This week is (International) Cassette Week 2021, ending with (UK) National Album Day on Saturday.
The calendar must be getting rather busy to provide us with such purchasing opportunities. If only record shops opened on the other days of the year. Wait, what? They do, you say? Why did nobody tell me before?
Anyway, my top 3 cassettes:
Talking Heads – 77 b/w More Songs About Buildings and Food (twofer)
Big Country – The Crossing (with the related single b-sides, on Chrome tape)
The Farmer’s Boys – Get Out & Walk (with the 12″ single mixes)
mikethep says
Better get all mine back from landfill then…
My favourites would be any 3 from the NME Compilation series, probably Pocket Jukebox, Night People and Low Lights and Trick Mirrors, although sometimes The Tape With No Name would creep in. I had them all, in a nice line on the shelf.
Nice rundown here: https://nmecassettes.wordpress.com
Moose the Mooche says
C81, Bush Fire, Department of Enjoyment…ace ..
I would have thought that most nostalgia for cassettes is centred around mix tapes. My favourite cassettes are probably the ones my Dad did for in the car in the 70s.
mikethep says
My mate Charlie would still say that the C90 I put together for his wedding in 1977 is his favourite. Took me weeks. I have a vivid mental picture of a mixed bag of hippies and Oxford intellectuals hopping about to the strains of Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache…
Hawkfall says
Those are pretty good Moose, but to be honest I prefer his older stuff.
Moose the Mooche says
So you were there when he put his week’s wages in a jukebox in 1962?
Hawkfall says
I hear that jukebox is going to get the Super Deluxe treatment next year. 18 discs, marbles, garden gnomes and everything.
Moose the Mooche says
And my dad’s ten bob, rendered in hand-tooled plastic.
Junior Wells says
Still kept some plus a whole lot of albums I recorded from records borrowed from shops when I was doing a radio show. A lot still sound nice with that analogue warmth.
Top 3 commercial tapes
Babylon- the soundtrack to the movie featuring Dennis Bovell
Sungura hits compilation from Zimbabwe
Smile Jamaica NME compilation
Vulpes Vulpes says
I did a skinny-thin-cheapo-cassette-tape drop (like a needle drop, but from a NME compilation cassette) of the Smile Jamaica beanfeast.
A1 Lord Creator – Independent Jamaica
A2 Jimmy Cliff – Miss Jamaica
A3 Eric Morris – Solomon Gundie
A4 Don Drummond – Man In The Street
A5 Delroy Wilson – Dancing Mood
A6 Soul Vendors – Swing Easy
A7 Desmond Dekker – 007 (Shanty Town)
A8 Toots & Maytals – 54-46
A9 Melodians, The – Rivers Of Babylon
A10 Scotty and Lorna – Skank In Bed
A11 Heptones, The – Book Of Rules
A12 Augustus Pablo – King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown
B1 Jacob Miller – Tenement Yard
B2 Burning Spear – Slavery Days
B3 Junior Murvin – Police & Thieves
B4 Culture – Two Sevens Clash
B5 Marley & Wailers – Smile Jamaica
B6 Wailing Souls – Bredda Gravilicious
B7 Sugar Minott – Hard Time Pressure
B8 Dennis Brown – Sitting And Watching
B9 Gregory Isaacs – Night Nurse
B10 Black Uhuru – Slaughter
If anyone wants a copy, just DM me for a Dropbox link.
Junior Wells says
I think Jimmy Cliff was 16 when he did Miss Jamaica
Vulpes Vulpes says
Like a lot of people, I still have a couple of boxes full of cassettes I made as, er, *backups* when I could borrow vinyls from the public library. I’ve also got a stack of the freebie tapes that came with Select and the NME back in the day. There’s no cassette player in the living room anymore, but there’s one connected to the stereo in the office, and linked to the PC both ways.
Probably my most treasured cassette is ‘The Pocket WOMAD’ tape, which has a couple of interesting tracks that never got used on any of their vinyl releases. It was released by Bop Cassettes, who did another one I have called ‘Manchester North Of England’. That also has an interesting tracklisting, and is pretty rare I believe.
