today I was having a bit of a clear out and came across a huge heap of my compilation tapes and taped albums, all stuck in a time warp that stopped dead around 1995.
I briefly considered saving the tapes, but with a house full of vinyl records, MP3 files, CDs and with Spotify on tap, I simply couldn’t justify hanging on to them, so it was with a heavy heart that I binned the lot.
So Allow me to pay tribute to the humble music cassette, my faithful musical companion for a large chunk of my life.
The soundtrack to my youth (and onwards), each little plastic box packed 60 or 90 minutes of music, hiss, wow and flutter, magnetically, nay magically embedded on a 3.81 mm-wide tape, which hurtled along at 1¾ inches per second. ( thanks wikipedia !)
I used to spend long hours making cassette compilations, choosing each song carefully so that it logically followed on from the previous one, with each collection having some sort of theme (‘sad,’ ‘Friday night,’ ‘just dumped,’ ‘drinking’ etc).
I always liked to completely fill every second of both sides, so would take ages trying to find a combination of songs that would exactly fit the remaining space.
With their ultra-short songs, the likes of The Smiths, The Undertones and the Buzzcocks always came in handy for this job, and it was particularly pleasing when I managed to get the last song finishing right at the end of the tape.
My favourite compilations were committed to the rather pricey TDK SA90 ‘chrome bias’ cassettes, which were reknowned for having a superior sound quality – although I’m not sure it made much difference on my walkman. Naturally, the technical-sounding Dolby B was applied to all recordings, even though it would often be turned off during playback to add some much-needed extra treble to the oft-muffled audio morass.
If funds were tight, then a bottom end TDK D90 would have to make do, but for the really important tapes, I’d splash out for the creme de le creme of cassettes, the TDK MA90 Metal/Type IV tape. This was just about as good as it got for most of us , and the packaging was usually a little bit snazzier too, often incorporating flashes of gold to remind purchasers that the little extra in price was worth paying.
Mind you, there was never any chance of me putting a top notch metal tape into a friends curse word player or half knackered car cassete system, oh no never.
Over the years I’d already seen too many important tapes turned into plates full of spaghetti by knackered casetteplayers with dodgy flywheels and gunk-coated heads ,so the best tapes were kept for the best cassette decks . I always kept my machine in tip top shape with lashings of isopropyl alcohol, carefully applied with cotton ear buds stolen from my sisters room..
I actually found it harder to throw out the boxes, with their carefully hand-drawn listings of songs, and Letrasetted spines.
All these cassettes played a big part in becoming a grown up. . They’d travelled to distant holiday destinations with me in my walkman and formed the backdrop to parties, break-ups, good times and bad. The tracks of my tears , and beers. Still, not every cassette will be expelled as I’m keeping a handful of my old band demos, live gigs and unreleased albums. The only trouble is that not even I want to listen to them any more and all my cars have bluetooth radioś in them.
And now I feel really sad throwing them all out. End of an era. I'm old , just like my father........
So goodbye to the TDK SA90s, SF90s, AR90s, MA90s, to the BASF Chrome Extra IIs, the Maxell AD90s, USII 90s, the Woolworths Chrome 90s and some company I’ve completely forgotten about called ‘That’s,’ who made EM-X90 and VX-90 cassettes.
RIP cassettes. You served me well.
Are you still using cassettes? Or have you just thrown out yours? Share the trauma.....
I briefly considered saving the tapes, but with a house full of vinyl records, MP3 files, CDs and with Spotify on tap, I simply couldn’t justify hanging on to them, so it was with a heavy heart that I binned the lot.
So Allow me to pay tribute to the humble music cassette, my faithful musical companion for a large chunk of my life.
The soundtrack to my youth (and onwards), each little plastic box packed 60 or 90 minutes of music, hiss, wow and flutter, magnetically, nay magically embedded on a 3.81 mm-wide tape, which hurtled along at 1¾ inches per second. ( thanks wikipedia !)
I used to spend long hours making cassette compilations, choosing each song carefully so that it logically followed on from the previous one, with each collection having some sort of theme (‘sad,’ ‘Friday night,’ ‘just dumped,’ ‘drinking’ etc).
I always liked to completely fill every second of both sides, so would take ages trying to find a combination of songs that would exactly fit the remaining space.
With their ultra-short songs, the likes of The Smiths, The Undertones and the Buzzcocks always came in handy for this job, and it was particularly pleasing when I managed to get the last song finishing right at the end of the tape.
My favourite compilations were committed to the rather pricey TDK SA90 ‘chrome bias’ cassettes, which were reknowned for having a superior sound quality – although I’m not sure it made much difference on my walkman. Naturally, the technical-sounding Dolby B was applied to all recordings, even though it would often be turned off during playback to add some much-needed extra treble to the oft-muffled audio morass.
If funds were tight, then a bottom end TDK D90 would have to make do, but for the really important tapes, I’d splash out for the creme de le creme of cassettes, the TDK MA90 Metal/Type IV tape. This was just about as good as it got for most of us , and the packaging was usually a little bit snazzier too, often incorporating flashes of gold to remind purchasers that the little extra in price was worth paying.
Mind you, there was never any chance of me putting a top notch metal tape into a friends curse word player or half knackered car cassete system, oh no never.
Over the years I’d already seen too many important tapes turned into plates full of spaghetti by knackered casetteplayers with dodgy flywheels and gunk-coated heads ,so the best tapes were kept for the best cassette decks . I always kept my machine in tip top shape with lashings of isopropyl alcohol, carefully applied with cotton ear buds stolen from my sisters room..
I actually found it harder to throw out the boxes, with their carefully hand-drawn listings of songs, and Letrasetted spines.
All these cassettes played a big part in becoming a grown up. . They’d travelled to distant holiday destinations with me in my walkman and formed the backdrop to parties, break-ups, good times and bad. The tracks of my tears , and beers. Still, not every cassette will be expelled as I’m keeping a handful of my old band demos, live gigs and unreleased albums. The only trouble is that not even I want to listen to them any more and all my cars have bluetooth radioś in them.
And now I feel really sad throwing them all out. End of an era. I'm old , just like my father........
So goodbye to the TDK SA90s, SF90s, AR90s, MA90s, to the BASF Chrome Extra IIs, the Maxell AD90s, USII 90s, the Woolworths Chrome 90s and some company I’ve completely forgotten about called ‘That’s,’ who made EM-X90 and VX-90 cassettes.
RIP cassettes. You served me well.
Are you still using cassettes? Or have you just thrown out yours? Share the trauma.....