- Image via Wikipedia
Were any of you like me, laden with a huge bag full of cassette tapes? Did you ever hit a point where you got rid of the outer cases because you figured out that you could put 2 tapes top to bottom in the same space as one in a case?
Ahh cassettes. I grew up with cassettes and walkmans. I used to record my record so that I could take them everywhere and still listen. I would record those brand new cd’s onto cassette so that I could listen to them in my car. Do you remember the places where the tape got stretched and had a few seconds of higher pitched music?
Do you remember exactly where the breaks were at the end of the tape? Did it piss you off when the CD of your favorite album came out on CD and the songs were in a different order!?!? (I am talking to you EMI with Queen’s Greatest Hits)
Or how about the points where you had to unscrew the shell and retape together the broken ends. Inevitably it would skip right there and become more of the charm of the tape. Did you stay up all night Sunday nights to record Dr. Demento so that you could listen to him all week? Did you ever long for a double deck system so that you could dub tapes because holding a headphone of your Walkman up to the microphone of another set just didn’t have the same, well any quality?
Now we have cd’s and I don’t know of many cassette players around. I don’t have one in either of my cars, my old Walkman has given up, my old stereo doesn’t play them anymore, it just eats them.
I did find a whole bunch of my old tapes the other day in the case that I used to haul around in my truck. I opened it up and saw some of my old compilation tapes that I had made, and some of the old Dr. Demento tapes. I can’t quite remember all of the songs that are on those tapes now, but I can remember which ones were the good ones, the ones I would listen to for hours.
I am sure that most of them would sound like crap if I cranked them up today. I know that I keep meaning to get rid of them, I have for the 4 years since we moved. I just haven’t done it yet. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I will get an old player and hook the thing into my computer and record off those old songs that I loved all of those years ago.
Come to think of it, my daughters new stereo has a cassette player in it….
I would love to hear your stories of times with your Cassettes. Stories about the one that broke and got replaced the next day, stories about the ones you got for Christmas that never got side B played because side A was so good.
Please regale me and the rest of us with your stories in the Comments section as well as digg, stumble, facebook, linked in and twitter!
Thanks for reading!
Justin
Related articles
- Sony retires cassette-tape Walkman (theworld.org)