Side One
1. The Man From Delmonte – Australia Fair
2. Inspiral Carpets – Joe
3. Pepplekade 14 – Uptown
4. New Morning – Working For The Payroll
5. The Waltones – Smile
6. Jean Go Solo – In Salford The Sun Doesn’t Shine
7. Penny Priest – Sometimes
Side Two
1. James – Sky Is Falling
2. Bradford – Lust Roulette
3. The Railway Children – Sunflower Room
4. Johnny Dangerously – Subway Life
5. Milltown Brothers – Janice Is Gone
6. Raintree County – Nice Time At The Disco
7. Dub Sex – Instead Of Flowers (Dub Mix)
My only concern about the Bop cassettes is that the tape they use is if anything even cheaper and thinner that the stuff the NME used!
Junior Wells says
I haven’t heard of most of this lot Foxy
Vulpes Vulpes says
TBH you haven’t missed much. Worth a listen, but not a set I replay often.
The Pocket WOMAD tape is much more interesting:
A1 Orchestre Super Matimila– Nalilia Mwana
A2 Toumani Diabaté– Djata
A3 Asha Bhosle– Yuhn Na Thi
A4 Culture Musical Club: Taarab Orchestra– Kama Yalivyonipata
A5 Sasono Mulyo– Gamelan Gong Kebyar Music
A6 Jean Bosco Mwenda– Mother and Child
A7 Bhundu Boys– Vakaringa Dombo
A8 Bagamoyo Group Of Tanzania– Mateso
A9 Şivan Perwer– Daye Ez Xezalim
A10 Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan– Ya Mohammad Bula Lo
B1 Najma– Neend Koyi
B2 Tian Jin Song– Raindrops Pattering On Banana Leave
B3 Pedro Caldeira Cabral– Entrada
B4 Nadka Karadjova– Ivan And Donka Are In Love
B5 Vermenton Plage– Les Verve De La Coulée
B6 Flaco Jimenez– Cielito Lindo
B7 The Musicians Of The Nile– Drum Solo
B8 Alaap– Chunni Ud Ud’Jae
B9 The Real Sounds– Tsi Tsi Wangu
B10 Kanda Bongo Man– Ekipe
moseleymoles says
Ok now I’m biting. Binned the lot shortly after minidisc came in (still the best format that ever was…).
1. Cure – Faith. With a copy of 30-minute instrumental Carnage Vistors on the other side.
2. Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream (last cassette I bought)
3. A taped copy of Peel’s Festive 50 with Masimba Bele by Unknown Cases on it.
4. Dancin’ Master – NME
5. Night People – NME
6. DJ Remould mix from the Co-op Hall – very possibly this mix
7. Tape given by friend with Black Uhuru in Dub on one side and Burning Spear in Dub on the other. Heavy rotation summer 1st year uni.
fentonsteve says
Oh yes, The Cure had gooc VFM tapes.
Standing On A Beach singles collection had all the b-sides on the other side. And Concert had a side of demo/live odds and sods.
dai says
Minidisc was great for recording, rearranging album tracks etc, but the sound quality as a digital format was inferior to CD. I liked them because a computer was not required to make playable discs.
fitterstoke says
True – but it was marketed as a better-sounding replacement for cassette (portability, re-usability, resilience), not as a direct competitor with CD re absolute sound quality…
fentonsteve says
Hands up who else bought a Philips Digital Compact Cassette deck?
I tried to give mine to a charity shop but they refused.
Leem says
I loved my MD system back in the day. I had a couple of hand held (Walkman size or smaller – one of which also recoded) an all singing and dancing Sony separate which I fixed a few months ago to great satisfaction. And an Alpine in-car 6 disc. changer. I love the whole process of making compilations and robust copies to play in the car and around the house. Still have them and about 50 or so blank discs I stocked up on. Happy days.
Timbar says
I did a couple of consumer surveys for Sony about mini discs. General view was “that’s nice, but I wouldn’t buy one”.
Very useful for semi pro musician backing tracks/karaoke, but released at the wrong time as everyone opted for the convenience & greater storage capacity of mp3s.
Most annoying thing is incompatible file format, so that box of old mini discs sits next to the cassette one waiting for the day I do a real time copying spree.
fentonsteve says
As a portable format it was brill, and much more robust than cassettes. And ATRAC was a much better Codec than mp3, but that’s a bit like pointing out Betamax was better than VHS.
