Entertainment For Lively Minds
Crap last tapes?
Posted by Sven Garlic on 27 July 2009 - 7:46pm.
Just played my 31 year-old (a christmas 1978 gift) cassette of Bowie's 'Low' (the original album on RCA, PK12030 with Dobly, price code XX, whatever that means), bought and paid for, not a home recording - don't you know it's killing music? Still sounds really good where other cassettes have either ended up chewed up and unravelled or side 1 is audible when playing side 2, 'print through' I believe it is called? 'Low' is my oldest. Wondered if any of you lot had old tapes you still play and what is your oldest example that remains playable? Just curious.
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Left all the tapes i had
in the loft of house i moved from, several years ago. Couldn't bear to throw them away but by the same token didn't want to take them with me. Like to think new owners of house got something out of them when they found them.
I for one was glad to see the back of them, rubbish things. Only really got singles on cassette and a few albums that were cheap, everything else was vinyl.
Whilst at Latitude in one of the tents, one guy was trying to convince people, unconvincingly, that vhs was the greatest thing ever invented in the last 50 years, and was the best format to watch film on?
As any fule kno'
Betamax was the best video format ever invented. Neil Young 'Archives' on Betamax, now there would be something worth having!
I hung onto 2, that sit in the Car
'Blue Slipper' by Helen Watson - never managed to find it on CD.
Also 'If This Is Rock And Roll, I Want My Old Job Back', by the Saw Doctors - probably available on CD now?
Ooh
Someone's wrapped the text round the image for me. How kind. Not mastered that particular skill yet.
Tape
Still play tapes in my car as it has a tape player, can't bear to throw them out. I actually need to buy some blank tapes, but they're hard to come by these days.
Betsy Cook
The Girl Who Ate Herself. One of the rare moments of shock on a WEA rep's face as he desultorily mentioned some single he was going to have to give away half a dozen copies of, only to be greeted by a bright "Is she the one off the Linda Thompson album?" by the shop manager (Me).
Remarkably good thread title too. I heartily commend your work, young Ferruginea..
I don't have a cassette player any nore
which is annoying as there are at least half a dozen cassettes I have that I'd like to transfer to mp3, including a Jacques Brel compilation and Mazzy Star's "She hangs brightly"
Only vinyl stays
Tapes really were an interim thing I reckon. A means of getting your music into your/your parents car whilst the vinyl had to stay at home and the CD was yet to be demonstrated on Tomorrow's World. I have got rid of a lot of my CD collection due to ipod/downloads taking over, but have religiously kept everyone of my vinyl albums stored, in order, and packed carefully in boxes, whereas my tape collection has vanished, I suspect into a skip some years ago. I don't remember when or where and haven't missed them in the slightest. No means of playing them and clearly not the sentimental value of vinyl.
I do feel sentimental about the 'Low' tape though
Probably as it was one of my first 'proper', serious music purchases, so as an object it is something of a fetish to me.
To answer the question,
the oldest cassette tape I have which is still playable is a bright green BASF C90 upon which I recorded a concert put on by mates at Plymouth Arts Centre in 1974. Music and poetry was the theme, with the title "Fire And Ice". Very sixth form, great fun, dreadful recording. I can't possible bin it, it's historical. I have even transferred it into the digital realm, and one day I will track down the perpetrators* and send them copies, mwah hah hah hah.
So that's 35 years old and still working. Well done BASF.
* includes the Headmaster of a school in Kent, one of The Wolfmen, a flying instructor from Kalamazoo and a music shop owner from Gloucestershire, amongst others.