Cassette tapes are cool again

I was talking to a musician/audio producer during breaks in a session the other day, and he mentioned that not only were they making vinyl, but that they were releasing audio cassettes, along with digital download codes. Now, as part of my job, I used to have to have audiocassettes mass-produced, and there are no more large-scale replicators, so this is being done 10's of copies at a time.

Who still has a tape deck, like except for me?

Post like its 2014?

Baby Driver made mixtapes.

>Post like its 2014?

AOL is cool again

The last time I looked at my cassette tapes was when Felina was asking for specific recordings of the GD hour. I found that tapes don't really hold up all that well and hundreds of shows were worthless. The wooden case that my grandfather built me for all of my tapes was still very usable so I passed it on to my twins. I'm honestly surprised that it hasn't been broken yet.

I just relocated to a new west coast hamlet about a month ago- during my packing process I couldn't stop tripping over countless shoe boxes of GD cassettes (& dats)

In the coming months I'll be cataloging  them - copy the best ones to disc- and then post on line ...FOR SALE - 25 cents each.

I do need to find a place that can tune up my Denon DRM 400- that won't be easy

Dead tech. Muddy sound, tape surface distortion is not "warmth". 

Yes let’s return to a crappy medium. smh 

There is a new recording studio around here that records solely to cassette tapes.   Guess its popular in the punk scene.

Never got rid of cassettes (well my Dead tapes are in my parents attic and will probably be given away soon, who the hell would pay money for those), I also still use a Fostex 4 track for music ideas/demos. I have 2 shoeboxes full of hi quality blanks that I mostly got for very cheap at thrift stores.

Have a Marantz PMD 640 that I've had serviced at Superscope don't think they do all types though.

Indie rock type music labels have been doing cassettes for years and noise/avant/weirdo music never stopped doing cassette releases.

It's not a medium that blue eyed soul fans prefer. 

25 cents each - cheep

Indie rock kids love em for some reason. There's a label/store called Burger Records out of Orange County that has hundreds of releases on cassette, and they've been doing it for years. Drag City is a huge indie rock label they do all their releases on cassette. They are not alone. Folks who fiddled with this frustrating format in the 70s 80s and 90s would hardly be expected to return there...

I have and use a cassette deck. 

 

Also, a friend of mine uses the company in the article to produce cassettes for his dungeon synth label. If you like Dungeon Synth, check them out:

 

https://ancientmeadow.com

 

 

 

moved a bunch of shit from my office home, including all my old cassettes.

Been listening to them a lot lately.

 

Some are almost 40 years old, mostly maxells, but a lot of tdks,

Most have not degraded at all to my ears....spent last two decades in an air-conditioned 24-7-365 office....now in my mostly open-air home office, can't imagine the humidity and temp changes will be good for them.   Lots of decent-gen shows, also lots of albums, also lots of taped from KNON's Lone Star Dead show, kind of entertaining to hear the commentary along with stuff.  Lots of amazing stuff on those cassettes.  Key is to never, ever, ever, use Dolby.

just say no to NOISE RESISTANCE

Packed them into two large trash bags and gave them to a friend years ago. They are still in the trash bags in her shed. No use for them.

ive never stopped listening. ya, ive gone months, probobly a year, but never much more than that without listening to one...its become a running joke or topic w friends as i always seem to have one friend (at moment its a deadhead named mike) that ends up buying an old used car w a deck...ill get a phone call and end up supplying new owner w music....once a month or so we will rotate out a dozen or so tapes...

 

i can pretty much just ask them to name five or six bands, and a favorite "style" of music...guaranteed ill be able to fill 80% of any friends band requests, as my collection is pretty large and covers classical, swing, r and b, rock, soul, motown, jazz, big band, and......maybe 1500 gd....total cassettes has to be 2-3 thousand. (lots o boxes, lots o shelves)

 

i currently just have the original bose box w cassette deck in house, and a system w tuner and cd, etc...im going to buy a turntable soon....ive had the bose box serviced twice, and its still the best portable ive ever had...ive heard some better , but not that i ever wanted once i bought this one, the first year they came out. they are soooo much better than the more moddrn sleeker designed ones that Bose moved on to...the whole concept of "acoustic wave" is that bigger is better (imo).

 

that stystem is beat to shit on the outside, but still cranks...and has traveled the country,  supplying the music at countless big parties, incl two weddings (not mine), ...actually, i cant imagine Not having it...(thats prob a huge reason i still listen to some of the tapes...they just sound better on the bose, even if i have same show on cd, or on a drive etc)

 

 

cassettes will be a fad for everyone but the gutterpunks - they fucking love those things

I still listen to cassettes from time-to-time.

 

Most of my tapes are the mix tapes from high school/college years.  Also tapes of the my garage band and a few bootlegs of other bands.  I used to just record everything from my boombox: concerts, jam sessions, and the radio.

 

Almost forgot all the radio taping that I used to do of live shows.

 

I've been thinking about transferring the bulk of this stuff to digital.  Simplest way seems to be playing them on my tape deck and recording them with my Tascam DR.

jd, you reminded me of taping "king biscuit flower hour" every sunday night for years...well, id try and LISTEN  every sunday, and i taped what i liked...i know somewhere i still have a floyd concert from there, and maybe a few others. Unfortunatly, i lost many of my early cassettes in a flooded basement years ago. Worse news is that the original recordings of show (i think it waz on from like 75-2000 ...at some point they were just repeating episodes from 70 s and 80 s) were destroyed in a fire in a New York studio. So, not alot of early ones are available online. You can find them, ive seen them, but, havent looked in ages--you just gave me a next day off project.

