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the cassette shuffle game
Jan. 31st, 2020 10:37 amGang! GANG! Do I have a good one for you today!
I spent my entire teens home-taping pop songs off the radio; I have maybe 60 of those 90-minute cassettes, ten or fifteen songs crammed onto each side, dating between 1999 and ?2006, a mix of current hits and (more and more as I got older and more into Radio 2) whatever classics happened to get played. I moved to more of a digital-walkman-based system around 2010, and although I always kept my cassette walkman and a small selection of tapes with me, I haven't touched it in, god, at least five years.
Recently I was prompted to retrieve my entire set of home-taped cassettes from the family home (in their lovely purpose-built case with the slidey drawers and the little cassette-sized slots). I thought, well, I don't want to chuck these away, but if I've got to have them cluttering up the house, I should probably actually make use of them, at some point?
And yesterday I got a song in my head, one I really love (Lovestruck, by Madness) and realised I only possess in analogue format. I don't hold with streaming services, you see; maybe I could rip the digital audio from somewhere on YouTube, but by the time I'd done that, well, I could just as quickly have resurrected my old audio cassette setup...
- Which cassette was it on, then? Check my little notebook with its handwritten alphabetical system of listings (also, fortunately, safely retrieved from the family home). Seconds later, we have the answer: cassette number 7, from 1999 itself...
- Find the cassette in the case, first of all ripping off the parcel tape I'd stuck over the drawers for transit.
- Does my cassette player that I haven't touched for aeons still work? Yes, it looks like it does! Need some more charge in those batteries, though...
- Do my rechargeable AAs that I bought in 2012 and have barely used in years still charge? Yes, they do! And enough to power a cassette player at appropriate speed and volume, no less!
- The final hurdle: how the fuck do I carry this thing so that I can listen to it while cycling? Turns out, it fits perfectly in my shirt breast pocket (much as, I imagine, a stylophone would...) (actually, my housemate has a stylophone... maybe I'll try that when I get home :P)
Deliberately I didn't check the tracklisting (neatly written out, with numbering, on the sleeve that comes in the cassette case). What I enjoy about shuffle is not knowing what's coming next; also, in this situation, I'm going to have to listen to everything in the order it comes without skipping (I could fast-forward, but that would be very awkward while cycling), and I don't want to know there's a run of utter garbage on the way and lose the will to power through it. This is only cassette number 7, after all, back when I was still newly bewitched by the Top 40 and its Stockholm-syndrome-like power of repetition and familiarity; it's probably full of throwaway pop shit that "oh, I love it so much, I can't bear to not record it, what if I never hear it again!". Isn't it?
Five songs in and... oh dear... I might be making one of these posts twice a day for the next 180 days XD
1) Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
Well! That's a pleasingly solid start! 11-or-12-year-old-me had taste :D
2) ?The Whole Of My Universe - ?
THIS is a real mystery. Sounds pretty indie, sort of Beck-ish; I do remember it, and remember liking it, and writing it down with satisfaction in the tracklisting when I managed to capture it; I couldn't remember the artist (though I think they might have been relative unknowns), and I left the sleeve at home, but I assumed I'd be able to search-engine it from the lyrics fairly quickly, because we live in the future now. But... nope! Not a thing! Very odd... I shall investigate further and update you once I'm able to check the tracklisting...
3) Dance The Night Away - The Mavericks
I... had absolutely forgotten that my gran quite liked The Mavericks, and our tastes intersected at this particular song which had got a lot of airplay, and I think I, unusually, recorded this song onto this cassette from an album of theirs that she owned! (This theory would be borne out by it actually having the full outro, rather than being abruptly cut off where a DJ started talking over it...) Her cassette player, marvel of marvels, had two decks, so you could do reel-to-reel recording with it; I coveted it greatly, and occasionally took advantage of visits to do little projects like this. Oh, bless her. I'd forgotten all about that.
4) Feel Good - Phats and Small
I know that this is what it is and who it's by, because Zoë Ball triumphantly announces it just at the end of the recording. I must have decided to keep it in because she timed it so neatly. This was the only thing about this song that was worthy of noting.
