Tape Cassettes??

My first cassette was "the best of Tour of Duty".

I grew up listening to 60s and 70s rock and roll from Vietnam era. Then when my dad bought me a mini boombox with a cd, he bought me that CD too.

 

i just wanted to quote this part of your post.

 

I used to belong to one of those clubs or whatever that gave you 6 cassettes for a penny a piece, then you had so long to buy more at regular cost. They'd send one in the mail every month and you either kept it (in which case you'd have to pay) or send it back. Of course I'd always forget to send the damn things back so I ended up paying for Phil Collins, Bananarama and a bunch of other crap. I think I still have some of those in fact.

 

I still use a cassette recorder as a backup for recording sessions. If my Tascam DP-008 fails, and it has since it freakin eats batteries, I always have a second chance to save the job without re-recording. If I do have to use the tape audio I load it into Audacity after converting to a .wav file and run a custom filter called "Cassette" (oddly enough) that removes the slight sound of the motor dragging the tape across the head.

Cassette tape has saved my bacon enough times for me to keep using it. I use Maxell 45 and 90 tapes depending on availability. I always run them full fast forward and rewind a few times before I record on them to be sure the tape has gotten over any stretching issues. I don't use noise reduction on the recorder since Audacity does a much better job (not a plug for free software, it's just the first that had the features I needed.

 

I used to fill these out with the names/addx of people I hated or otherwise wanted to torment. I usually selected music titles I knew they'd hate like Polka and Pan Flute music. It only cost me a penny to ruin some asshole's day. It's one of the few things I miss about the 20th century.

 

cassette tapes were what we backed up what was in ram, before floppies were something most of us could afford.

they're what the folk music of folk who weren't born yet was distributed on, along with song books, back in the 80s,
when before there was promethius there was firebird and before there was firebird there was off centaur.

and now filkers have their own conventions, as furrys do. in the 80s, both were just sub-genres of science fiction.


as for music, my first 8-tracks, when i got out of the air force in 71, were moody blues, jefferson airplane, jethro tull and walter carlos. i did try to keep a log/diary on cassette in the early 70s, inspired by captain kirk of star trek doing so. but my nature was too inconsistent and i soon gave up on the idea of doing so.

i did have an 8-trak recorder as well as a seperate play back deck, and the cassette player-recorder was built into my sterio amp, and receiver, so i used these together to law down multiple tracks with my paia module mixer, but you couldn't really do more then about four layers without the earliest ones getting completely mushed out that way.

i guess i was never really all that big on buying a lot of recorded music. though i did buy emerson, lake and palmer, that was on cassette, and tangarene dream and yes.

(and yah, i could never afford a real tascam mixer, just my crummy kit build paia module one)

 

I would if they were readily available. I like older music but if I were going to use anything before a CD it would be a record. Records are coming back. I keep seeing record stores pop up everywhere and new artists even have records. I used cassettes when I was a kid but I came after records so I'd like to try that at some point.

 

I think my first tape was a Paula Abdul cassette I got from my cousin. She was done listening to it apparently, but how nice of her. Anyway I think all of my first music was on tapes. Then one Christmas I got an MC Hammer CD. You can't touch this!

 

omg you made me lol with this one.

 

You know, now that I think about it I still have every single tape cassette I ever bought, minus the ones my friends kept or ones that got fucked up or whatever. I wonder if they still play.

 

i remember when every combined stereo in one package (like boom boxes and before) included at least one play and record cassette deck, and sometimes a second one.
had a huge collection of cassettes i recorded off the air in the 80s and 90s on the 90 minuet cassettes, recording hearts of space on one side, and thistle and shamroc on the other.

from the mid 70s onward, every sound system i ever owned had at least one casette deck. until the last one i owned, sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s.
(now all my sounds are just on the hard drive on my computer, or backed up on usb thumb drives)

 

My first car ( a Ford Fiesta) had a cassette player....my favourite was Now that's what I call dance music 30....which I used to hammer constantly!

 

I think my first cassette was Survivor Eye of the tiger..

 

I like all formats of music. But tapes are a really great one. They all have their benefits, it seems. I don't see why we have to do away with the old all the time.

I was collecting tapes into the late 90s when all the cool kids had moved onto CDs. I supplied the music via tape on various school field trips. I even made mix tapes, which was a joy.

One thing which is incredibly stupid, though. When Pamida (now defunct department store) started carrying CDs, I didn't know the difference between CDs and tapes. I only had a tape deck, but I bought an MC Hammer 2 Legit 2 Quit CD thinking it was a tape for my birthday. I had gotten like a whopping ten bucks for my birthday to get something, so I bought this CD. Thankfully Pamida was understanding and let me refund it for a tape, though I'd already opened it and everything.

 

my furst cassette tapes were definately blank ones to record on. i'm sure of that. i'm almost certain the only pre-recorded music i ever bought on cassette were filk tapes from off centaur, later firebird and later still promethius. though i don't think i've bought any since the most recent name change. although, i think maybe, when i bought tagarene dream's double album it might have been on a pair of cassette tapes. all of the moody blues, and most if not all of everything before cd's was on 8-trak. i haven't really bought very many pre-recorded music cd's either. just fox amore's come find me, and one or tow others. my appologees to other musicians who's work i like for not supporting you. actually its the riaa, or whatever they call themselves i choose not to support, as for not buying more stuff, its called poverty.

 

My first cassette had this song on it. I still remember sitting cross legged on a cream colored carpet in a childhood bedroom and playing it over and over in my forest green cassette player.