Dualing Cassettes

Not sure if I should be as excited as I am, but you know what I don’t care. I ran over to Ignition Music this morning with my wife and picked up a used Sony Dual Cassette Recorder. It’s a little over 20 years old, but it’s a clean looking machine. And by the fact that I’m currently listening to something on it it’s in proper working order.

Am I actively collecting and buying cassettes? No. I haven’t bought tapes on the regular since the early 90s, and once CDs came around it would feel like a step back to buy cassettes. Like “You know this Lexus is nice and all, but I think I’ll just stick to my covered wagon.” Technology begats newer technology, which begats even newer technology. You want to keep moving forward, not backward. And for close to 20 years I lived by the credo. I replaced the VCR with a DVD player. I replaced the DVD player with a Blu Ray player. I didn’t go out and buy another VCR.

But then in 2008 I had the bright idea to buy a turntable and start collecting vinyl. Why? Why would I do that? Well first and foremost nostalgia. I didn’t collect too many of my own albums in my teen years. I started in cassettes and went straight to CDs. I had a small handful of albums I bought on Christmas break, 1986. I’d received a Soundesign stereo, which had a turntable, dual cassette, and AM/FM radio. It was housed in a neat particle board stereo case and had tower speakers that seemed too thin to hold woofers and tweeters of any sort of quality, but it was mine.

The day after Christmas I went to Butterfly Records and picked up Vinnie Vincent Invasion’s first album, Judas Priest’s Screaming For Vengeance, and Yngwie Malmsteen’s Besides Priest nothing great, but that’s where I was in 7th grade. I was all about the metal and glam and guitar noodling.

Besides those, I never bought any other records. My record obsession was more from being a little kid and watching my parents put albums on their Pioneer hi-fi, and listening to beat up KISS records on my red, white, and blue Fisher Price record player. KISS, Three Dog Night, Aerosmith, and Led Zeppelin were spun in fine fashion when I was a brat in short pants. That’s where the vinyl obsession started, and apparently stayed with me for all those years till in 2008 when I decided to rekindle that old flame. It’s been going strong ever since.

The cassette thing didn’t really come back into focus till about 7 years ago. I started making mix tapes on an old deck that was my parents. I was dealing with a herniated disc and on pain meds when I was at home. I decided to take my mind off of that by hooking the turntable into the tape deck and made vinyl to cassette mix tapes. It was pretty time-consuming, but kind of fun. My son even got into it. I made a horror soundtrack mix, as well as dubbing some full scores onto tape so we could listen to them in the family van.

Eventually there were a few record labels that started putting out short runs of cassettes, from artists that mainly worked in the electronic realm. Reimagined scores to old horror movies, as well as “imagined soundtracks” to non-existent horror films. These were all very synth-heavy, which I loved. The nostalgia factor was pretty intense, and it sucked me in.

I eventually had a pretty decent collection of cassettes that my son and I hauled around in the family van. We’d play them in there, as well as playing them on the home stereo. But the deck I had that was my parents was on its last leg. The tapes wobbled quite a bit. I had an equally old Technics deck that played the tapes pretty well, when it wanted to. It had a tendency to just shut off for no reason, making mix tape fun kind of impossible. And to just enjoy listening to a tape wasn’t that great either.

Both decks took individual craps on me, with the Technics starting to eat tapes. The old Sanyo deck had some output issues and just sounded muffled. Eventually it just sounded too weak to even enjoy, especially with strange distortion coming from the speakers.

I knew a guy that worked on electronics so I let him take a stab at the Technics. He thought he knew what the problem was and ordered a couple pieces. Well those didn’t work, so I had two tape decks and yet nothing to play tapes on. I know, first world problems. But hey, I love music and it felt like a waste to have all these great cassettes yet nothing to play them on.

Last week my wife and I went to Goshen and hit up Ignition Music. As I perused I noticed this nice Sony Dual Cassette deck, super clean and even had the owner’s manual with it. I didn’t grab it, opting for a couple records. But it remained in my head during the week. I finally gave in and emailed the record shop about the deck. I said I wanted it but couldn’t come back to the store till Saturday. The owner kindly put a note on it to hold it for me. This morning we arrived back at Ignition and picked up the deck.

Now I’m in the living room writing this and listening to Justin Sweatt’s Where The Light Goes and Phaseshifter’s Music For Cosmic Connection. Some nice and calming ambient/new age trips for a cool, overcast Saturday afternoon.

Weird, but I feel sort of complete now. Music is my thing. It’s what keeps me grounded and level, pretty much all day. It feels pretty great having a means of playing some of these amazing cassettes I’ve amassed over the last few years. It’s nice to have the option of buying a new album on cassette if I don’t want to spend $30-$40 on vinyl.

And also, total nostalgia trip.