Some
years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some
called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items.
Over time my collections ... no, wait.
I'm not talking about a collection today, it's just something I still have.
I was born in the 60s. I grew up with vinyl records, my father's single collection - we even had one loner that was 78 RPM which was the standard into the 40s, but I don't remember if it was from shellac.
Compact cassettes - usually just called "Kassetten" here in Germany - had first come out in 1963, not long before I was born, and they took a bit to arrive in our household. My brother was the first one to have a cassette recorder with a microphone, my guess is that must have been in the early 70s.
I got my own recorder years later when a school friend gave me her old one for a gift, together with a bunch of home dubbed Beatles cassettes. I will never forget how it drove my mother nuts that I took an hour to dry the dishes, just because I mostly danced around in the kitchen singing along with the Beatles.
There were also cassettes with pre-recorded music - music cassettes, often just MC here in Germany - but I never had one of those myself as I preferred records.
Cassettes also became wildly popular for audio dramas for children, and although the cassette was more or less replaced by CDs and later MP3, it never went away completely and actually made a bit of comeback in the last few years.
You can buy recorders, blank tapes, yes, and even music cassettes. Long live retro! 😜
For "old" people like me, cassettes can of course hold a lot of emotional memories. They were magic because they let us do so many things so easily. They were easy to take along and share music with friends. You could copy music from one device to the other. They were easy to use even for small kids (which could be a disadvantage if you were visiting a friend and then a little dwarf marched in with her chunky yellow/orange recorder proudly making you listen to her latest Benjamin the Elephant story three times, yes, that really happened).
I bet a lot of people remember trying to get the perfect recording from radio hit countdowns and being angry when the presenter once again talked over part of a song you had been desperately waiting for. Some of those tapes were quite eclectic. The music industry, however, wasn't so happy about home dubbing.
Then there were the mix tapes people made for their girlfriends or boyfriends or, in my case, siblings. Actually, I still have one of those, too.
I'm sure I wasn't the only who sat in front of the TV and swore everyone to absolute silence (haha, that worked really well), so I could record a movie. We definitely had "The Wizard of Oz" and "Moby Dick" on tape.
Of course you always had to be careful not to tape over something that you might not be able to come across anytime soon. Or having someone else tape over it. That kind of accident did happen.
Also there was the curse of the tape eating recorders. If you were lucky and the tape wasn't too tangled and crinkled, you could wind it up using a pencil, but if it was, chances were high that the tape would be eaten again. I once had a tape whose crinkled end I had to cut off completely, and because the small plastic peg holding that end had jumped off, I used a bit of a toothpick to replace it. It was such a relief when that worked!
This is my own boombox - which has never been outside because darn, that thing is heavy! - and part of my cassettes. I tried out a few of them and although they are up to 40 years old, one or the other even older, they still worked even if everything is a bit dusty.
If you have a close look, you can see that the Play button is pressed, I listened while taking the picture.
There are a few cassettes that I didn't remember having at all, for example the one in the front saying "Grusel!" = "Creepy!" I listened in a bit and that's exactly what it is, creepy music as if for a movie background. I have never organized a Halloween party myself, no idea how this tape ended up with me, and I don't recognize the handwriting, either.
The one on the left, however, brought back a memory. It's labeled "Beatles (AFN)" and it was a documentary about the Beatles on AFN (Armed Forces Network) radio, probably in the early 80s after John Lennon died. I only recorded the songs because the cassette wouldn't have been long enough for the whole documentary. Yeah, weird, I know.
Do you have any cassette stories yourself?
Oh yes I remember cassette tapes and trying to get the song recorded how I wanted from the radio. I also remember having to wind it back up with a pencil if it came out of the wheel thing. I remember my mom sucking my Sesame Street cassette up in the vacuum cleaner and being so upset. My now husband made me a mix tape when we started dating. All country music that I listened to on the way to North Carolina to visit family. We had a fight last night and your post made me remember this and how much time he must have spent making that so i sent him a text to tell him I loved him. Look at you, Cat — bringing married couples back together with a blog post. 😂😂😂
ReplyDeleteThat was an unexpected comment, Lisa 😂 Mix tapes rule!
DeleteThanks for sharing!
Oh, my gosh! This brought back so many memories! I don’t know if the tape recorder we had was mine or the family’s. But, I would listen for hours to make my own tapes. And, yes! I thought it was just the DJs here that talked over the beginnings and ends. I made so many tapes back in the day. I loved those early pop bands like Bread, early Eagles, and Gordon Lightfoot. I’m trying to think if I ever bought an actual pre-recorded tape. I kinda doubt it because I usually bought albums. And, yes, accidental taping over occurred. My son, though the story always seems to change which one, recorded over the tape of our wedding! I didn’t discover it for years after and what’s the use of getting angry about something like that? Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Cat!
ReplyDeletehttps://marshainthemiddle.com/
Just looking through part of my tapes brought back memories I had completely forgotten about!
DeleteI think it was a plot of the music industry to spoil our recordings from the radio, so we would buy the albums 😂
You are most welcome!
Ha! So many memories in this post. My dad had a pretty extensive vinyl collection at one point. And as for cassettes, I remember my frustration as a radio DJ would announce a song I wanted to record, and me waiting impatiently to turn on the recording just as it started and off just as it finished. I never mastered it getting it just right.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone in the universe ever managed getting it right, Michelle, not just because they liked to talk over it, but also because the tape always seemed to move a little if you hit the button to record or to stop.
DeleteCat, I was born in the 50"s and loved playing music. I even bought my own record player when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. It even came with a couple of records, Glen Miller and His Orchestra and Patsy Cline who I still listen to, to this day. But when cassettes came out, it was like magic, especially when you realized a pencil could fix it when it got caught and came of the wheels!
ReplyDeleteI remember my first record player so well, I had saved up for it and it was a big thing to go to the store and buy it. I was a bit older than you at the time. Many people seem to remember their first own record, but I don't.
DeleteGood old pencils! 😁