The true tale of the tape… and the LP Let’s go to the video tape…. Remember that old mantra? Well, now, it seems most would rather not. Am I the only one who still has a VCR? Three of them, actually. And they all work. And yes, we do still use them. Not to tape and preserve things. We moved onto a DVD recorder a long time ago, and I’m a real believer in archiving and saving. I’ve got interviews with my favorite singers and politicians transferred onto DVD that I originally taped 20 or more years ago on the old VHS machines. These days, however, we still use them to say, record one thing while we watch another. Yes, I now there are those DVR’s and all that stuff, and all those built-in services from the cable company. But when I say we’re gonna “tape” something, I still mean it! All those old forms of outdated media. Records. Tapes. VHS tapes. Cassettes (I haven’t spelled that one in so long I had to spell check it!), eight tracks. Yep, they’re all still out there. Rotting in 50 cent bins at flea markets. Being constant flea marketers, we see them all the time, actually. We’re quite acquainted with them. “What the heck is this?” my daughter exclaimed one day at a flea market as she picked up an eight track tape. I barely remember eight tracks. I guess around 1978, I was still into toys, not music. I was 10, and didn’t much care about music. In the subsequent few years, I only had a few of them. They were always more of a curiosity. But cassette tapes, those I had! And in droves. Talk about safety in numbers. They were an army. And I remember in the mid-80’s when they made the plastic shells containing the tape clear; you could see right through it. You felt like you were holding something new and exciting, instead of that same old soon-to-wear-out magnetic media. Try playing one now, and hearing those lovely metallic scraping sounds coming through your speaker. Yep, just another form of recorded media that just wasn’t meant to last. Or couldn’t’ last. Or wasn’t designed to last. Just think of how much money companies have made forcing consumers to buy the same product over and over and over, only in a “new and improved” format. Not that I don’t approve of the new and improved format. I hated records. I was one of those “keep it clean” record collectors. I had the little brush, and the bags, and the anti-static sleeves to keep them in. My records- I still have a few that are autographed that I’ve kept- still look as brand new today as they did 25 years ago. But, I never liked them. No matter how you tried to keep them clean, dust and static free, there was never any avoiding of that “ snap, crackle and pop” even the cleanest would bring. And I’m not talking cereal here. It always bothered me. Even back then, as an obsessive compulsive “keep everything neat and clean” kid, I was obsessed with knowing that those very recordings would still be with me, on those records, 30 years from then. But then I learned that they wear out! So when cassettes started to wear and break, and VHS tapes started to haze the tv screen over in a storm of white because the VCR heads were dirty, I knew my dream was lost. I wouldn’t be able to watch my favorite singer, Kim Carnes, performing on Solid Gold in 1985 in the year 2015. Or so I feared back then. These days, we have wonderful DVD’s. Although those are easily scratched and hazed too. Again, I take good care of mine. And I’ve read that they should last years and years past their predecessors. Why am I still skeptical? I’ve seen my 10 year-old churn through more than a bunch of them. Scratches, scrapes and handprints on the back make a nice, pixilated, frozen image on the tv screen. And now, we have a wonderful thing called You Tube and even You Tube TV! It seems there were a whole bunch of buffs like me out there, who recorded virtually everything there was to record on one of these old mediums. And now, they’re wonderfully displayed- and preserved- for the world to see, and for free! Old Gi Joe toy commercials? They’re there! Old McDonald’s commercials? Those are there too. Does anyone remember that the Grimace, in the beginning, was an evil-type character? He wasn’t always the loveable fur ball the later commercials portrayed him as. I bet you most under 30 don’t even know who the Grimace was! Or Mayor McCheese, or the Hamburglar! But I digress. Nowadays, I still see records priced as “collectibles.” And I’ve heard you can still buy record players, or “turn tables” as they’re more affectionately known. My answer is always the same though: who would want them? It’s a purer sound, some say. Some even like the snaps and pops. I have exactly one album that had to be transferred to CD (yes, they make those machines too) because it was never available in the new format. It’s literally like playing a record on your CD player. You hear all the pops and hisses between songs. Actually, it’s kind of neat. It sure brings me back. And after all, I am and always have been a tremendous nostalgia buff. Maybe I should rethink this whole records thing.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:51:08 +0000
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