Remember the 80s
Due to a variety of reasons, in the past week I’ve not had to chance to glance at a newspaper (Well, slight lie, I read a few pages of The Daily Mail yesterday, but I doubt that counts anyway), read an article on a news website, or watch a news bulletin. Nor am I likely to get chance to do so today.
But, as TD is away trying to recreate this video (one presumes), I sort of feel obliged to give people something to do over the weekend instead of reading this blog.
So, people of a certain age, cast your mind back to the 80s. That girl you liked in school. How did you express your admiration? Well, you found a Maxwell, put it into your tape deck and either by carefully recording off the radio so you hit pause just before Bruno Brookes started talking (come on, we all did it); or using a double take deck and taping it across from the original if you actually had it.
Mixtapes have died out with the introduction of CDs and mp3s - it’s rare you find a new car with a Cassette deck. It’s possible to add files onto a CD, or even have a mp3 playlist, but the romance simply isn’t there. There was skill in making a mixtape that there isn’t in a CD. The reassuring clunk of the mechanism. There was just something about it all.
Thankfully, someone has seen the lack of this, and made the 21st Century version.
OK, so an internet mixtape from mixwit might not have quite the same idea - there’s nothing to hold after all. But you can see the tape and things moving around - it’s quite fun.
So, on the wet June weekend, if you’ve nothing better to do - go and have a play. You can save them all to show off (see mine here - I often use them for Musical Bites, particularly the alphabetical playlist feature) - perhaps to that girl behind the bikesheds who might otherwise get a boring old CD…
~Asp
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Intriguing!
I started messing about with sound recording (on real tape — not encased in little boxes) way back in the ’sixties, so pre-date your experiences by some twenty years.
I used to like making tape loops and holding them taut across the recorder’s heads using the necks of two bottles, and very careful and precise editing with razor-like blade and splicing tape. All good fun, and ideal for creating sound effects for the local Youth Club’s stage productions (I was a member) including pantomimes.
Nothing like what you have been doing, I suppose, but you did ask us to cast our minds back, and mine just happened to vershoot the decade you mentioned…