5) Love's Got A Hold On My Heart - Steps
You know what? This is actually bloody good. I was never particularly a Steps fan, but neither did I particularly deride them, and as a sort of low-rent ABBA, they really do the job. Heartfelt soaring vocals! Tasty chord progressions! A beat perfect for striding from the cycle park to the office! This is what cheese is all about - it's overblown, and it's manufactured, but we humans are simple creatures and we respond to the by-the-numbers tugs on our emotions nonetheless. Embrace it, and it feels triumphant. XD
I spent my entire teens home-taping pop songs off the radio; I have maybe 60 of those 90-minute cassettes, ten or fifteen songs crammed onto each side, dating between 1999 and ?2006, a mix of current hits and (more and more as I got older and more into Radio 2) whatever classics happened to get played. I moved to more of a digital-walkman-based system around 2010, and although I always kept my cassette walkman and a small selection of tapes with me, I haven't touched it in, god, at least five years.
Recently I was prompted to retrieve my entire set of home-taped cassettes from the family home (in their lovely purpose-built case with the slidey drawers and the little cassette-sized slots). I thought, well, I don't want to chuck these away, but if I've got to have them cluttering up the house, I should probably actually make use of them, at some point?
And yesterday I got a song in my head, one I really love (Lovestruck, by Madness) and realised I only possess in analogue format. I don't hold with streaming services, you see; maybe I could rip the digital audio from somewhere on YouTube, but by the time I'd done that, well, I could just as quickly have resurrected my old audio cassette setup...
- Which cassette was it on, then? Check my little notebook with its handwritten alphabetical system of listings (also, fortunately, safely retrieved from the family home). Seconds later, we have the answer: cassette number 7, from 1999 itself...
- Find the cassette in the case, first of all ripping off the parcel tape I'd stuck over the drawers for transit.
- Does my cassette player that I haven't touched for aeons still work? Yes, it looks like it does! Need some more charge in those batteries, though...
- Do my rechargeable AAs that I bought in 2012 and have barely used in years still charge? Yes, they do! And enough to power a cassette player at appropriate speed and volume, no less!
- The final hurdle: how the fuck do I carry this thing so that I can listen to it while cycling? Turns out, it fits perfectly in my shirt breast pocket (much as, I imagine, a stylophone would...) (actually, my housemate has a stylophone... maybe I'll try that when I get home :P)
Deliberately I didn't check the tracklisting (neatly written out, with numbering, on the sleeve that comes in the cassette case). What I enjoy about shuffle is not knowing what's coming next; also, in this situation, I'm going to have to listen to everything in the order it comes without skipping (I could fast-forward, but that would be very awkward while cycling), and I don't want to know there's a run of utter garbage on the way and lose the will to power through it. This is only cassette number 7, after all, back when I was still newly bewitched by the Top 40 and its Stockholm-syndrome-like power of repetition and familiarity; it's probably full of throwaway pop shit that "oh, I love it so much, I can't bear to not record it, what if I never hear it again!". Isn't it?
Five songs in and... oh dear... I might be making one of these posts twice a day for the next 180 days XD
1) Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
Well! That's a pleasingly solid start! 11-or-12-year-old-me had taste :D
2) ?The Whole Of My Universe - ?
THIS is a real mystery. Sounds pretty indie, sort of Beck-ish; I do remember it, and remember liking it, and writing it down with satisfaction in the tracklisting when I managed to capture it; I couldn't remember the artist (though I think they might have been relative unknowns), and I left the sleeve at home, but I assumed I'd be able to search-engine it from the lyrics fairly quickly, because we live in the future now. But... nope! Not a thing! Very odd... I shall investigate further and update you once I'm able to check the tracklisting...
3) Dance The Night Away - The Mavericks
I... had absolutely forgotten that my gran quite liked The Mavericks, and our tastes intersected at this particular song which had got a lot of airplay, and I think I, unusually, recorded this song onto this cassette from an album of theirs that she owned! (This theory would be borne out by it actually having the full outro, rather than being abruptly cut off where a DJ started talking over it...) Her cassette player, marvel of marvels, had two decks, so you could do reel-to-reel recording with it; I coveted it greatly, and occasionally took advantage of visits to do little projects like this. Oh, bless her. I'd forgotten all about that.
4) Feel Good - Phats and Small
I know that this is what it is and who it's by, because Zoë Ball triumphantly announces it just at the end of the recording. I must have decided to keep it in because she timed it so neatly. This was the only thing about this song that was worthy of noting.
5) Love's Got A Hold On My Heart - Steps
You know what? This is actually bloody good. I was never particularly a Steps fan, but neither did I particularly deride them, and as a sort of low-rent ABBA, they really do the job. Heartfelt soaring vocals! Tasty chord progressions! A beat perfect for striding from the cycle park to the office! This is what cheese is all about - it's overblown, and it's manufactured, but we humans are simple creatures and we respond to the by-the-numbers tugs on our emotions nonetheless. Embrace it, and it feels triumphant. XD
