Tapes gave me the ability to find out who I was and share it with others.Īs I was reveling in receiving and giving music to friends, a concurrent campaign to eradicate what became referred to as “home taping” was coming into public awareness. To make a copy of something I loved - whether that be an album or a mixtape - and give it to another was a huge part of coming into my own identity. (I ended up buying both physical albums when I eventually had enough money). Throughout Strangeways, you could hear the shadowy echoes of Cake somehow it made it that much better and special. What I would pay to have the first copy of The Smiths’ Strangeways, Here We Come that came into my possession when I was 17! The boy in question (shout out to James Kramer!) had taped off his original copy of the album onto a cassette of the Trash Can Sinatras’ 1990 album Cake.
As I got older, it was often boys who were the most frequent recipients and givers of said tapes. I would tape key records for family trips, make mixes of Christmas songs for annual forays to cut down a tree, and sometimes even make copies to give to friends. From this magical machine, I could not only make mixtapes, which I started doing at around age 8, but tape my parents’ albums to play both in my bedroom on my single tape player and in our Volvo. The pièce de resistance for me - especially before I could afford to buy records of my own - was the dual cassette player and recorder. Two huge hi-fi speakers, an amp, a receiver, a turntable with an arm that allowed you to stack about five records so a new LP could drop down as the one before another ended. My parents had the coolest stereo set up in our living room when I was growing up.
0 kommentar(er)
