The Cassette Tapes Project

My great uncle probably moved the trunk fewer times than I have, and he came from Switzerland. His key belongings, maybe even all of his belongings, were once carried across the sea in the same trunk I've used to store my collection of cassette tapes. I started storing them there right around the time I went to college. Pre-recorded cassettes, dubbed tapes, even mixes. But by the time I moved into the dorms they had been replaced by a new medium, the compact disc.

Of course that didn't mean I was going to abandon them. It was my music library. And because I've added very little to the collection since then, other than a stray mix tape and perhaps some home recordings of my own, it remains a vault. One that's been moved at least ten times and has spent a significant amount of time locked up in various storage units. Well, it's time to open it up and have a listen.

I first had this idea a few years back. I was working at an ad agency with a community stereo, and the other copywriter and myself spent the days taking turns playing CDs and iPods. At one point I found an old tape recorder and joked about bringing in my old tapes and playing them one by one and documenting the reaction of the agency. Really, we were probably the only two people who would have cared. I could never get the thing to work right either. Just when I thought I got it hooked up with the right Radio Shack connections a Journey tape got jammed inside. It never worked right after that.

This will be a little different. It'll probably just be me listening to the tapes. Music can be quite a solitary thing anyway. At least I have equipment that works. The dual cassette deck I have was purchased long after the cassette was pretty much dead and I've hardly used it. And because there are two decks I have one to spare if a tape gets stuck.

I have my cassette deck on top of my desk and will be hooking it up to the same speakers I use for my laptop. These are high end and sound pretty good, so it ought to be a fair comparison. I won't be listening on a Sony Walkman or through my first car's tape deck or on a home stereo system. Instead I'll be listening to the tapes in much the same way that most of us consume music now, at our desks through computer speakers.

I have a few other rules for myself. I'm going to try to do this somewhat randomly, which means I'll open the dark cobweb infested storage unit and stick my hand blindly into the trunk and pull out one handful of cassettes at a time. I'll pick a tape and listen to it all the way through. I may write while listening to it, or maybe I'll do it afterwards. But I have to listen to the tape all the way though, regardless of what's on it. Especially for home mix tapes and all the other nonsense you record when you're 12 years old, this should be quite interesting. For dubbed tapes I have to treat the cassette as one unit and write about it accordingly, even if the artists on the A side and B side are drastically different.

I suppose that's my introduction. It's time to start listening.