Scratch, being an older vehicle, has a most peculiar way of play musics, aside from a standard AM/FM radio-with weather band capabilities, which intrigues a weather geek such as myself-and a CD player. This device is called a tape deck. Isn't that something? Have you, gentle readers, in this advanced and enlightened age of iPods and MP3 players, ever heard of such a thing? Dig it, back in antiquity, portable music was played via cassette tape, on something called a walkman.
Next, I'll be telling you of walking to school uphill-both ways!-in the snow, barefoot, and being grateful for it, because it made us tough! Unlike you candy-ass whipper-snappers of this here modern age. Ya'll are fucking soft.
I digress...
Back when I was young, and up through my roaring twenties, I made mixed-tapes. This would be the direct ancestor of mixed-CDs and the setlists my daughter sometimes compiles on her iPod. When Jezebel and I hung out all the time, the creation of a new tape was big doings; we'd jump in her auto and tool about the greater metroplex, burning fuel late into those neon-laced nights, grooving to our tapes, trying to see if the other could decipher the riddles, the jokes, the hidden cosmic truths contained therein. Aside from monkey watching, coffee, and playing rummy-sometimes done all in the same night-this was considered fun.
Recently, going to the library's book sale, I've acquired a few lightly used cassettes; Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, and a compilation of Cuban music that only pays correctly on one side-the other sounding like the Chipmunks on speed, if such a thing were possible-for only a few coins. How novel. The nice librarian felt bad for even charging me anything. Times change; I remember, back in antiquity, when it cost real money to get a cassette.
The last time I went out back to the barn, our ramshackle folly, which is testament to mountain ruin, I checked on my bicycle and rummaged through a few boxes we have stored out there. I found them; some of my mixed tapes, along with just a few others I've had for years and lifetimes. Just looking at the labels and titles I concocted took me back. I smiled bittersweetly and thought of those long drives with Jezebel back when we were young and told riddles, jokes, and hidden cosmic truths through the placement of songs on a cassette.
I do not know if any of them play, and, even then, how well. Be that as it may, I have a ways and means to find out. The CDs and radio can be played at home. Driving time might just find itself being reserved for the tape deck for a bit.
I remember tape decks and mixed-tapes (I've also made them) but my 12-years younger sisters don't. They might know what a tape deck is but they've never used it. This fact makes me feel old. :)
ReplyDeleteThat's cool given there's an almost twenty-year age difference between us :).
DeleteMy daughter knows my tapes because I subjected her to them, but her boyfriend has only heard of such things in apocrypha. Sad.
Ah mixed tapes. I made a many of those for a many a girl trying to woo her :)
ReplyDeleteI think I made a tape once for a girl, and it was a total abortion. Afterward, I just stuck to ones for myself to be shared with friends.
DeleteI had a CD I wanted to send my mother, but before I mailed it, I asked if she had a CD player in her car. I was amazed when she said no, only a tape player. Her car is barely ten years old! How quickly modern becomes antique these days!
ReplyDeleteMine is a 2000, so I think that might be the reason for both a CD player and tape deck. My previous vehicle was a 2008 and had a port to plug in something like an MP3 player or iPod.
DeleteAll of my tapes were ruined in the year 1994 when there was a water heater mishap in my apartment while I was away at some convention somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI took it as a sign that I should leap into the 90s and buy a CD player.
I do still have a Metallica Kill'em All tape stuffed in the back of my make-up drawer. The kids make fun of it. I just sigh...
I found two Megadeth tapes from my teen along with the mixed tapes. I had a CD player with tape deck by the time I was sixteen, but didn't get a discman, or go over to mostly CDs until the early-mid 2000's. Reckon I'm a luddite in that aspect.
DeleteMy daughter will sometimes harass me about being old by saying;
"Back in your day, all you had was Motley Crue. And you liked it!"
*dramatic sigh* I'm tellin' ya--there was more than one guy I fell for due to a mixed tape! (I remember one with The Cure on it...Depeche Mode...oh heavens...) Is it wrong that I think making one of those--somehow counted more?? All the rewinding and timing and the volume and--I mean, now it's all "click and drag." *sigh again* Ah, the good old days...
ReplyDeleteI do think there is a certain alchemy when it comes to making a mixed-tape that's lost in the modern approximations.
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