About a month or so ago, I came across this limited edition Pink Floyd Darkside of the Moon cassette player from We Are Rewind, and impulsively decided I had to have it. Until this point, I have been adamantly resisting the urge to return to cassettes, which has been more and more trendy these days. What if what happened to me with vinyl happens with cassettes, i.e. throwing endless money into collecting far too much shit? Within minutes of seeing this cool ass cassette player, I decided I didn't care, and had to have it.
Having a cassette of Dark Side is a nice bonus. I believe the only time I ever owned a physical copy of this was on 8-track, a format I only briefly experimented with back in the day. Even more exciting is that this also has the ability to record to cassette, something I did incessantly back in the day. I bought a blank tape from We Are Rewind to start. Exactly how to start remains to be seen. The source signal landscape has changed a lot since those early days...
Cassette Player [PINK FLOYD] Limited Edition, by We Are Rewind
As a child of the 80s, I was always more of a cassette person than a vinyl person. At one point I had more tapes than anything, an entire wall of the fuckers. And even as CDs were rising, I clung for a long time to my precious cassettes before succumbing to CDs. I remember starting my first computer job in the late 90s with a walkman and little case of cassettes in my cubicle, and getting lightly teased by my teched-up peers about it. Maybe it was only a matter of time, then, that the pull of nostalgia would bring me to this moment.
Am I sad that I eventually got rid of all my tapes, except for the below? Yes, a little, but maybe that just gives me more future collecting goals haha. I am very thankful that I have managed to hold onto the cassettes I have, even though I've not had a working cassette player in years.
My last surviving cassettes. First cassette up: Dillidagur Utvarp 2/27/93 b/w "Doing It For The Kids" Compilation
Over time, I'll dig more deeply into each of these old tapes and post about each one. For now, I'll just start with this one: Dillidagur Utvarp 2/27/93 b/w "Doing It For The Kids" Compilation.
Dillidagur Utvarp was recorded by me off the radio while I was an exchange student in Husavik, Iceland. Dillidagur was basically like what we used to call a Field Day in our high school growing up. An all-day school event where the kids didn't have class but instead participated in various games, events, competitions, etc. One of these events was that the kids got to take turns being a radio DJ for the school's local FM radio station. I recorded lots of songs, interstitial banter, etc, as they broadcasted. Lots of fun. I now know that that "Teenage Timekiller" track is by Rudimentary Peni, but all the other ?s are still ?s. Plus there are other little bits and bops I didn't even list here that are a mystery. I should do another more thorough "deep dive" into this...
"Doing It For The Kids" is this amazing Creation Records compilation of what I believe they used to call C86 britpop, with some early Primal Scream, MBV and others. I've been keeping an eye out for this in the wild. It's probably on Discogs for a thousand dollars or something, so it's nice to now be able to play it for free. I must have recorded it from vinyl, as there is an annoying skip during the Heidi Berry track haha.
That's all for now. Stay tuned for further Adventures in Cassettes posts. I need to figure out a better name for this series...
