but here it is again, the first 14 of those famous NME cassettes.

Just the 14, then? I must have lost interest after that.

A long, long time ago I used to type the inlay cards to bogus copies* of pals albums. On an old typewriter. Manually and that.

*Sorry Lloyd, sorry Eddie, sorry Gary

I still have all my (approx 300) mainly copied and compilation cassettes in a box in my garage. There are some pre-records in there too but don't merit but a fleeting mention (as there aren't any good ones!)
Put it this way, when I first lifted the lid I was met with Mick Hucknall's bonce staring back at me. Oh dear. I can't even blame my wife either, it is definitely mine.

Lloyd Cole & China Crisis. I was too quick to post the earlier comment.

The last surviving cassette in my flat.

about this very subject not so long ago

http://magicalexdjs.blogspot.com/2011/09/cassette-culture.html

Asked her out, bought the drinks, danced until the sun came up, got the girl, stayed the night, home with a smile, big breakfast, made a tape.

One of those amazing nights. Worth commemorating. Can't for the life of me remember what date it was, though...

Remember those flip-top cassingles? They appeared to be modelled on a cigarette packet and were briefly popular, but I don't think I ever played these.

The Zappa tapes were just part of a wider collector's obsession. I had all the records, now, what else could I hoard?

my old cassettes are all lovingly housed in some neat cupboards the previous occupants installed in my home office space.

and here are some of the pre-recorded ones. Essence of patchouli still present in the Yes cassette

G.G.F.H. (it stands for Global Genocide Forget Heaven) were enigmatic industrial doom-mongers from Oakland, California. In 1994 my brother and I had been both terrified and intrigued by Welcome To The Process - a vinyl single with a double-grooved B-side, that played a different track depending on where the needle fell.

Our attempts to acquire additional material by the band came up empty, until my brother ran into a fan on an internet chat room who offered to send us a copy of what he had.

The low connection speeds and poor browser stability of the early 90s made file-sharing practically impossible. Our homemade G.G.F.H compilation arrived via the Royal Mail on a double-sided cassette. An accompanying hand-drawn inlay made a prominent feature of an inverted pentagram, stencilled in biro over an upside-down crucifix, and accompanied by the slogan: “Drugs, perversion, child abuse, murder – All in the name of religion.”

I don't own a tape player any more, but can't bring myself to throw out my cassettes. They fall into 3 groups:

Pre-recorded - I tended to buy ones which you couldn't get in other formats, usually obscure industrial-type bands (eg Nocturnal Emissions, Psychic TV & Touch series). There was a huge underground tape culture in the 80s - usually £1 or £2 was enough to get an hour's worth of music you couldn't hear anywhere else. Dave Henderson's "Wild Planet" series in Sounds was invaluable here, pointing me to a host of tiny "labels" which were often little more than (literally) bedroom operations.

Bootlegs - precious recordings of gigs I'd been to. I never saw the point of buying other unofficial live recordings, as the poor recording quality wasn't outweighed by the personal connection. I particularly like the mocked-up cover the bootlegger designed for the Smiths tape - Morrissey reclining at Sandie Shaw's feet.

Home-made compilations - I'd make a tape when I felt there was an "angle" I wanted to get at: "Open Top Car and Cosey in a T-Shirt" was my attempt to have an "alternative" drive-time tape; "Move On Up" ws my admittedly small collection of life-affirming songs. I had a series of "Noisy" tapes, which unfortunately now omit number 3.

to get a photo on my posts cos' I ran downstairs to the garage the other night and took some photos. And then realised when I got back up to my wee howf (look it up)that I didn't know how to sprinkle the magic dust and put photos on here.

I was just sorting out tapes last night - put about 50 in a bin bag, but still have hundreds. Need to get organised with the PC and my tapedeck and get a few more copied before disposing of.

Will try and get some piccies - found some goodies:

Babytapes: compilations made to be played during labour (how deluded were we?)
U2 - a tape with just "U2" written on it - don't know what it is and don't plan to find out
David Bowie at the Milton Keynes Bowl - victim of a car dashboard - melted beyond belief after having been left in the sun on a hot day! (downloads *don't do that)
3 copies of Young Americans - must have loved that album

I wish there were a non-timeconsuming way of transferring some of this music into a digestible format - even my quality tape deck separate thing is on its last legs....

ps if anyone *wants* a free load of vintage Bowie cassettes of all/most of his classic albums then let me know! I can't bear to bin them as they gave me so much joy as I collected them in 1987 or so...

A brilliant excuse to just sit there and listen undisturbed to an LP or radio broadcast all the way through without interruption. You knew very well it was the machine doing the taping but you had to be there, you know, in case of fluff... or to check the levels, or the tuning...

As I said above, sorry Lloyd, sorry Gary, sorry Eddie.

file:///H:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user/My%20Documents/My%20Pictures/...

Let me know if I have fluffed it though.

did it. Sorry. Don't know what I am doing wrong.

but I was just testing myself really...

I used to have on tape an album by pedestrian late-80s hip-hop outfit Rodney O & Joe Cooley. One track was called "Nobody Disses Me" and an older, drunker me had written next to it - "Yes they do, you talentless wazzock".

