My Cassette Tape Collection

     I thought I'd spend one post waxing nostalgic about cassette tapes. On one hand, cassettes seem like a relic from my childhood. However, as recently as a couple years ago I drove a car with a tape deck and I listened to my old cassettes. I even made mixtapes of music I have on cd to listen to in the car. Those days are over now and my cassette collection has been reduced to one case that holds 60 tapes. It's an old brown 2-sided case with the following stickers on it: Rush w/ red star, Rush Hemispheres, Z 93.5, Foreigner and Triumph Allied Forces.
     If you're my age, or a little younger, you may be able to relate to my childhood cassette tape obsession. My parents gave me my first tape recorder in the mid-70's. It was one of those boxy recorders with the "buttons" that you would push down for play, stop, record, rewind and fast forward. I would buy blank cassettes and then spend countless hours with the recorder by the radio taping songs. At first, I'd wait to hear the first couple notes of the song and then decide whether or not to record it. Then I got annoyed with not having the beginnings of songs, so I changed my technique. I just recorded every song and if I didn't like it I'd rewind the tape back to the end of the last song and try again. I also used my recorder to tape things off the television. This was before VCRs, so I'd tape the audio of Looney Tunes and Abbott and Costello. I was so obnoxious that I would demand everyone in the house be quiet while I was recording. Then, once a cassette was full you had to remember to break the tabs out of the top. This made it so you couldn't record on that tape anymore. I forgot a few times and then accidentally recorded over something that I'd previously recorded. I wish I still had some of those tapes. I had recorded several episodes of the King Biscuit Flour Hour, which was a live concert series that featured bands like Triumph, April Wine ad Billy Squier. I also recorded several Rush album specials. They were either called On The Record or In The Studio, I don't remember now.
     In the 80's, I had a job and saved up for a dual cassette player. This allowed you to record a tape onto another tape. This was the beginning of mixtapes and "file sharing". I say file sharing because you could borrow a tape from a friend or the library and record your own copy without having to buy it. It seemed like a Golden Age. Cassettes were going to replace vinyl records. People bought Walkmen. You couldn't drive or jog with a record player. Cassettes didn't get scratches and skips. However, cassettes didn't sound as good as records and they frequently were eaten up by the player. Then cd's came out and that was the end of cassettes. The last cassette I bought, other than blank cassettes, was Copper Blue by Sugar. Many of the cassettes in my collection were made by me with blank tapes, such as several GbV collections and the R.E.M. tape that I posted about previously. I still have my Rush and Led Zeppelin tapes too. Most albums that I had on tape that were good have been replaced by cd's. In the event my kids actually go through my tapes, and there are still tape players in existence, here is a list of recommendations. Peace.

* David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust Motion Picture Soundtrack
* Van Halen I
* Michael Hedges- Live On The Double Planet
* David Gilmour- David Gilmour (There's No Way Out Of Here is a stunning song)
* Yes- Fragile
* Yes- Classic Yes
* Ian Hunter- Shades of Ian Hunter
* Cars- 2 in 1 Cars and Candy-O
* Triumph- Allied Forces
* Triumph- Never Surrender
* Ozzy/Randy Rhoads- Tribute
* Judas Priest- Live!
* I've already posted about Rush, Led Zep and Cheap Trick