Saw this yesterday
https://www.amazon.com/Cassette-Documentary-Lou-F-Ottens/dp/B078NLGGXV
Cassette inventor Lou Ottens digs through his past to figure out why the format won’t die. Musicians like Henry Rollins and Thurston Moore join a new generation of bands releasing tapes to help Lou remember the importance of his creation.
Post your cassette/mixtape memories here
I was a bartender and part-time DJ in a strip club (Dolphin Club, Broad Street, Philadelphia, 1986-87ish; it’s since been acquired by some hipsters and RUINED).
At the time that I was working there, a friend of mine sent me a cassette from this band he was following in LA
It was a band known at the time as “Hollywood Rose” … I believe that I may have been the first DJ in Philly to play “Welcome to the Jungle” while a girl swung around a pole!.
I’ve long since lost that cassette, but if you happen to find a bootleg titled Appetite for Outtakes online, that’s it
I was still playing a lot of hardcore punk shows around Philly when a girl I worked with gave me a mixtape to listen to
I’d never heard of The Cure or Joy Division/New Order or Echo & The Bunnymen or Violent Femmes until then, so I really have to credit her for that
Of course, we know she tried to kill me , but that’s OK
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I have to check this out, I had tons of these where my high school/college years stretched the 80s. I used to make mix tapes all the time plus acquire bootlegs (a friend had 3-4 live U2 shows from the War/Unforgettable Fire tours that were very good quality).
I just found out that Lou Ottens has passed away
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/10/975598869/lou-ottens-inventor-of-the-cassette-tape-has-died
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I remember creating my own mix tapes. Listening to American Top 40 on Sunday mornings, finger hovering over the Record and Play buttons to hopefully catch the song you wanted. Getting pissed when the song started and Casey Kasem kept talking during the first 5-10 seconds.
I just unearthed my tape collection from the last move into our current home; there are many, many mixtapes but the most well thought-out ones were part of a series i did as Christmas presents for 4-5 years. Maybe 25 copies went out to any of my friends I thought would get some mileage from them. All of my skills as a college radio DJ went into those and pretty heavily weighted in 80’s vintage indie rock with some earcookie, listener-friendly chestnuts thrown in. If my vinyl had been cd’s instead, the compilations would have taken about 10% of the time to construct but the fun of the exercise was to painstakingly arrange the songlists. Pearls before swine; I think the tapes got listened to a couple of times and chucked…
Semi-sequitur: I just bought my first vinyl in a while(Pebbles garage rock collection albums 1-5) and now i have to get a new turntable to actually play them. Small detail…
I love a good doc, this looks like a watcher.
I remember that feeling of unfolding the sleeve on my BB Paul’s Boutique tape for the first time and seeing pages and pages of lyrics to comb through.
Kids making playlists now have no idea how much work and art goes into the production of a good mix tape.
I also had one of those early LA pre-GnR mix tapes, complete with an iteration of November Rain, recorded before Appetite had been released. No idea where it came from and how it landed in the South Jersey suburbs.
I think I had that one too. Was there a version of Heartbreak Hotel on it?
Damn, we’re talking 8th grade, 1989, can’t say I remember. Patience was on there, too, but I think November Rain and Patience are all that I can clearly remember.
Sounded like maybe 50 or so people in the room.
I remember creating my own mix tapes. Listening to American Top 40 on Sunday mornings, finger hovering over the Record and Play buttons to hopefully catch the song you wanted. Getting pissed when the song started and Casey Kasem kept talking during the first 5-10 seconds.
Can relate to that so well it gave me a good laugh. Possibly going back one step, I recall the first cassette player we had were those little box type units with a handle at the front. I am pretty sure the record feature linked to an external mic of sorts. So recording a song appeared to mean recording what came out of the speaker. As such worrying about the DJ speaking was the least of one’s problems, it was ensuring your mum didn’t come knocking on the door saying “dinner’s ready”. The anxiety therefore remained for the entire song.
Man, that brings back memories. I remember the moment I realized that I didn’t have to place a tape recorder in front of the speaker of another radio to record a song, and that I could just press record on the same box radio. Game changer.
