As we backstroke across the bottomless sewer of the digital age, trying to keep our snouts above the stink, The New York Times throws us a 2,049-word lifeline on … the return of the cassette tape?
Holy hell. And I thought I was a retrogrouch. I don’t know whether to be tickled by this or go hang myself in the garage.
More than a few of us will recall the struggle to take our music along Back in the Day® when it was actually music, not the overproduced tuneless swill these crazy kids are drowning themselves in today.
Those tinny little transistor radios that fit in a pocket. Aftermarket FM radios to bring the local freeform set to whatever moldering shitheap you were driving after you got carpal tunnel trying to tune in KOMA — 50,000 watts at 1520 on your AM dial — while motoring through the Intermountain West on Coors, ditch weed, and fumes, coasting the downhills in neutral and praying for a gas station before the ground tilted back up again.
Eight-track-cartridge players, God help us all, bolted insecurely under the dash where evildoers could snatch them without getting all sweaty.
And then — the compact cassette.
I don’t remember whether my Japanese pickups of the Seventies and Eighties came with AM/FM/cassette packages, but if they didn’t, I certainly added that setup at my earliest possible opportunity. I was a driving fool, Maine to Spokane, Tucson to Tacoma, and a man had to have his traveling tunes.
Once a traveling companion jerked a Merle Haggard cassette out of my truck’s player and threw it out a window as we snorted that old white line across Utah. Something about turning 21 in prison doing life without parole doesn’t sound all that glamorous when you are basically a red-eyed, high-speed festival of felonies.
Who among us can’t recall spending a fun-filled hour teasing a tangle of cassette tape out of the in-dash player, then rewinding it past the wrinkled spot with a ballpoint pen?
“Goddamn it, I need this Creedence tape if I’m gonna make it across Nevada on US 50 without losing my fucking mind. …”
When the CD player came along I eventually “upgraded” to that like everybody else. Had to polish the discs more often than I ever did the truck, but the truck didn’t have to look all smooth and shiny to function.
These days when I hit the road I always carry a large box of CDs, but mostly scan the FM band for NPR affiliates, the way I once hunted for KOMA. I’m hoping to find some jazz, blues, classical, or the increasingly rare freeform set cobbled together by some kindred spirit.
But mostly what I get is pledge drives.
So I sing along with the voices in my head. That sure makes the miles fly by. And it isn’t hip or even illegal yet.
Mad Blog Media 
Damn. I finally donated my tape deck and got rid of my forty year old collection of tapes. Did that all when we downsized to the Fanta Se house. Oh, well.
Herself got rid of a bunch of my old consumer electronics when I wasn’t looking some years back. Lost a perfectly fine Technics turntable in that little housecleaning.
I wouldn’t mind having the turntable back, but I can do without the cassette player.
That is one of the worst forms of hard media ever invented. Terrible audio quality that degrades every time you play it due to capstan and reading head wear of the tape. The only redeeming feature was size. When will people understand that CD quality digital audio is as good as it gets?
Beats me what ancient oddities hipsters will latch onto. (Says the Neanderthal who draws with pencil and ink on paper and rocks a 10-year-old half-busted MacBook Pro as his daily driver.)
I’ve got a box of CDs in the closet that must weigh 100lbs. I haven’t listen to them in years since the Sony 400 disc player broke. I created a Pandora account and downloaded a bunch of stuff onto my iPod and I thought that was a great idea. My girlfriend however would have none of it. She wanted to listen to the actual CD not some cheap streaming knockoff. I still don’t understand. Once the player broke I pulled all the discs out and put them in a box in the closet. I was thinking just yesterday about getting rid of the CDs. A friend of mine owns a record store but he won’t take them. I could set them out on the curb and they’d probably disappear but that would be the day my girlfriend would want to hear some Crash Test Dummies in her car.
We’ve got a buttload of CDs too, in my travel box and in a living-room closet (at least one of them is a Crash Test Dummies disc). Still have an in-dash player in the Subie and a detachable SuperDrive for playing on the Mac and/or adding to the iTunes music library. This old MacBook Pro has a serviceable pair of Bose speakers attached.
I don’t use any streaming services, and I’m not sure my ears are delicate enough to notice the difference between CD and streaming.
