Cassettes

Here's an interesting article I found. Being of the cassette tape generation I too feel sad that all the 'material' ways of listening to music (cassette tapes, vinyl records and compact discs or CDs as you youngsters will know them as) as fast being replaced by the digital medium of MP3 files.Ok fine, I wept. :'( But what do you expect? I mourn cassette tapes. I miss the days of having to sit through 50 million songs on a chart countdown to record half of a song I liked because the intro was taken over by a DJ's long winded monologue on what the band was currently doing and the outro was full of jingles such as '...Hey this is Britney Spears and you're listening to HIT 40 UK...' Like I'm remotely bothered by that.I miss the haphazard compilations that I made. All of which I still own unless I've taped over them.But here's the actual article I found. Grab your hankies if you're 20+.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/05/im_a_part_of_the_blank_tape_ge.html

I'm a part of the blank tape generation
Cassettes are so old-fashioned even Currys have stopped selling them. So why can't I throw mine away? By Sian Pattenden
Now, I don't want to come across like a dimwit Bob Stanley, all Luddite and no trousers, but I'm annoyed by the fact that Currys have stopped selling cassette tapes. Mind you, I thought that they had ceased trading in them years ago, as rumour spread that you could not buy them from anywhere at all, and I got very worried, couldn't sleep and had to look them up on the internet. I have just been "going through" (i.e. mostly looking at and walking away from) my cassettes, as an attempt to throw some away. Today, I am happy to announce that it's taken me four years to dispose of 12 of the little rascals. Why am I keeping them? I am not sure. My most recent taping was of the Libertines' first album, with a bit of Lenny Cohen on the other side. The reason? I couldn't upload either on my Mac, to download onto the iPod (which I have now lost). But this was years ago. Since then I have looked at my tapes, vowed I would choose a "best of" selection which could sit in the car, and clear out the rest. I sensitively pawed a home recording of a Radio Four programme about Wittgenstein that I had never listened back to - then put it back in the rack. Then I got stuck on the Pastels. I was frozen with ineptitude from that moment and haven't moved on - practically or emotionally - since. 1. It's the Pastels - who cares. Can't even remember which album it is. 2. Hey, get with the real world and buy it on CD! 3. But why spend extra money when I have it on tape? (The dreadful but politically viable - anti-Alan McGee-style record collector authentico superiority - Pooh Sticks song On Tape spring to mind here, although I wish it wouldn't.) 4. I don't think I'm going to play it - ever. The mere thought of Truck Train Tractor is enough to make me rip my own nose off.But I love compilation tapes. The hiss, the whirr. Many of the friends who made them for me I either now hate or have moved country, so I can't exactly ask them to burn them on a CD. I like the fact they're flawed - they have false starts and abrupt endings. A chum once taped me a Specials album when we were both 13. I had presumed she had a posh hi-fi system (she lived in Surrey) but her method actually involved pressing "record" on a portable, walking slowly to the record player and putting the stylus on the disc, then sitting quietly until she had to get up for side two. Now that, as Bobby Gillespie would say, is genius.What's worse, is I have a hundred interview tapes - from Kylie to 2 Unlimited; Let Loose to REM - that I need to bin. But they must be worth something! To someone! Or to me, when I make my audio/visual artwork out of sampled speech and, um, cotton wool. Or I could just play them to myself when I am 70 to remind me what an idiot I was in the 1990s. My stack system tape deck still sits under my bed, unused, and is a bugger if you trip up on its edges in the middle of the night. I can't get rid of it. I have great plans, but these involve making a million, buying some huge work studio filled with light and air and placing my old junk (inc. aforementioned cassette player) in it so no one can tell me to throw it away anymore. As you might imagine, it could take some time for this dream to be realised.