The top comment on that article describes him as an "invisible hero" and that's perfectly apt - one of those people nobody would never know the name of but brought such joy to humanity. Let's share some memories of one of the greatest (and sometimes infuriating) inventions of our generation. In other words, another old man thread!
We weren't well off as kids so my first cassettes were copies other people had made for us - Thriller, Bad, Enya (I loved Orinoco Flow), Kylie Minogue and Bros were the first tapes I remember having. A few years later, an older cousin fancied himself something of a DJ, so he made us a few mixtapes of the big rave/dance hits of the time. We listened to those nonstop. Also had a few double cassette compilations by that time.
Remember sitting with your hand on the record button so you could tape the latest hits off the radio for your own mixtape? We also had a cassette recorder which had a plug in microphone so we had tapes of us spouting whatever random nonsense we could think of - probably commentary of our wrestling figure fights.
Additionally, we had an Amstrad computer growing up and all of the games were on cassette tapes that you'd insert and load that way.
I bought a couple of cassettes in Recordland a few years ago. I don't own a player and don't intend to get one, but a flood of nostalgia hit me once I picked up those beautiful little rectangular boxes. I'm an oldschool soul and love the physical, tactile experience of objects.
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The top comment on that article describes him as an "invisible hero" and that's perfectly apt - one of those people nobody would never know the name of but brought such joy to humanity. Let's share some memories of one of the greatest (and sometimes infuriating) inventions of our generation. In other words, another old man thread!
We weren't well off as kids so my first cassettes were copies other people had made for us - Thriller, Bad, Enya (I loved Orinoco Flow), Kylie Minogue and Bros were the first tapes I remember having. A few years later, an older cousin fancied himself something of a DJ, so he made us a few mixtapes of the big rave/dance hits of the time. We listened to those nonstop. Also had a few double cassette compilations by that time.
Remember sitting with your hand on the record button so you could tape the latest hits off the radio for your own mixtape? We also had a cassette recorder which had a plug in microphone so we had tapes of us spouting whatever random nonsense we could think of - probably commentary of our wrestling figure fights.
Additionally, we had an Amstrad computer growing up and all of the games were on cassette tapes that you'd insert and load that way.
I bought a couple of cassettes in Recordland a few years ago. I don't own a player and don't intend to get one, but a flood of nostalgia hit me once I picked up those beautiful little rectangular boxes. I'm an oldschool soul and love the physical, tactile experience of objects.
Yeah and if the DJ jumped in to singalong to the last few seconds of the song you'd want to fataing murder him for fataing up your mix. Rick Sadler from AM106, I'm still mad.
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Long after I had switched over to CDs I still had a tape deck in my car so would make mix tapes off my CDs for listening to while driving. But I hated having long periods of silence at the end of the tape and didn't want to be searching for the tiny fast-forward button while driving, so planned them out meticulously to fill up the entire tape. Of course a 90 minute tape actually had around 47 minutes on each side and varied a bit making it hard to get exactly right. I don't miss doing that.
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Long after I had switched over to CDs I still had a tape deck in my car so would make mix tapes off my CDs for listening to while driving. But I hated having long periods of silence at the end of the tape and didn't want to be searching for the tiny fast-forward button while driving, so planned them out meticulously to fill up the entire tape. Of course a 90 minute tape actually had around 47 minutes on each side and varied a bit making it hard to get exactly right. I don't miss doing that.
I only threw my tape collection away in 2011 when we moved house and it physically hurt to do it.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
I owned quite a few cassettes as a kid, teen, for some reason the one that I remember the most is Bell Biv Devoe - Poison because it was yellow. That is all.
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agggghhhhhh!!!
