danbrooks
October 22, 2014 at 9:08 pm
No, dude, that had not occurred to me. I’ve always assumed that each person only likes one band. It’s the same way that you either like Spotify or you don’t; liking some things about it and disliking other things is inconceivable.

ok

wooooooooooow he is salty. him and ariel pink should hang out and collaborate on a tune about how the social justice warriors are out to get them.

so Brooks doesn't like Miguel, books, and non-rock

When the Rodney King uprisings happened were you there?

lol y I was in 6th grade I think and we were supposed to go to catalina island for the yearly retreat (a week of "roughing it") and they postponed it bc black people, although ultimately we wouldn't have been anywhere NEAR south central DRIVING to OR from Long beach. Nb. I knew, like 3 A.A. people between the ages of 0 and 15, iirc

Mind you, the great transition did seem mainly about chain stores/mass appeal/legit releases. For everything else (and more), in the *late* 80s, with my massive K-mart RCA CD/Cassette/AM/FM boombox (detachable speakers) already a constant companion (incl. at record shows, to motivate buyers), I became a subscriber to Goldmine Magazine (more like Crackpipe Magazine).
As far as an actual backlash against non-vinyl, there were a few dealers ranting in Goldmine ads, but the only diehards I actually knew were much younger: my high school buddy's middle school son, already a budding singer-songwriter, and his muso buddies refused to listen to anything but vinyl. My friend: "Son, if you're really serious about music, or even if you aren't, you're missing a lot! You're making a big mistake!" This. of course had opposite affect.
Son's debut album was cassette-only, I think, but later reissued on vinyl, and he's always made a point of vinyl options for each album, whenever they become feasible, and long before the great resurgence (was re-discovered each recent year in features).

"to motivate buyers": also my aging portable stereo, but "record shows" were already all-format (even a guy selling cylinders, once). A friend bought a bunch of Beefhearts for 50 cents each at a yard sale, and tried to re-sell, but they were all eight-tracks; no sale at that rec show (though later in Goldmine)

Beefheart was mostly OOP except as pricey imports, at that point.

We got our first CD-player, I think a JVC CD boombox, maybe some time in the late 80s. I remember even having our neighbors over -- the whole family -- to check it out.

For a while it seemed like Graceland was the ONLY album we owned on CD, although maybe my parents had a couple of classical albums. We listened the shit out of it, and I was also pretty obsessed for a while with the fact that you could skip tracks/easily forward or reverse to an exact second of music. I think at that point we had pretty much already been switched exclusively to cassettes from vinyl for at least a few years -- I mean we still played vinyl a lot but only bought cassettes (especially bc you could listen to them in the car).

It's funny, all the emotion this think piece has generated. I wouldn't have imagined the degree of personal investment of the responses.

Eh, I'm too old to be a hater. You reach a point where you just realize some things aren't for you, or you're not ready for them, or whatever. Hating takes up way too much energy.

Per "High Fidelity": It's not what you like, it's what you're like!

This was a good comment on his post, which I think we can possibly more easily relate to as POST ROCKIST MUSIC FANATICS because it doesn't contain mentions of specific artists we feel defensive for: http://combatblog.net/?p=6851&cpage=1#comment-69258

Nice!

not sure i even completely agree w/ it but i do think it's interesting

and then immediately following that, in brooks's own comment:

"Also, if you like schadenfreude and would like to get a sense of how Holden writes about subjects other than me, there’s this piece in Vice:" http://noisey.vice.com/blog/why-are-you-fetishizing-girls-who-like-rap-music

"if you like schadenfreude?" if he's shitting on her piece for being either badly written (inaccurate IMO) or somewhat smarmy/overwrought (somewhat accurate), uuummmmm, pot meet kettle. if he's trying to be like "when she's not shitting on me her writing's fine," which i doubt but is possible, i dont even know.

sure, he wasn't trying to be elitist (according to him). fine. still kind of a douchenozzle. verging on ott-esque tbqh

to clarify: if he was trying to be like "when she's not shitting on me her writing's fine," that's kinda tacitly condescending, but i guess well-intentioned? i just seriously doubt it

Could you clarify the end bit a bit more?

nm I just reread the original

More from Uncle Maven's musical adventures:
Well now, sometimes when I'm walking down the road, I spy a CD. Long as it doesn't start falling apart when I pick it up, can take it home, rip it to Wav. Can't do that with a record or an mp3, by cracky. (Re-wind an unravelled, tossed-out-of-the-car cassette? With a pencil? Too much work, wouldn't be reliable, and haven't found one in ages.)

This was linked from the Steve Albini thread, but is relevant here as well. Colorful description of the way the record industry used to work:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis-keynote-address-at-face-the-music-in-full

millennials v gen z!!!! pic.twitter.com/JSkJ2MLDJs

— Chris Fleming (@chrisfluming) March 8, 2021