Whether it's a mixtape, recordings of Monty Python or a bands new album, this was the music buying technology of my formative years. You'll see those memes on Facebook suggesting you're old if you know what these and a HB pencil have in common... when the cassette lost tension or struggled you would insert a bevel edged pencil or biro into the left or right wheel and turn it to run the thin brown magnetic tape from one reel to the other. These were revolutionary compared to the old reel to reel deck on which Dad played endless recordings of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.
ABBA's 'Arrival' was one of my first bought cassettes but I had been taping TV shows through the audio aux plug for ages. We often sat in a corridor listening to Monty Python to escape school for a lunch break. I also had a lot of tapes of 'Hogan's Heroes' at one stage. By the time I bought Adman's ghetto blaster off him it was all about the music. I first heard Midnight Oil's 10,9,8... on cassette on an early SONY Walkman. Later came the cassette you inserted into your car stereo to play an external audio source in the car!!
This t-shirt connects me with a bygone era and is about my youth and music but interestingly the conversations I have are not with young people asking me what it is, rather they are older folks speculating whether young people do ask... and yes, I did make a few mix tapes for a few girls over the years...
One recording I would like to hear again and convert [but no longer have a functioning player for myself] is my competition winning [3-4] question sports star interview taped for ABC 1233 Local Radio in Newcastle in 1994. I spent an afternoon in the studio chatting with former World Cup winning Wallaby Skipper and halfback, Nick Farr Jones, from his law firm offices in Sydney. Craig Hamilton liked the questions someone else wanted to ask Michael Jordan then suddenly realised it might not be possible to arrange so my questions were chosen!!
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