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oh yea... mix tapes!!! who didn't make that special girl in high school a mix tape with all the cheesey power ballads of 80s hair bands! ha! ha!
what i usually did when i bought a tape would be to record it onto a 90 minute tape. you could usually get all the songs on one side and usually had room to add a favourite track or two to any remaining space on the tape. flip the 90 minute tape over and record another album on the flip side.
my main reason for recording my original tapes was to reduce wear. i listened to music constantly and was really ticked off when my walkman ate my northern pikes tape that i hadn't had a chance to dub yet. had to go buy another one and it was something like $15 to replace... that was a lot of cash back then!
i remember i did a road trip to south dakota eons ago and most of the guys going on the trip were die hard star wars fans so i played the movies on the vcr, outputted the audio into the tape recorded and made audio recordings of star wars, empire and jedi. we would pass 6 hours of driving while reciting the star wars movies - ha! we were such geeks!
and as Swift mentioned - computer games on audio cassettes! i had space invaders on one tape and asteroid on another! ahhh - great memories!
__________________ "...and there goes Finger up the middle on Luongo!" - Jim Hughson, Av's vs. 'Nucks
I started collecting and making cassettes like a hipster and currently run a Pioneer CT-F1000 but I need to find someone to service it.
https://www.cassettecomeback.com/ was a UK company but they recently switched to Canada as the UK is running low on new used stock and there is more in North America
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oh yea... mix tapes!!! who didn't make that special girl in high school a mix tape with all the cheesey power ballads of 80s hair bands! ha! ha!
what i usually did when i bought a tape would be to record it onto a 90 minute tape. you could usually get all the songs on one side and usually had room to add a favourite track or two to any remaining space on the tape. flip the 90 minute tape over and record another album on the flip side.
my main reason for recording my original tapes was to reduce wear. i listened to music constantly and was really ticked off when my walkman ate my northern pikes tape that i hadn't had a chance to dub yet. had to go buy another one and it was something like $15 to replace... that was a lot of cash back then!
i remember i did a road trip to south dakota eons ago and most of the guys going on the trip were die hard star wars fans so i played the movies on the vcr, outputted the audio into the tape recorded and made audio recordings of star wars, empire and jedi. we would pass 6 hours of driving while reciting the star wars movies - ha! we were such geeks!
and as Swift mentioned - computer games on audio cassettes! i had space invaders on one tape and asteroid on another! ahhh - great memories!
Yeah, not only would you make mix tapes for your girl (always had something by Peter Gabriel on mine). But you also had that stash of specific person mix tapes. The sex tape, the party tape, the drive over an our tape, the studying for finals and you know you're going to fail tape, the gym tape.
I swear one night in Dallas, I was errr in an altered state and I was determined to get the song something going on added to my mix tape of favorites, and I say there for like 3 hours waiting for the song to come on the radio.
And some of my favorite games were on cassette, the original castle of Wolfenstein, Forbidden Forest, Castle of Doctor Creep.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I only threw my tape collection away in 2011 when we moved house and it physically hurt to do it.
My tapes are still in the garage. In their "fancy" rack and carrying case. I still have a portable stereo with a cassette deck and sometimes in the summer I'll pull it out on the patio and play some of them. Then you remember what a pain in the ass they are. Dead space, flipping them, ejecting them to play a new one, god forbid one gets eaten. Still can't bring myself to toss them though.
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Sent from an adult man under a dumpster
Recordland in Inglewood used to buy cassettes if they had the case and liner notes, so if yours are just taking up space but you can’t bring yourself to throw them out you might want to give them a call.
It was all about when you graduated to mixtape level 2 and pressed pause instead of stop on the tape being recorded and transitioned songs on the drumbeat.
Tom Cochrane, Mad Mad World in elementary. It's funny how you probably owned so many cassettes and CD's back in the day but you can't forget the first one. Green Day's Dookie was my first CD.
I think my first cassette was AC/DC High Voltage. I remember getting a big case for them for Christmas one year. IT had a lock on it and my ####head cousin tried to pick it and broke the damn thing.
Had a Sanyo boombox, that thing got some mileage. Also had the Sony Sports Walkman (mine was blue, not yellow). the volume knob broke off so it was full volume or nothing.
My cassette case and it's contents were donated to my brother in law who has an old RV with a cassette deck still.
Cassette tape memories
