Friday
Jan052007
Nothing Sounds Like Tape
Friday, January 5, 2007 at 12:22AM
My friend Shane has a bumper sticker on his car that says "Nothing Sounds Like Tape". He's an audio engineer and I'm pretty sure he means this kind of tape...
and not this...
and that he means the first kind of tape sounds really good. It does. Nothing sounds like the second either. Which sounds kind of not-so-good. HOWEVER, this post will attempt to prove that the cassette was awesome.
I wrote the other night about finding The Prophetic Mix Tape of 1998 but I did not tell you about all the others. I found a big ol' box of all the tapes I had from my year of college and some of high school.
I had a tape case that got stolen in college. It was full of great stuff. Toad, 10,000 Maniacs, Michael Knott and U2 (that last one was for you, Zach). I, unfortunately, did not find this case. But I did find the one with a bunch of R.E.M., Indigo Girls, the Choir and War. And I was so jazzed.
I got a new (old) car this Summer. It has a tape player. My old Volvo's radio barely worked, so the tape player was a huge improvement. Not only can I use the adaptor for my iPod, but I now have tapes to play!
Now, tapes have some stuff stacked against them. They don't sound that great, they're not as convenient as MP3s, and the artwork looks terrible since everything gets so squished.
But here's what's great about the tape:
You heard the whole album.
And that's a great thing. There was no hiding a bad song at track 9. It was the ultimate way to learn every tune. That tape would sit in your car and play over and over and over again. Pretty soon you forgot where it stopped and started, you just knew which song came next.
I honestly don't even know some of the later songs on even my most favorite albums. But I know every song off of Van Morrison's Common One. And I would never have made it through that second song on a cd, let alone an ipod. I mean, it's 15 minutes long. And you know what? I LOVE that second song now. AND all the ones after it. Because I heard them a thousand times.
And mix tapes. Who can forget mix tapes? Some of my favorite bands I discovered because Amy put one song on a mix for me. Again, the mix would live in the deck of the car and you'd learn all these tunes. On a mix cd you end up skipping half of the songs your friend wants you to hear. And when your friend shoots you 276 MP3s in a two-minute file-sharing party you might end up listening to the first 20 seconds of 30 of those songs. No one ever became a John Lennon fan that way. Though that's probably not a bad thing.
High school memories are bookmarked by which tape sat in the player that month. I don't know how many times Natalie Merchant's Tigerlily played while we drove around picking people up for prom. When you live in a farm town half the folks live out in the country, so you get a good fifteen or twenty minutes through corn fields to get to anybody else's place. So much time to burn those tunes in your brain.
I miss that. I will not lie. I miss it a lot. So I'm excited to have my tape case sitting on the passenger seat floor. When Monster's done I'll hear Green and then Monster again, and at the end of a week I will be as big of an R.E.M. fan as I was sophomore year.
So when I get some extra cash (this will never actually happen) I want to print some copies of The Morning and Photographs on cassette. Anybody know a place that can do them 50 at a time for really cheap? Then I can have a Tape Release Party. And we'll have to start in the middle of one song and end by playing that some song again and then wait through a minute and a half of hiss until we hear the "click".
and not this...
and that he means the first kind of tape sounds really good. It does. Nothing sounds like the second either. Which sounds kind of not-so-good. HOWEVER, this post will attempt to prove that the cassette was awesome.
I wrote the other night about finding The Prophetic Mix Tape of 1998 but I did not tell you about all the others. I found a big ol' box of all the tapes I had from my year of college and some of high school.
I had a tape case that got stolen in college. It was full of great stuff. Toad, 10,000 Maniacs, Michael Knott and U2 (that last one was for you, Zach). I, unfortunately, did not find this case. But I did find the one with a bunch of R.E.M., Indigo Girls, the Choir and War. And I was so jazzed.
I got a new (old) car this Summer. It has a tape player. My old Volvo's radio barely worked, so the tape player was a huge improvement. Not only can I use the adaptor for my iPod, but I now have tapes to play!
Now, tapes have some stuff stacked against them. They don't sound that great, they're not as convenient as MP3s, and the artwork looks terrible since everything gets so squished.
But here's what's great about the tape:
You heard the whole album.
And that's a great thing. There was no hiding a bad song at track 9. It was the ultimate way to learn every tune. That tape would sit in your car and play over and over and over again. Pretty soon you forgot where it stopped and started, you just knew which song came next.
I honestly don't even know some of the later songs on even my most favorite albums. But I know every song off of Van Morrison's Common One. And I would never have made it through that second song on a cd, let alone an ipod. I mean, it's 15 minutes long. And you know what? I LOVE that second song now. AND all the ones after it. Because I heard them a thousand times.
And mix tapes. Who can forget mix tapes? Some of my favorite bands I discovered because Amy put one song on a mix for me. Again, the mix would live in the deck of the car and you'd learn all these tunes. On a mix cd you end up skipping half of the songs your friend wants you to hear. And when your friend shoots you 276 MP3s in a two-minute file-sharing party you might end up listening to the first 20 seconds of 30 of those songs. No one ever became a John Lennon fan that way. Though that's probably not a bad thing.
High school memories are bookmarked by which tape sat in the player that month. I don't know how many times Natalie Merchant's Tigerlily played while we drove around picking people up for prom. When you live in a farm town half the folks live out in the country, so you get a good fifteen or twenty minutes through corn fields to get to anybody else's place. So much time to burn those tunes in your brain.