A product launched at the wrong time (1992) it took years to gain any traction. It really took off in ’96, but the Diamond Rio* (’98) and iPod** (2001) pulled the rug from under MD. Amazingly, it limped on until 2007.
I mastered a live CD recorded on MD in 2001. The Australian royalties paid for a Christmas curry for a few years.
(*) I worked on that, so you can blame me for killing music
(**) and the bloke I did the Rio with left to do the first-gen iPod and iPhone
Mike_H says
Became a piece of standard kit for BBC bods and press reporters doing interviews, for a while. Then overtaken by digital recorders.
I have a large box full of cassettes on top of my bookcase. Some are now duplicated with CDs or digital files. Plenty are not.
I also have loads of minidiscs of music radio shows (over a hundred) from around 2002-2003, in boxes lurking in my shelving. I really ought to get around to digitising them.
fentonsteve says
A pedant writes: the MiniDiscs are already digitised.
I had my Nak deck serviced and bought a replacement MD deck (power supply of the old one blew up), but I have also not got around to transcoding the suitcase full of tapes & discs…
Moose the Mooche says
“I had my nak deck serviced”…. Nice to hear in-person consultations are coming back.
Timbar says
It was very short sighted of Sony to cripple mini discs with SCMS and no one ever came up with a hack to directly convert the file format to mp3 or flac.
Using the toc output would allow it to remain as digital, but it still needs real time copying.
Mike_H says
Yes. That’s why I never seem to get around to playing my collection of discs into my computer and digitising the audio output.
Not short-sighted of them. Protecting their proprietory ATRAC format to the bitter end, more like.
But wasn’t there a piece of studio gear (some kind of effect box) which was highly prized by studio bods because it could bypass SCMS?
fentonsteve says
It’s easy to bypass SCMS in IIS but it requires conversion from S/PDIF to IIS and back again.
Pro-sumer CD recorders from the likes of Tascam could do it but they cost a lot more to buy than the Philips consumer units. They also used computer blank CDRs rather than the more expensive “audio formatted” blanks.
Mike_H says
IIS?
What’s that?
fentonsteve says
IIS is the two-wire (serial data and bit clock) digital audio interface between chips on a printed circuit board.
myoldman says
A few favourites of mine
The Orange Juice – Orange Juice (has some great 12” mixes tagged on the end)
Soul Mining – The The (most of the extra tracks still only exist on that format)
The Factory Tape – various (free with select)
fentonsteve says
The Select Creation Tape was another goody, the only place to hear Bandwagonesque-era Teenage Fanclub doing BMX Bandits’ Kylie’s Got A Crush On Us.
moseleymoles says
Yes I forgot The The – had that as well. And Vox and Select both had great tape series in the early 90s.
Moose the Mooche says
Oh yes, Soul Mining is a corker. The cassette is basically a double album. As you say, some of those tracks have never appeared since.
Timbar says
I think the links are still live at “press play & record” which has rips of all those old nme tapes.
Like everyone else, I ditched loads of cassettes when doing a big clear out, keeping only those that I’d digitise “one day” – That day still hasn’t arrived!
https://pressplayandrecord.wordpress.com/
mikethep says
Yes they are…brilliant! 🙂
Vulpes Vulpes says
Wow, that’s a great link, thanks.
Junglejim says
Nice!
Leffe Gin says
Oh I remember that Big Country cassette… “In a big country DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS DREAMS”
Freddy Steady says
Not a fan of remixes generally but Talk Talk’s It’s my Mix is a corker. Bought on cassette in Sicily.
fentonsteve says
Speaking of whom, I bought a copy of the Greek “Tok Tok” mini-album (featuring the eight plus minute version of Life’s What You Make It) last weekend in the Lincoln indoor market. Sadly the seller knew what it was worth, so not a bargain exactly.
Freddy Steady says
@fentonsteve
I am not aware of that, what else is on it?
fentonsteve says
All the hits:
Σατς Ε Σεημ
Λιβινγκ Ιν Εναδερ Γουορλντ
Λαϊφ’ς Γουατ Γιου Μεηκ Ιτ
Ιτ’ς Μαϊ Λαϊφ
Τοκ Τοκ
… in extended form.
https://www.discogs.com/release/1691171-Talk-Talk-Talk-Talk-Mini-LP
Rufus T Firefly says
I have that on vinyl. I remember it being a bit crackly, though, even on my Linn Sondek. Can I now cash it in and retire?
fentonsteve says
Depends how long you want your retirement to last. It should fund you a good half hour, or two pints in That London.
