The Humble Cassette RIP (1964-2007)
By: Alex Lee Thomson
On my disheartening commute into London this morning I came across an article that hollered the end of the humble cassette tape and I couldn't help but think that we're all too quickly saying goodbye to a massive part of our musical childhoods here.
It appears that Currys, the last major supplier of the nostalgically magnetic striped cassette, has decided to no longer stock them as the internet, downloading, iPods and the more directly competing CDRs have driven sales into the ground. With all the leading stores now shying away from them, it seems that the end is nigh for our little plastic buddies as other shops will surely follow suit and remove all traces of them, and in time the players themselves. Gone will be the days we spend arduously kneeled in front of the radio holding down play and record buttons while the top 40 blares out, and no longer will we be flicking through our CD collections looking what to add to a mix tape, an item so often used as a cheap and effective birthday present for young lovers. It may have been a pain in the arse, it really was, and the sound quality was - shall we say - often incredibly inadequate or nonexistent, but there was a whole coming-of-age section of many of our youths going though the laborious task of turning these blank canvases into expressions of our musical creativeness... and so many times would we use the voice recording function to add DJ style sound bites between tracks in a bid to create a make-believe radio station. (Cue the looks of embarrassment).
We've heard all this before though haven't we?... Weren't our parents told about the demise of vinyl? Yet here we are, us indie freaks keeping it alive to the point where the retro discs have become a staple format for any self respecting band, with some artists releasing solely on the stuff. Maybe this should be our next project, our next outreach into the wistful bargain bin of yesteryear and, although tapes don't have the same practical values of vinyl, we'll salvage its memory for our kids. If the tape is heading to that great car-boot in the sky along with the 8 Track and Minidisc, at least don't let it go without a fight... for the sake of nostalgia, make it go kicking and screaming into oblivion until all that remains is old copies of 'Tubular Bells' and 60 minute mixes with 'my favourite songs' scrawled across them in biro left at the bottom of our wardrobes. If this is the final stand of an age old tradition, let us know that we did all we could. Or maybe we'll just go and whip out a 500 track mp3 mix in 5 minutes and realise we're better off.