Tapes!
When it came to recording mediums, cassette tapes were by far the least reliable. The tape would degrade, deck speeds were uneven, the heads got dirty, and magnets—any magnets—were mortal enemies. Like, you know, the ones found in speakers. Annoying given how perfect those were as makeshift tables. Cassettes were a disaster, but they were ubiquitous.
They were also the ultimate DIY.
I cut my recording teeth on various 4-track Tascam Portastudio systems, and I'm still more than a little impressed by the work we did on those machines: not just the music but the process, which required an amount of patience I can only dream of today.
The hero in Wim Wenders' Perfect Days is very serious about cassettes. The entire movie unfolds through tape after tape of classic albums played in his car, or in the small Tokyo bedroom where he lives alone, as each passing day becomes a serene carbon copy of the one before. There's even a scene in a music store filled with vintage tapes.
By now you probably know I don't throw a lot of stuff away. So, of course, I still had an old, cheap, tape deck lying around, and the movie made me curious. With it were a few cassettes, most of them uninteresting except for one: a live recording from ~1987. I immediately remembered the setting: our practice studio on Iberville, a couple of mics, playing every song in our repertoire. Original songs, not covers. There we were, all four of us, the jamming and the banter spewing through stereo speakers, in my house, in 2025.
I found Maxell 90 UR tapes on Amazon—I looked elsewhere but couldn't find anything so I reluctantly made an exception. Got a 5-pack. With one album per side I still have one left, but I'll need another pack to transfer the Jade Leary material. Why not. It's all imperfect as hell, a little noisy and wobbly at times...you know, like those high-end plug-in tape emulations (bloody ironic). But this is just for fun.
Before you ask: yes, CDs may be returning at some point.
These days, anything I can touch makes the cut.
