Was a time i'd listen to , i don't know , four , five , maybe more, hours of music a day. That's down to an hour or two on average now. My music system at home conked out more than six months ago now and i haven't had the energy to get it fixed. So while a lot of my listening is off the laptop , a big chunk also happens in the car. I have a 30-60 minute drive to and from work and the music makes it a special part of my day.
My car , a 2004 Ford Explorer , was prolly one of the last in its batch - it has a tape deck instead of CD player (leave alone anything more digital). That's a bummer alright but on the positive side i get to use my biggish old collection of cassettes that wouldn't have got played otherwise.(Radio ? yeah there're quite a few FM stations around but they're mostly shit.)
I took out Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop album from the cassette drawer the other day to play in the car. And bless my soul if it doesn't turn out to be ole Bobby Dylan instead when i popped said tape into the deck. It was one of the Biograph volumes i hadn't heard in some time. It was great ! Tangled Up In Blue , the 1966 live version of Its All Over Baby Blue, Tambourine Man (oh !), that blistering Rolling Thunder Revue version of Isis , Positively Fourth Street , ... all those mindblowers that you discover have pretty much never stopped speaking to you have they. What a really pleasant surprise that tape mix-up. Sweet.
And cassette tapes , what about them ? Gotta say you feel for them. You like the sound quality of CDs, you like the convenience of mp3 . You're nostalgic about turntable records (we called it record player though , not turntable) , you talk about the warmth of the LP sound. But cassettes ? Not here,not there.They're the nowhere men of sound,man . Not that i'm about to go on a harp trip here either , ha !
yeah...very well put. i always call my (can i say our) generation as the magnetic tape gen. and you know what, its true in many ways.
ReplyDeleteon another note, on my recent trip to Mumbai, was driving a Chevy optra and it had the same tapedeck situation with a few Floyd tapes thrown in. heard Meddle after ages and fell in love with it all over again :). of course, there were the squeaking sounds and ghrrrs but i went back to teen days...and it felt nice.
Very true Meraj , indeed we are that (yes , 'we' ;-))...man , other than my own ,this is the FIRST tapedeck situation i've heard about in years , coincidence !:) Right about the sqeaks and grhhhs - plus also : they get warped when kept in the car too long (sun , temperature , etc)as they are in mine ...but at those prices its ok (another post on this later !). i love Meddle too , my fav floyd album (along with dark side ,maybe..)
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