Cassette Week??? Cassette Store Day???

Well, the powers that be have dubbed October 8th-13th Cassette Week, leading up to Cassette Store Day on Saturday. Me, I don't see the point in resurrecting such an imperfect music medium. Sure, cassette tapes were small and portable, with an assortment of small and portable players back in the day. I had a cheap Walkman knock-off during the 80's, and by the time it croaked, I'd already moved on to CDs anyway. Mind you, I did use my trusty home audio tape deck to make mix-tapes from my CDs for the car stereo. 

But it only takes me a moment to remember my favourite tapes that got mangled in the player mechanism. Too many mechanical moving parts for my liking. Tapes got stretched, snapped, and occasionally there was "print through", where you could hear very faintly the music from the other side of the tape during quiet spots. After some years of use, commercial tapes often developed a muddy or thin sound quality, lost dynamic range, and exhibited wow and flutter issues, among other things. An all-around less than satisfactory listening experience. 

My home-recorded tapes seemed to hold their quality longer, probably because I was investing in the higher end chrome and metal cassettes and used a better than decent home audio deck. But even they could fall victim to the same issues as their commercial counterparts. 

Heat was very unkind to tapes, though I always stored mine in protective cases. I was always baffled when I'd get into someone else's car and see tapes - not in their cases - strewn all over the place... on the dashboard, on and under the seats, and on the rear window ledge. Melting. Crazy.

A couple of years ago, I chucked out nearly all of my old cassettes. I hadn't listened to any of them since the 90's, most since the 80's. After all, I'd upgraded to CDs. And this past year, I've even re-bought some of those albums on vinyl record - the proper retro way to go. I did, however, hang onto a handful of cool old favourites just as mementos for the time capsule. A few of them are pictured below. And the Judas Priest tape is actually on display on my audio stand in the living room. 

As for this Cassette Store Day thing... I'll stick to my records and the occasional CD.