I was a little slow on the uptake.
I was still playing a lot of hardcore punk shows around Philly when a girl I worked with gave me a mixtape to listen to
I’d never heard of The Cure or Joy Division/New Order or Echo & The Bunnymen or Violent Femmes until then, so I really have to credit her for that
Of course, we know she tried to kill me , but that’s OK
Punk+Philly=Dead Milkmen
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I also had one of those early LA pre-GnR mix tapes, complete with an iteration of November Rain, recorded before Appetite had been released. No idea where it came from and how it landed in the South Jersey suburbs.
I didn’t copy mine, I know that
I think I had that one too. Was there a version of Heartbreak Hotel on it?
Yes there was; Jumpin Jack Flash, too
I’m heading over to Facebook NOW to stalk you.
The line is long and dangerous. Be careful not to cut in front of anyone, you don’t know what could happen
There is a mixtape/playlist that NEEDS to get made
I already have one that is specific to the girl that tried to kill me (twice) but we could expand on that a little, adding some jam bands - I dabbled - and Camaro Rock
I need to revisit this project
In a way, I would kinda like to exorcise my break-up stories as podcasts, where I narrate the tale with the music of the time, or songs/artists that STILL trigger memories of those I let go ( some, rightfully so; some, I hung on too long; some not long enough)
If transcribed, Hysteria could be a novella unto itself
Back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, we had a redneck country band that played the dive bars over on the east side of Atlanta…mostly old Hank and Haggard covers and so forth. Anyway, we built much of our repertoire by taping this old country radio show that came on late Sunday night on the local community station. Then we would rewind the tapes over and over and write down the lyrics and figure out the guitar parts. We even got to where we would call the DJ and ask him to play this or that so we could record it and did he have any song suggestions for our band. Of course nowadays a young band could just go to YouTube for all this, but back then…it was the mighty cassette!
But I never would have thought that musicians would ever again be releasing their music on cassette, even if just for novelty/nostalgia. Wow. I’ll have to watch the whole movie sometime…looks interesting. Thanks!
Cassettes really allowed us to take our music with us, whether in the car, boombox, or Walkman.
The worst part about cassettes was having to replace my entire collection once everything went fully digital. Fortunately, it wasn’t that big. I’m guessing I had maybe 40 at my peak? I hit college in '91, and that was the point where I started buying CDs.
First cassette was ZZ Top’s Afterburner (next 12 were all ACDC)
First CDs were 5 albums from Yes (that cost me ~$75, plus that hundred or so for the five disc changer).
I never bought any albums on cassette. Vinyl LP’s until CD’s came out in the 80’s. But put together a lot of playlists on blank cassettes. Easy way to “edit” the bad songs from albums and to have 90 minutes of “good songs” for road trips in the car.
I worked pretty hard at getting close to 45 minutes of music on each side of a 90-minute tape. Even when they came out with “auto reverse” it sucked to have a song interrupted in the middle. And having to deal with one or two minutes of no music on one side of the tape wasn’t any better. Mostly, it just took a little planning. Then there were always songs like Elton John’s Goodbye from the Madman Across the Water album (1:49) and David Gates’/Bread’s *If *from the Manna album (2:43) that could be squeezed in to fill in the last bit of one side.
If only the cassettes wouldn’t have worn out. Eventually, they’d slow down and the lyrics and melody would play too slowly. It was sort of sad to throw the tapes away when they got to that point.
Growing up in Philly in the 80s, there was very little rap on the radio. There was a weekend show on Power 99, though, that would play rap. I had a cassette tape from there - wasn’t even mine, originally, but I wound up with it post-HS somehow. It was great. Nobody Beats the Biz, Boogie Down Bronx, a bunch of other stuff. I had it for a while, too - probably until 2013, though I think now it, like the rest of my cassettes, are gone.
There are also a few albums that I listened to over and over but only had on tape, and they didn’t quite fit. Blood on the Tracks until somewhere in Shelter From The Storm. I had another tape with Nation of Millions on one side, but not Prophets of Rage. The other side had Fight the Power, then Bum Rush the Show until somewhere in Megablast.