Freddy Steady says
Well played!
Dave Ross says
8 minutes of Life’s What You Make It sounds amazing… This one?
fentonsteve says
Yep. “Despite the sleeve and label stating that Life’s What You Make It, It’s My Life and Talk Talk are U.S. Remixes, they are in fact the standard U.K. Extended Versions.”
Dave Ross says
Out of many, many cassettes this Howard Jones 12″ Album on cassette was the one the immediately sprung to my mind. It’s such a great collection of his best pop songs.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165067855821?chn=ps&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A1ovtkQ2Q_TnWJFnu6bqBhog12&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&itemid=165067855821&targetid=1394813964140&device=m&mktype=pla&googleloc=1006906&poi=&campaignid=14476164386&mkgroupid=125428909646&rlsatarget=pla-1394813964140&abcId=9300650&merchantid=101721219&gclid=Cj0KCQjwwY-LBhD6ARIsACvT72OaxOeinEIxcrA6ETABirI-HihyY95Ny7exaAkvE36grDRNRfLntc8aAoPgEALw_wcB
I did actually check the thread before posting in case someone else had already. Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, someone else posting Howard Jones on the Afterword. Ha, ha, ha….
Leffe Gin says
I had this one. Great version of New Song on it that wasn’t available anywhere else for a long time.
fentonsteve says
Recently released in hi-res via Cherry Red, which usually means a CD/vinyl is to follow. There’s a massive HoJo BBC sessions set to come first, though.
Leffe Gin says
His sessions were always worth hearing, he often did songs that you hadn’t heard yet, or very different versions of existing ones. Great b-sides too.
retropath2 says
The cassette 10 Hail Marys and 10 How’s Your Fathers, an early Costello compilation was good. As was the original version of Gregson and Collister’s Home and Away. Both stolen, along with the car cassette player, a regular occurrence in the 1980s. I also had a good sort of greatest hits cassette by Thomas Mapfumo, from the merch table when he played his home turf in Harare. Couldn’t believe he was on in the week or so we were there, getting the tickets courtesy a chum, a Zim anaesthetist there at the same time. It was a brilliant show, if simultaneously terrifying, as I felt more than a little self conscious. It was a good tape too, that tending to be the preferred medium.
BryanD says
I was just about to mention the Elvis Costello cassette compilation, in a gold coloured case as I recall. The only other one I remember having that wasn’t a compilation or someone killing music by taping something for me was the dB’s Repercussion which I only had because it came free with the lp.
Think I missed a trick by giving away my Nakamichi cassette deck a few years ago as I hadn’t used it in about 20 years.
fitterstoke says
I kept my Nak, not sure why…but this thread has inspired me to dig it out of the loft and give it a blast…
I think I still have one or two of the NME tapes (definitely the Stax comp) – and loads of BBC comedy tapes (Goons, Hancock, Wodehouse etc). But the most valued is Hugh Hopper Band Alive – home-made job that I ordered direct from the great man himself.
Rigid Digit says
Costello’s Girls Girls Girls comp had a different track list for each format. The cassette was the only one with Girls Talk and Turning The Town Red
(so I bought that as well as the CD)
Moose the Mooche says
I could never help feeling that EC was taking the piss with that. Heaven 17’s Endless did the same thing.
Rigid Digit says
Venom’s Black Metal album had the “Home Taping Is Killing Music” logo, but added: ” … So Are Venom”
fentonsteve says
Today’s tea/keyboard moment.
moseleymoles says
And of course C30 60 90 Go had both tracks on side 1 so you could (after sellotaping over the tabs) use side 2 for your own stuff.
Moose the Mooche says
I didn’t always have sellotape, and had to make do with putting a chewed-up bus ticket in the hole.
