A thread for cassettes

i always hated thinking that i was wrecking the player, while fast-forwarding in vain to find the track i wanted to hear

No they're all yours, Hoos. Emailing you now. Coming from AOL so check your spam (for some reason, my emails have been going to spam lately).

my tape deck just gave up on me, started eating tapes. one of those things doesnt spin anymore either. i really dont wanna lose this deck, got lotsa features, sturdy, this once was a very very pricey tape deck

so how do i fix that wheel that doesnt spin anymore?

My crappy Sony dictaphone/Walkman hybrid packed in the other week, so I borrowed some other model from this dude I work with. I swear the quality was better than my new Sony mp3 player. It had some ULTRA-BASS switch and graphic equalizer sliders. Where the fuck are the graphic equalizer slides on an mp3 player?? And of course with a cassette walkman, you're not endlessly seeking to the next track. Although I'm usually listening to a laboriously constructed mix tape of my own creation, which I've spent a week or two re-editing and re-editing until it's perfect. Thenyou can listen to it over and over and over for weeks.

Hated having to wait during fast-foward/rewind, and then not knowing for sure where you're skipping to (unless you go all the way to the end or beginning of the side, obv).

Except when you become one with your walkman, and you can rewind to the EXACT beginning of a track. Immense satisfaction.

Or you got a fancy-dan walkman which FFed to the start of the next track by itself - awesome.

That's assuming at least two seconds of silence between songs, though, so it didn't always work.

Cassettes and their linear navigation certainly promoted more of a patient attitude towards music than either records, before it, or mp3 and CD players, after it.

I have recently run across This Dude again. He's also into Janet Jackson cassingles.

I still buy cassettes occasionally, but have had to scale it way back due to the sheer bulk of them. The last big score was three or four years ago, when a local supermarket was selling like a truckload of 'em for a dime apiece. It was whole stocks of unsold stuff like just about a complete run of those spoken word albums on New Alliance, a lot of SST albums (Painted Willie - Trotsky Icepick - Slovenly - Universal Congress Of? Got 'em covered.) Best of all was a whole stack of obscure (to me) Latin albums -- it's where I discovered "El Jeque" by Tommy Olivencia and the super-amazing Barrio Band album.

Briana what did he say?

Sorry, "briania".

Oh, man, it was the same sort of deal: "HOW BIG OF A HIT WAS MISS YOU MUCH?" "JANET JACKSON WAS MORE POPULAR THAN MADONNA, RIGHT? *RIGHT*?!!" This guy really needs to be on ilx.

Maybe he could settle the Janet/Madonna beef once and for all.

I imagine him with a fisherman's hat pulled down tight over a buzzcut, dark socks, white sneakers.

woah.... twin cassette walkman!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sony-Walkman-WM-W800-2-Deck-Recording-Cassette-Player_W0QQitemZ160221888378QQihZ006QQcategoryZ15053QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1368/877000800_852dd35338_o.png

Hoos, I mailed you at the address above (which I may have fucked up) and through ILX. Did you get either?

I just got Richard Pryor's That Nigger's Crazy on cassette, 'cause I couldn't find it on CD. Probably get around to digitizing it sometime this century.

I believe I got in before the Hoos, Kevin:

Next time someone's about to bin their old tapes, please send to me instead.

-- S-, Thursday, January 24, 2008 12:38 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

However os postage is def. deal killer...

Ugh I didn't see that. Sorry.

Usually just listen to a lot of public radio in my car (no CD) but lately I've been rocking a bunch of 80s cassettes. Totally forgot how much I love the first Hoodoo Gurus.

nah dude i didn't get either email (?? :( ) but it seems s- has a def claim on them before me anyways if he wants em

Ok Hoos, you're still in the running.

S- where exactly do you live?

Hoos, I emailed (a name)(the number one) @ (that dot com). Is that wrong?

Email obscurer 1, HOOS 0.

Well, his goal is to obscure the email so...

Does anyone know where S- lives? I really want these cassettes outta my place.

j_u_s_t_i_n_s_m_i_t_h_1_9_8_6 at gmail dot com ?

Oh hells no! How the hell was I supposed to guess those last three numbers?

Anyhoo, if S- lives too far, I'll email you.

Nerdy lols-a-plenty here.

I'm in Australia dude, weight regardless, the size of the package would make postage astronomical.

Because Australia isn't far away enough, I am in New Zealand.

Pants on fire, dude.

You'll want to be wary of magnetic fields when mailing out cassettes these days, especially overseas. Magnetic Fields caution is just a good rule of thumb in general.

That pesky Stephin Merritt going through packages at customs!

Ok Hoos gets it.

Sorry S-. If you want, I can send you an mp3 CD as a consolation prize. Lemme know.

Fucking greedheads.

Pants on fire, dude.

-- libcrypt, Saturday, March 29, 2008 4:40 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I was on fuckin' tour in NZ, libcrypt.xls

no probs Kevin

My friend's band just released a cassette spray painted purple and yellow that comes in an envelope sealed in beeswax

c/d: indie bands releasing singles on cassettes?

so fucking precious. dud

"precious"?

blame the people buying them if it really distresses you. some bands are way more likely to sell a tape than a cd these days

I blame everybody involved

idk i found out way too late that one of my favourite albums of all time also came out on cassette w/ a second tape of bonus material that does not feature on the cd version and which i have never found on the internet. this pisses me off.

ITT people who hate fun

what is fun about me never getting to hear music that would bring me joy

???

but then i guess you own all the bootlegs

cassettes are cheap to put out & no1 buys cds so

well ppl rip cds into rar files

what do people do with the cassetes once they buy it, do they then go to the thrift store and buy a boombox

cassettes are just fun! they are kinda cute and dirty. get a tape deck they're cheap and you won't regret it, one of my favorite artists ever released a tape-only album last year and I get more pleasure out of the tape than I probably would through the laptop or on lp - it's just a different vibe, putting a tape into the deck and hitting play. I can't keep up with how much good stuff there is on tape only right now so I hear you actually but there is an upside to cassettes for me, partly nostalgia but partly I don't know just like a different sort of object-relation.

xp my CD boombox w/tape deck has been my go-to way of listening to stuff in the kitchen for 10+ years so I didn't have to re-get a tape deck

if you want ppl to listen to your music on a shitty boombox then okay I guess

xp okay that makes sense - changing the nature of your relationship to the Object - I can see the appeal in that. itunes makes it a little too easy

gf has tape player in her car, plays them there