The Magic of Tape

Ezra Klein notes that he didn't begin buying CDs until The Roots' Things Fall Apart, which came out...in 1999. And I thought I was a holdout for staying with cassettes until 1992, shelling out for my first CD only because Guitarrorists wasn't available on cassette.

Related, having moved back to the east coast, I now have access to a suitcase full of my old tapes, which had been stored at my parents' house. As much as Iove having a new old music collection, stuff like Fugazi, fIREHOSE, and the complete early works of Fishbone, what I really love are the mixes. I made about two mixes a year from the time I was fifteen, and each of them is a fantastically efficient time machine. I can make compilation CDs on my Mac, but it's just not the same as sitting there in front of a deck, pile of cassettes around you, cueing up the tape to where the last song has just ended, holding down play/record/pause, and then releasing pause, over and over for two hours. I mean, a compact disc doesn't wear out and distort after two-hundred plays. Where's the fun in that?