Tell em that these days etc
fortuneight says
I had 500+ bootleg tapes I colelcted over the years, mostly via swaps with other collectors. In truth, most weren’t really worth the cost of the cassette, but once you started trading it was hard to stop. I’ve held on to a few that were high quality, mostly radio shows or the odd soundboard tape, many of which have since finally received an official release. I also have a few recordings I made myself on a Walkman with inbuilt mics and automatic levelling that made surprisingly good recordings.
I also have a Personics cassette that I had made whilst on holiday in San Franciso in the late 80’s. They were sold in record stores, offering you the chance to have your own mix tape made up from their library of high quality masters, and with a printed inlay. I spent ages selecting tracks, sequencing them before handing over my $20 and going back the next day to collect it. Of course, the guy making the tapes in the shop changed the sequence and the title now read “Californis Dreaming” after that well know Beach Boys typo.
More on the Personics story in this video (po face presnetation alert)
MC Escher says
I used to tape the top 40 on a Sunday evening. Finger poised over the Pause button to cut off Simon Bates. Best totally live segue : perfectly timed Boys Don’t Cry into Sledgehammer *chef kiss*
Rigid Digit says
Often had DJ fails with a snippet of cheery inane dialogue creeping in at the start or the end (or even the middle) of the track.
I listened back so often that Tommy Vance, Richard Skinner or Simon Bates became part of the record.
Most disconcerting when I went an actually bought the singles
Black Celebration says
I know you’ll appreciate this – I taped Nobody’s Hero from TOTP because I completely loved it. I played it back dozens and dozens of times and as a result David “Kid!” Jensen sounding excited at the beginning is, to me, an integral part of the song.
MC Escher says
Tommy Vance understood better than most about this. As I understand it, part of DJ “training” (hollow laugh) was to make sure you talk over some part of the song, to stop those pesky music-loving kids “kill music.”
Today of course it’s just so they can talk more.
This house is cold! I complain but no one listens! /Abe Simpson
Sewer Robot says
Frustrating though it was for the purposes of home taping, I remember having a grudging respect for DJs who spoke over the intros to records but could time it so that they stopped exactly before the singing began..
dai says
DJ copies of singles had the intro timings written on them
Black Celebration says
Yes, in my hospital radio days a well timed bit of talk over the intro was very satisfying. Like smoking the underground I now shake my head in disbelief that everyone did that.
Mike_H says
All my tapes from the days when I recorded from Radio One in the ’70s are long gone now. I used ultra-cheapo cassettes that deteriorated too much in sound quality over the years. It became like listening in the shower to music playing in the next room. They had to go, despite containing many tracks that I loved and some R1 “In Concert” gems.
There are 163 cassettes left from my ’80s boombox-owning days. Lurking in the box that usually lives on top of my living room shelving.
Joe Mints says
Another thumbs up for the NME cassettes (Mighty Reel, Dept of Enjoyment, Indie City etc) some of those tracks never appeared anywhere else and are now fragile relics of a bye gone time.
Also of note were the ROIR cassettes from the 80s which thankfully were re-released in the 90s on CD, such as:
1) Television – The Blow Up
2) Buzzcocks – Lest We Forget
3) MC5 – Babes in Arms
The Inspiral Carpets dung 4 cassette also got a makeover a few years back too.
mikethep says
I’m listening to Feet Start Dancin’ (no.20), which hasn’t stuck in my mind as much as some of the others. I know I owned it, but don’t remember ever listening to it. Amazing collection of absolute bangers! Eg…
Joe Mints says
Guiri says
I remember being gutted when I bought New Order’s Substance on vinyl and then finding out that the cassette version had a whole tape of b-sides. I was 14, value for money was important. 34 years later I’m pleased I bought the vinyl, possibly the first record I bought I still listen today. The b-sides are now on Spotify as good as free and I’ve never listened to them (apart from 1963 of course).
dai says
B sides were on CD too
fentonsteve says
You’re missing out. Lonesome Tonight (b-side of Thieves Like Us) is one of the best things they ever did.
The CD had editied versions of a few A-sides due to the 80 min CD running time.
Guiri says
Didn’t have a CD player back then so I could but dream. I’ll give Lonesome Tonight a listen though.
fentonsteve says
All of the b-sides before Blue Monday were new tracks, and all worth a listen.
After that, apart from Lonesome Tonight, Murder (not a b-side but an a-side of a Factory Benelux 12″ single) and 1963, the rest were remixes.