I read an article recently talking about the fact that cassette tapes were making a sort of comeback. In fact, as far as cassette tape sales go, there were 436k+ units sold in 2023 while Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department sold almost 22k cassette units this year. I used to love cassette tapes. The technology grew up with me through junior high, high school and even went to college with me. While the renewed interest in this antiquated technology may be nothing but a passing fancy, reading the article brought back some fond, fond memories for me.
I was a late bloomer, musically. I didn’t really get into music till around the age of thirteen. Up to that point (and even after), my parents had tried to head the rock and roll devil off at the pass by pushing me towards Christian music. Early in 1984, though, I heard two songs that cemented my rock and roll fixation forever: “(You Can Still) Rock In America” by Night Ranger and “The Reflex” by Duran Duran. One day, while at a mall with my family, I spent some of my hard-earned lawn mowing money at Hastings Records and Tapes on two cassettes. I bought Midnight Madness by Night Ranger and Seven and The Ragged Tiger by Duran Duran.
My parents promptly marched me back into the store and made me return them, much to my embarrassment. They opted instead to walk me down to the Christian book store where I was allowed to purchase a couple of tapes from a little known Irish band named U2: October and War (the jokes were on them with that purchase…but I digress).
I didn’t matter though. I was hooked. I found a friend at school who had the album versions of both of the tapes I tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase. I paid him a buck a tape to record them for me. It was around this time that I started recording music off the radio, as well. Dozens of cassettes with radio recordings (as crude as they were). I also discovered that a local radio station – KMOD in Tulsa, Oklahoma – would play albums from beginning to end, back to back, in the overnight hours of Sunday night/Monday morning. I started recording those as well. I would set a watch alarm under my pillow so I could wake up and change the tapes out when I needed to. On several occasions, I scored the mother lode. One night, they played three Van Halen records back to back (I, II, Diver Down). Recorded them all. Another night, they played four Ozzy Osbourne records (Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of A Madman, Speak of The Devil and Bark at The Moon). Got them too. On and on and on.
When I started high school, I made a couple of new friends that were getting into music as much as I was. One of those friends had something called “dual cassette decks”. The music world was suddenly WIDE open. As fast as we could borrow tapes from people we were dubbing and distributing. It didn’t matter what it was or if we were a fan of it or not. When I finally got my own dual cassette deck set up, my music collection started to really grow. Exponentially. My little twenty-four capacity tape case quickly became two sixty capacity, double-sided tape SUITCASES.
Some of it was purchased. Most of it was bootlegged. I remember driving to the mall one day with a buddy, on our school lunch break, to buy the new release from Tesla, Mechanical Resonance, because we saw the video on MTV the day before. By that evening, I had already made multiple copies of it, ready for distribution. I was like that with all my music. I made copies for everybody. If I liked you, I would just give you a copy. I’d even write all the song and album information on the insert for you. Otherwise, I might charge you a buck or two. What a stupid kid I was. If I had possessed ANY foresight at all I would have been charging for EVERY dub and charging more than a buck or two! Most of us had no idea it was illegal. I don’t think we would have even cared if we did. It was all contraband, though, and if I could develop a formula to calculate the value of all the music I stole the amount would be staggering.
We can’t forget mixtapes in this conversation. So many mixtapes. One for every occasion, it seemed. Out of all the gloriousness that was cassette tape technology, this is the one true gem that has been lost forever. Some of them were truly awesome, some were truly stupid. We still had the ability to combine ten or eleven songs that expressed our emotions or feelings when compact discs came into play but it wasn’t the same. They’ve both have since been replaced with “the playlist” but, really, can the mixtape ever really be replaced? The true beauty of the mixtape was you could make it for someone and leave it on their car or in their locker or anywhere they were sure to find it. They could pop it in immediately and listen.
Technology rolls on and on and every year will be the anniversary of some piece of it that was thrown by the wayside in favor of something cooler and more advanced. If you grew up in the ’80s, though, stop with me for a few minutes, raise your boom box over your head and remember the cassette tape. Also, remember this: had the RIAA be as active back then as they are now in their quest to squash music piracy we’d all be in so much trouble.
Say. My. Name.