CASSETTES OR TAPES - Event Date: 10-August-2012

Cassettes ??

Who still has them - who used them to record - who bought them to replace vinyls and why ??
Did you buy them singly or only in Bargain 3 or 6 packs in one of those dodgy Bargain Baskets.


MAXELL/TDK/FUJI - 60 or 90 min.
Bias/Eq/ Tape Selector - who understood all of that back then ??

There was even a box you could tick for this and that on the tape cover.. and why would you bother..only the peeps that understood all the jargon would have had that felt tipped pen on hand.
I ticked all boxes to show my friends I understood things like Dolby..
Ignorance is bliss.

I don`t remember the actual year tapes came into fashion ( early 1980's ? ) but I remember feeling a bit peeved that they were so small in size.
It meant the impression one made on the bus coming home from town with " the purchase from Golden Discs " - wasn`t as strong with a decent 12" vinyl.
With vinyls, I always craned my neck to peer down the top of a golden disc bag to see if I recognised the album cover and did it come with a plastic sleeve or not..
Needless to say I only bothered about the bag if the owner had hair settling below a combat/reefered shoulder and said owner was a HE.
A quick dive under the seat of the bus then to check the kind of footwear ( Dessies or Docks ) and I was able to rest for the 20 mins journey home.

Gosh the 29A was an exciting route once..

Anyhow I do remember the early hassles of recording an album to a tape off of the 3 in 1 OR better still recording off of the radio..the odd time I had the horrendous experience of attempting to record something off the Old Grey Whistle Test - why I ask myself now - considering the sound quality would have been rubbish with all the clatter and racket and interference in the background.
STOP, START, STOP, START..took ages to get right..

Recording the vinyl to the tape was a tricky business by times...you had to warn everyone in advance you were doing it or else halfway through " Romeo and Juliet " - the mood would be interrupted by an audible " Mins come down for your dinner " and then it would be ruined and you would have to start all over again.
Who wants the Mammy`s voice halfway through that 3 minute 42 second track or the dog barking or someone flushing a loo..

Had to be done in the "Shhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuush I`m recording" environment.

I remember getting massive padded earphones and that was the business..you could play DJ then pretending and if you really got into it you could use the microphone facility that came with most cassette players/3 in 1`s and announce the song..
I still have some of those tapes..cringe..
Usually though that was also quite inadequate and you had to scream the title of the song so it would be recorded. Bizarre.

Timing was important..you would look at the times of all the tracks on the vinyls and then check and see if you needed a 60 min or 90 min tape and then draw up your list for Side A & Side B.
If one track stopped abruptly half way through with that merciless button hopping UP ( when u had taken a break to go to the loo) on the tape recorder to signal END OF TAPE- you knew you didnt do the correct Maths and your cursed like hell..
Back to the drawing board so...

Recording in the early days required pressing the PLAY and RECORD button at the same time.
If you couldnt get the co-ordination right it whistled and cranked at the beginning of your song and you started again..

Wow it was hard work.



Before the tape decks and the 3&1`s - Cassette recorders were very basic stand up things..
Some had dual facility so you could do a " tape to tape ".
I remember the antique that was present in my bedroom growing up was a Nordmende and there was great excitement the day we trekked the whole way to Jonesborough over the border to pick that up..

I remember the boyfriend getting a Nakamitchi Tape Deck - what`s a tape deck I wondered then ??
Oh, it came with a dual tape player and dials amongst things boosted by a splendid looking amplifier.
He used to spend hours and days recording every vinyl he bought and then spend more hours designing the cover of the tape on nice yellow vellum paper written with a calligraphy pen.
He would never play his vinyls again and only what he recorded from his deck.
He convinced me the sound quality was better plus above all things it didnt hop, skip and jump every time you stood up or sneezed sometimes like the vinyl did on the turntable.
I accepted that but then figured when the old pencil appeared to unravel the mess that was the prized 90 min recording of Marillion I was sceptical of that theory.

Having said that here I am unpacking 2 large boxes of tapes and placing them lovingly alongside our Vinyls, CD`s, DVD`s and Blue Rays to take their place in our library of Music & Film.
Only thing is I can`t find that Nakamitchi..

That requires another day of searching and unpacking...

Stories please....

Mins X

Agree with Pat - great post Mins!

I didnt have a lot of cash when I first started "getting into music" and since the cheapo 6 pack of cassettes (cant remember the name but it wasnt a known brand) was relatively cheap, I would tape friends records and press record when songs I liked came on the radio (Pat James' old show on Radio Dublin (78-79) was a godsend since I knew I would like almost every song on his show!).  When I had had the cash to buy vinyl though, I hardly bothered with cassettes since there was too much work rewinding etc.,  Handy for bringing out when you were down the park etc., though. :)  Sadly, I reckon I binned all of my cassettes when  I moved out in the late 90s but I kept my vinyl! :)

When Karaoke started the DJ would give you a tape of yourself singing. I have about about fifty tapes of myself singing Hey Good Lookin. They are really good but nobody seems to want them.

it was the only way for me to make compilations of songs I liked back then,I even have cassettes of Grove songs...the last cassette I have is a recording of the Page / Plant gig from the Point back in the 90's...it still sounds great today.Before cars had CD players,I would have listened to tapes all the time while driving,kinda miss those days...

Like SHH, I used to record tracks off my vinyl albums onto cassettes in order to have compilations.

Like Mins, I remember recording stuff off the radio, especially Pick of the Pops on a Sunday between 5pm and 7pm with Alan Freeman.

I also have a load of cassettes that I recorded in the early 90's off Rock 104 when it just played rock music and all the track for that matter.