Photographic evidence of various forms of what I believe were called "cassettes". Ah, the fond memories of playing one album at a time in my trusty Walkman, Side A then Side B. Kids these days don't know they're born, with their shiny digital music devices! :-)

Study of old cassette tapes 1

Study of old cassette tapes 2

Shiny gold SONY tape a friend gave me

Maxell tape from an American friend

TDK - don't you just love this?

These are just a few of the many tapes I still have. Will try to take photos of the rest soon.

I used to have a small program that ran under Windows 3.1 for printing out cassette inserts on my dot matrix, and later inkjet. I used it for every tape I made, whether it was a compilation or just a dub of a couple of old vinyl albums.

i have some pix.... they used to be a lot cooler, home-made cover wise... how did the bland ones survive?? i have moved a lot and the cassettes weren't treated as lovingly as they should have been! but... how do i upload them?

1. Mr Lewry provides instructions in FAQ at the bottom of the page
2. You could do a search like "How to post pictures"
3. Many people just follow this method provided by Mr Gatz:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/easy-picture-posting

Bad photo too. Sorry..oh well...here, if you can make them out , are some old friends of mine...

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/46/photojrlp.jpg/

The problem is almost certainly you're not using the html link. (There's a list of different options on the imageshack page. Pick the html link and copy that one.)

My mate Tony sent me these lovingly produced tapes from the states for many years.
Radio Cheezwizz alo featured Tony DJ-ing and talking me through the songs and artists.
I found so many great records and artists through them.

I found an old Mark Ellen interview with Fish!

I have lots of old tapes like that which I numbered lovingly.

More old tapes of interviews and more.

Phil Collins anyone?

Here are some rarities for y'all. Did you know Keith Moon of The Who once did a radio show? I have an excerpt from one of his shows a friend gave me.

Endless tape - no, really. TDK made one!

Old music tapes I've not yet bought again on CD or MP3 (ahem).

Help I'm drowning in too much stuff (are cassettes recyclable?)

but is that an Ovation tucked away in the corner?

Great photo btw!

This prog-folk group from the early 1970's will not mean much to most of the Massive but they were right in the middle of the Canterbury scene at the time. Formed at the University of Kent they released 3 albums in their short career. I followed them because of the Bolton connection: local lad Martin Cockerham was the band's principal songwriter. I was also attracted to the angelic voice of Barbara Gaskin.

Shoot forward several decades and I am in regular contact with Barbara, who has released a number one single with Dave Stewart. By now the original Spirogyra LPs are expensive collector's items and the only CDs available are from the far east and mastered from vinyl copies. Having been convinced there is a market Barbara retrieves the master tapes and has them remastered. At the same time she remasters 2 demo sessions and sends a copy to me. The handwriting on the case is hers and there is also a letter. They were the holy grail to me. Seven years later, in 2000, they finally get an official release on the Repertoire label. I have only just noticed the cassette has 2 more tracks than the CD.

Got some of these free ones...

Got loads of pre-recorded ones...

Some friends and I used to swap 'mix-tapes' in the 70's and 80's and I've got loads of those too (don't tell the tape police). But far from 'killing music' these tapes actually made me go out and discover new music, much of which I still have on vinyl and CD.

And this one I bought from a guy in a shack on the beach in Jamaica. The sound quality is rubbish but what memories...

Walking into a record shop, you select the record you want, take it to the counter and the owner says he cannot sell you the record, he only has a couple of copies left but he can sell you a cassette copy for a couple of pounds. Pay the money, leave your address and he will post it on.

Sound familiar to record collectors in Manchester? Cannot remember the name of the shop but the owner was called Mr. Davenport. It was more of a very large record collection than a shop and the floors were in danger of collapsing under the weight.

Better late than never..

I used to have boxes of tapes..now just a few brave soldiers survive.

Once a month at least in Bedford during the mid to late 80's there was a record fair in the Harper Suite. Without fail the stall facing the entrance always consisted of a couple of large trays of cassettes with dayglo inlays - it was the "live recordings" man.

A few failed experiments buying "audience" recorded tapes later led to desperately only checking for tapes marked as SBD or FM Radio..as the 1986 recording of Big Country live at The Grugahalle in 1986.

In 1989 I was coming to the end of student life at Bradford Uni, these
were the tunes I'd really got to like at the weekly FND (Friday Night Disco) and wednesday nights at Pickwicks. Some songs are definitely missing though - especially The The's Uncertain Smile (Pickwicks), a Pogues song and Fight For Your Right To Party (FND). Considering I went up to Bradford just knowing about Dire Straits it seems at least some education went on during those 3 years (not sure about the Billy Idol and Simple Minds stuff though)

Finally, in 1991 I took a 6 week trip around the USA - mostly by Greyhound. As well as budgeting, planning a route and getting the cheapest flight (at an actual travel agents), by far the largest amount of prep time was spent condensing my music collection down to 5 tapes with what seems like some fairly strict rules - no more than 7 tracks by any one artist apart from REM..Toufilm and Out Of Time made me an obsessive.

Here's the 3 that survive..

..Thanks Tapes!

The oldest tape I own - dates back to at least 1973! It came in a huge grey box. I think it was originally a SONY demonstration tape (as I always remember the intro to that tape!) though the box says BASF.

Original piano and synth tapes I made back in the 80s and 90s:

Back view of those old tapes:

You can hear some of them on my SoundCloud page. I'll be adding more later!