 

if my memory serves me right, (and after just seeing him saturday night) i think the first concert they broadcast was John McLaughlin and M. Orchestra.

dbl

I have a ton of XL2-s in the basement. Next to hundreds of recordings.  Along with some DAT's. I used them on an old 4 track recorder for my band just for fun too. The tape decks still work.  Its what I collected first so I find them comforting. Some of them sound freaking great with little degradation over the years. Anyone want some Maxell points?

revenge of the Analog...

but they will never surpass the resurgence of the LP

Cassettes: 

lots of hiss 

Shitty frequency response

takes forever to FF and RW

tape snaps and you have to splice it 

melts in the sun

tape gets old and degrades 

 

yeah let’s bring that back. stupid hipsters.

 

I'll trade Maxell points for Bitcoin.

they sound better tham cds

I have a shitload that are part GDHour, part Prairie Home Companion/part whomever-dropped-by-some FM station while I was home and had some blank tape.

I even have some Stephen Lynch, who must've starved to death since, if the US is as "politically correct" as has been reported.

I even have a Xmas with Coburn I recorded while working a shift in my cab years ago. Complete with sharp-turn tape waffling.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O6THRqH9Ak

 

This show.

>>>>>>> Dead tech. Muddy sound, tape surface distortion is not "warmth". 

Been saying that about Vinyl for decades.  You want "Warmth", get a tube amp & magneplanar speakers.  But then again, I'm probably Deaf as well as Blind.

Oh and let's not forget:  "Medium is destroyed a little each time you play it"

 

 

Just remember all those great old recordings we all love to analyze, pour over, and buy over and over again, digital, analog or otherwise, are being remastered and reissued from... tape

XL-2(metal) or STFU

:)

unspun

I've been grabbing one at random to play while crashing, since the last remaining deck is in the bedroom.

I hit this vein of '91 JGB shows that all sound pretty shitty, acoustics-wise.   I've since replaced some of theses shows with CDs.  I filled in the tour gaps first.  Damn, that tour could have used a bit more setlist variety.

Maxell XLII-S 100min High Bias Black Magnetite

Here's one of my last cassette masters (bought a DAT deck right before the MSG shows).  This isn't attributed to me but it's exactly my rig & the double tape cut in Drums (went back to 1st tape Side B for balance of drums, up to just before Space, to save room for post-drums) was exactly what I and no other taper was doing for long 2nd sets @ the time.  I can only assume this guy patched out of me.  Not that I really give a shit (oh yeah I am posting it here so I guess I do lol)

https://archive.org/details/gd1990-09-11.AKG451.Currier.Keo.121664.Flac2496

The jam after Spoonful goes on for quite a while & hints @ New Speedway (which wasn't in the rotation @ the time).

Bob I snuck down to about 5th row in front of Jerry for that! Probably the closest I ever was at a Dead show. the He's Gone > Spoonful > Jam was fantastic, and Jerry doing a quick Spoonful quote at the very end of it was awesome

Have box for the dead, box for Zappa, box for everyone else...  but the biggest box is for old tapes of my own bands, though most of those are unlistenable board tapes, still comes in around a hundred pounds...  one of these days go through and digitize the the good stuff...   

 

Cassettes were the Best available in the 70's & 80's.  If you were taping  Live or off the Radio,  that was the best option.  Tweaked D-5 or Nakamichi or ??

Reel - to - Reel decks were out there,  and better.  But who had those ??

Everyone who got into the DAT scene,  when that arrived,  may have achieved great recordings,  but digital dropouts are unforgiving.  So many DAT people have boxes of useless Krap if they did not archive to more permanent media.  Digital recordings on ferrous tape.  Dropouts fail the whole thing.

Between the Cassette era and the DAT time was the PCM experiment.  That made for some Great recordings,  but it was Suitcases full of Heavy Gear.

For me it's  Microphone placement & a rolling deck,  levels set just right.

Great. I have about 100+ blank Maxell XL2S and XL2 90s and a few 110s. Who wants to buy them? 

I hear that they were popular on Ebay, Howard. Don't know if it's still true, but if they're getting more popular it might be even better.

Analog sound but doesn't degrade?

 

How about analog laser discs? Not sure why they didn't become the standard. They should be like a vinyl record, but read w/ a laser instead of a stylus. Grooves could be smaller, so the disc would be smaller than an LP, larger than a CD - about like a 45 perhaps. Covered w/ a transparent layer to keep the grooves pristine. To keep surface dirt from interfering w/ the signal use two lasers, analogous to what the GD did w/ vocal mikes w/ The Wall to cancel noise.

Lol.

A Kool Zoner known as SilentMark gave me a huge stack of Cassettes when he was relocating.

All nice XL-II or similar,  with pretty labels and excellent documentation on said label (AUD,  SBD,  gen-2,  etc.)

I enjoy grabbing a handful to play in the Subaru's functional tape deck every week or two.

Thanks again,  Silent Mark.