Je’ Suis Cassette By Ted Archer
Sometimes feel that I have a bizarre way of looking at the world, I become incredibly excited about the most seemly mundane of things.
For an example sinks that have infrared sensors so that you just have to hold your hands out and the tap turns on. That to me is incredible as far as technology goes. Of course right now you’re probably thinking wow get with the program man. Which I will admit is a fair call.
Yet it is important to take time to acknowledge good technology no matter how seemingly mundane. To this end I want to acknowledge the simple compact cassette.
Whilst cleaning my room and sifting through the layers of my trash and treasures that had accumulated since year nine. I uncovered an old cassette walkman and three unmarked cassettes. It was hardly a surprise that I might find some form of archaic technology tucked away in my room.
Wanting to see if I could salvage the walkman I rummaged through my drawers for double A batteries. Finding a pair of batteries I slid them into the back of the walkman then moved off to find headphones. The headphones I put into service came from a Virgin Blue aeroplane that I was on earlier in the year (see told you I rarely discard technology).
I inserted the first cassette in the now re-powered walkman. A strange hippy music filled my ears and an annoyingly ethereal voice came on telling me to ‘breathe’ and be ‘calm’. Well it was good advice. I ejected the tape and quickly returned it to its dusty tomb in the cupboard.
The next tape was more up my alley with a small kid requesting Korn’s got the life on Triple J. Flipping the tape and was greeted with a furious live performance of the band Hole. After hearing Courtney Love lose her voice doing a cover of Guns’n’Roses Paradise City I ejected the tape placed it on the desk and loaded the final cassette.
A familiar intro breaks out in the headphones. It was Regurgitator. After listening to a few songs I flipped the tape and after a few more songs I determined it was a recording of the Homebake CD.
You are no doubt wondering why anyone would record a CD to a tape.
Well in 1964 the audio or compact cassette was released in Europe and America finding its way to Aussie shores. Later CD made its appearance in 1982. However, the cassette walkman was the main form of portable music player. In fact it defined the still growing market at the time.
Though, sales of CD’s out stripping cassettes by the 1990’s lead to the development of a Discman.
However, these early Discman were expensive and would often jump and skip if bumped. Anti-Shock technology not properly developed until the early 2000’s. For this reason tapes remained prevalent in the portable music scene. With audio cassette remaining the standard in car audio until the advent of Anti-shock made CD’s a viable option.
So it was common to buy CD’s and blank tapes then record the CD’s to these tapes for portable use. It also allowed people to make the infamous mix tapes, creating their own play lists.
Sound Familiar?.
It should because we still do this today. However, now it is the apple ipod and not the Song walkman that defines the portable music market. CD’s are still purchased, copied and sorted into personal mixes.
Now, however it is a more streamlined process rather then carefully attempting to hit record on the tape and play on the CD. Often missing the intro or cutting the ends off songs.
Also a great trend is that this practice is actual contributing to the decline of CD’s. With people downloading songs direct and not buying CD’s at all.
So I wonder how many years will it be before I’m dusting off CD’s with the same nostalgic reverence. Trying to find batteries to power up my Discman. Well the cassette managed to live from 1964 to the 2000’s before becoming obsolete. So a life of 36 years isn’t bad.
In parting I’d like to just leave you with one last interesting factoid. The word cassette is of French origin. It translates to ‘little box’. Sounds a little fancy doesn’t it?.
“Je Suis Cassette”
Think about it next time you reach for the ipod and put it on shuffle. |
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