I miss that. I will not lie. I miss it a lot. So I'm excited to have my tape case sitting on the passenger seat floor. When Monster's done I'll hear Green and then Monster again, and at the end of a week I will be as big of an R.E.M. fan as I was sophomore year.
So when I get some extra cash (this will never actually happen) I want to print some copies of The Morning and Photographs on cassette. Anybody know a place that can do them 50 at a time for really cheap? Then I can have a Tape Release Party. And we'll have to start in the middle of one song and end by playing that some song again and then wait through a minute and a half of hiss until we hear the "click".
Reader Comments (22)
Wow... introspection at its best (I think that qualifies as introspection... or is it simply reflection, I am not quite sure). Anyway, I remember my brothers mix tapes were the most looked forward to presents we ever got as kids. I just found a case of his tapes in the basement. He bought it at a garage sale and it looks like it might be your lost one, because I think it had every band you mentioned. I just might have to dig up that tape player and replay them... all I know is Michael W. Smith rapping on "Love Crusade" is something that would have only been listened to on a tape. Brilliance in action :)
Nothing like that warped sound where the tape speeds up and slows down, eh? Or when the tape breaks and you have to painstakingly splice the tape back together? And that lovely tape hiss.... oh, good times. I've got about 100 mix tapes in my basement full of terrible stuff from the early 90's. I've moved almost all of it to MP3 by now, but I must confess, I haven't gathered up the strength to throw them all out.
I have to admit...I wore out my copy of Steven Curtis Chapman's The Great Adventure...it was a great tape...and lets not forget his rapping duet on "Got 2 B Tru" with Toby McKeehan (back in his days prior to being known as TobyMac)...now that's a tape-only listen.
I guess the tape was not all bad. I had made a mix tape for my friend working in Yellowstone, that my friend said was a hit with all his coworkers up there. If I had to make a mix tape today "If I Had Wings" and "The Priest and the Iron Rain" would definitely make the mix. I guess make that a 90 min tape....
Peter
Whoa, did you just slip a slam on Lennon into this post?!?
The "hiss" always woke me up when I fell asleep to my tapes. My favorite tape ever (which I just found a copy of) was Carmen "Radically Saved". Don't judge me---I was 11. My next favorite tape was of a band called The Normals "Better Than This". I believe I found it at Cornerstone. What a treasure! Too bad I put a magnet on the popcorn can that I had all of my tapes in. That was a ruff day!
Later,
Jarred
What Choir album did you find?
Surely there's a studio somewhere in Nashville that will copy 50 tapes. Shoot, I'd do it my studio with the tape deck I use for tape->CD conversions. I'd probably need to get a degaussing tool if I did that many. It even has a high-speed dubbing so it would only take, like, 18 hours!
You'd be on your own for the artwork, though...
--PK
http://www.shadowcloset.com
Ahh, high quality cassette respect. Thanks, Andy.
Carmen's Addicted to Jesus, Steven Curtis Chapman's The Great Adventure, and (my personal favorite) Michael W. Smith's Go West Young Man were my brother's and my favorites growing up. I am also proud to say that I own all but two of Rich Mullins' albums on cassette.
If enough of us pre-ordered The Morning and Photographs on cassette, could you make it happen?
I probably could, that's a good idea. Anybody else want in??
I'd get in...it'd be cool just to have a copy
I'm in on and tapes.
Please assure me that I'm not the only person that sat around and tape-recorded my favorite songs off the radio to play back all week. Unfortunately, I was 8 at the time, refused to listen to "non-Christian" music and wasn't even aware "Contemporary Christian Music" existed. I was into the classics: Sandi Patty; Acapella, anyone?
That was supposed to say I'm in on "The Morning" and "Photographs" tapes.
i don't know ---- after that magnet thing---well it still hurts
Finally, there's a way for grandparents everywhere to get a chance to hear the music.
(I was going to give my grandparents a copy of Peterson's "Love and Thunder," but they seriously don't have a CD player.)
dude I'm all for the tape idea!...however, you could make a really good argument for some sweet chill times that have been had around a good vinyl. Have you thought about an LP for your records?
Here's how I handle the tape thing: long drives aren't iPod-fueled. They're CD-fueled, and I usually don't let myself touch the skip-track buttons. My car is the main place where I listen to music without it being sliced-and-diced by iTunes, so I'm not going to let the shuffle hegemony carry over into all parts of my life.
I completely understand the CD fueled road trips. My best version of the mixed tape was road trip CD's in college. If I had to travel more than 30 minutes there was a mixed CD. Then the movie Elizabethtown came out, which was very influential in pushing me to make more road trip CD's. now I label them by the desination.
an idea for the cassette release party: 80's themed? or would that be overboard?
or early 90's themed?
when i was a young boy so much younger than today i nver knew that cd burner dpoes exist.hehehehe
and so what i did is that i listened to my favorite rock fm station and record every song that came out and then later edit them into another tape...sometimes due to money problem,i usually borrow my friends latest cd or tape or his mixtape and copy them.that's how i collected music back then...
why do we have to reproduce those two albums on cassette when we can hear good quality sound in out itunes or cd?
I TOTALLY want in! I'm new to this so please let me/us know how that's done and I'm there! Thanks for the cassette shout-out! I'd forgotten how much I loved them- you stinking rock Andy!
I'm in. I still have 2 tape decks, a box of tapes (recorded stuff)
in church they still use sometimes a tape deck to play choir music. Its kind of funny when it doesn't work. But it also takes me to a simpler time.
JM