I still have a Superdrive too. I use it to load music from CD, without compression, to the Macbook laptop. I also have music purchased for iTunes loaded there. I then load everything to the iPod Touch, last generation before they discontinued it, in CD quality. Use it with bluetooth or cables to play music in car, living room, or second bedroom/den. I also connect it with cable to my guitar amplifier for break music. So, much winning.
There’s something to be said for the relentless march of technology, for sure.
Whenever we have guests for dinner I play (quietly) some selections from my iTunes library through an Edifier bookshelf sound system via the iPhone. Herself Bluetooths audiobooks from an old iPod into her CR-V sound system while motoring around and about.
Me, I leave the music off while driving here. No distractions, please. The Duck! City motorists are getting worser and worser. Inept, inattentive, impaired, and/or insane, zipping along without driver’s license, license plate, registration, or insurance. The old Subie already has enough dents in it, and so do I.
For sure POB there is no tech moss on your ass. Like you I’ve mastered enough digital audio science to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want which is in FLAC or at the very least lossless/CD quality. I stream Radio Paradise a lot in high rez and really enjoy the various mixes. I wish they had a folk/bluegrass channel but they play a good bit of Dylan, Emmylou, Prine, Colvin but you’ll be sad- not much Tom Waits. Just kidding….if I remember he’s nails on a chalkboard to your ears. What kind of headphones or earbuds are ya sporting POB?I’m guessing they aint the venerable Koss Pro4A’s that I lived in back in the day.
My man Tom Waits is too busy reissuing new versions of old stuff to generate any new new stuff to grab Pat’s eye. Ear. Whatevs. Although there have been rumors that he has something in the works. …
When I was an electronic technician, many years ago, I learned about sampling rates in analog to digital audio conversion. MP3 compression, among others, was popular when memory was limited. That’s not the case anymore; there is no reason to accept anything less than CD/lossless quality when listening to music.
No earbuds or headphones anymore Herb ole buddy. But, I do have a nice set of Polk towers in the living room connected to an Onkyo stereo receiver with Bluetooth and USB input. I do have my eye on a pair of Klipsch Reference Premiere RP8000F.
Most of my audio-video gear is ancient and unremarkable. The Toshiba TV is … from 2011, I think. Its sound gets threaded through an equally elderly Sony home-theater setup with a center speaker, four satellites, and a subwoofer, but driven by a Yamaha tuner because the Sony’s tuner croaked some years back. The Apple TV and a 2010 Mac Mini run the home-theater aspect of this technical marvel.
Then I have the Bose bookshelf speakers attached to this crippled-up MacBook Pro, and the Edifier bookshelf speakers in the dining room, which I run off the iPhone. These bookshelf deals are the newest gear in the rancheroo, with only a hint of white hair in their ears.
“Red-eyed, high-speed festival of felonies” 🤣🤣🤣
Thank you, sir. I’m kinda fond of that one myself.
God Almighty KOMA at night and KIMN in daytime. Remember crossi9ng Nevada on US 590 and I 80 before you could m bypass most of the little towns and pray for a radio station and a gas station. I mIssed the 8 track crap and bought albums most of which I still have along with a Sansui turntable rescued from a thrift store just need a cartridge. A lot of my albums were trade by me esposa when I got the cd player. Have about a hundred or so left. Cassettes have a lot of great jazz on them and I pray every time I
I put one in the deck. Between Pandora and Sirius I get most of what I need or want.
When I tried to get a set of JBL L-100 speakers and Macintosh tube amp my resources screamed like a witch in a windstorm with a busted broom stick with her knickers in knot. My wife thought a Kilo per speaker was way to flippin’ much money, plus a couple of K for the amp. Reasoning being between drugged out rock and roll and 25 years of wood cutting sans earphones, your hearing sucks at best and 5 grand for hearing aids is not going to happen. But still listen to Carole King o “Tapestry” sounds really good with this hiss and pop.
Man, Carole King’s “Tapestry” is always gonna sound good, even if you can only hear it in your memory.
Bought that album when stationed at Ft. Gordon, now Ft. Eisenhower, in Augusta, GA. What a songwriter!