22/02/2010

“ Being 20 years old, I’m among the youngest people who remember a time before the iPod, where it was a really big deal to get a new CD/tape and rush home and put it in that little boombox everybody had. You told your friends, you played it for your friends, and you fell in love and cherished that small collection of records. It doesn’t matter that it was Will Smith’s Big Willie Style or your parents’ Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits. When mp3s hit I was like, ‘Who needs CDs or tapes?’, but the further and further I got away from the experience of listening to full albums, going to the record store, and sharing what you found with friends, the more I realized I was just becoming a pretentious fuck with a full iPod, not somebody cherishing a collection of albums I was in love with. When I started listening to albums just to find out my favorite three tracks so I could make raging mixes or blog about them, I realized my complete lack of soul. „

Alex Davis, in Marc Hogan’s “This Is Not a Mixtape” article on cassette culture over at P4K. (This quote just barely edged out “But I don’t have a tape burner!” as my favorite quote of the article.)

Apop Records, in the Cherokee district, has been devoting less and less shelving space to CDs in favor of vinyl and cassettes. I was trying to explain this phenomenon to my sister-in-law last summer, and how cassette fetishism fit in with local noise subcultures, but she felt adamant that no one would buy a tape today without being ironic. I’ll have to forward her this article and see if she sticks to her guns.

(via wellrespected)

I’m denying this is happening, only that it’s stupid.

The only benefit over vinyl was portability and home recording (which was also stealing in the eyes of record companies).  The only advantage over cd was cost and until about 1995 flexibility… both became irrelevant points about 15 years ago.

I’m waiting for the cassette-adaptor renaissance to kick off the cd renaissance, then the CD-R renaissance moving into the mp3 renaissance, the gen 1 ipod renasissance, about 2 days of ogg vorbis renaissance, then flac renaissance and then whatever I listen to next renaissance.

I refuse to believe the capitalist lie that paying for music distributed in a physical form was a better experience than what’s available today.  At best it was an illusion constructed by record companies and record stores and bought into by consumers to help us justify what we often completely wasted our money on.

I bought “Ordinary Average Guy” by Joe Walsh.  It was a terrible idea, a complete waste of my time and money and it was not a more valid experience because I tried to like it because I paid money for it.

Further, the idea posed here that music was somehow more social in the major lable record store days is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.  “Sharing what I found with friends” happens in a more litteral sense now, but also the growth of mp3 legal and shared has had an amazing democratic effect on music consumption.  You could ask any person on the street what they think of a band like Surfer Blood (who’s debut album has technically been out a few weeks) and have a much better chance of having an informed conversation than back in the cassette days.

It use to be hard to find recordings by smaller artists.  Now your most musically inept friends know how to get the new MGMT album (even if they just know to ask you) or whatever 2 months before it “comes out”.  What so many “real” music fans hate now is that their knowlege (which many worked hard to build up over a lifetime) and dedication isn’t special.  It’s a google search, email, text message or sendspace away.

Cassettes aren’t and have never been better than anything.  They were portable, convienent and flexible and now they aren’t.

There are valid arguements to be made about analog fidelity, some of which apply to cassettes as well as vinyl.  But casseetes are mechanically inferior as are the machines that play them.  They break, unspool and demagnetize even when you are generally careful.  You can scratch records but even then the whole record typically isn’t ruined.

This is basically nostalgia.  People pining about the greener pastures of the past when they thought everything was great because they were too young to know better.  Plus, it’s been further poisoned by the corporations (including all those incorporated bands) who have a vested interest in the old, and very dead business model.


Nostalgia, we all have it and it’s still incredibly stupid.

My advice is think before you spend.

Quote posted at 14:55

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