"Lost cause" department:
Tapes are making a comeback. Chunky and hissy, plastic in custom colors, with crafty artwork on tiny rectangle sleeves and custom-made “j-cards,'' they're finding a second life as the go-to medium for underground bands working on shoestring budgets. For a handful of fans, tapes are the perfect antidote for the information overload ignited by digital music and blown up by the iPod.
“Tapes are cheap to buy, cheap to make, and easy to carry around,'' says Potrykus. “You never see someone walking home from a house show in Allston with a CD or seven'' in their pocket.''
For Boston's latest crop of cassette-carrying bands, the medium fits the message. A horde of psychedelic and garage rock bands — bands like Girlfriends, MMOSS, Quilt, and Doomstar! — translate well to the imperfections of tape. All find common ground in flavors of '60s rock, typified by fuzzed-out guitar and dusty, echoing vocals. Historically, the genre doesn't exactly match up with the heyday of the cassette, but the quality of the recordings are uncannily complementary.
Well, let's just go all the way and bring back eight-tracks, too, or better yet, fire up the reel-to-reels if tape is all that wonderful. I can understand the comback of vinyl records; they're cool enough a medium that we can overlook the sound-quality shortcomings, and the (sometimes) really great cover art is a true loss. But tape? Don't think so.
Comments
I thought 7" vinyl records were the underground way to go. Of course, it's been 15 years since I had any, even tenuous, connection with the underground music scene.
It is easy to scratch up a CD. The jewel cases are so fragile. Cassettes are more portable. Slap it in and its rolling. CDs you have to wait for the digital reading to kick in. So there's an advantage of a few seconds with cassettes and you can have what you want ready to play as opposed to having to press a few buttons to get it in the right spot. I can sort of see an advantage.
Leo:
What I can see coming is some form of SD card with tunes on it JUST like a cassette...a lot smaller (which means harder to LOSE), and easier to carry than even the venerable cassette.
(but without all that fancy-schmancy playback device that spools the tape through more curves than can be seen on Angelina Jolie)...LOL!
The REAL problem comes with the "cover" of that SD card...can you IMAGINE how SMALL the liner notes and lyrics will be???
;)
Two friends and I rented a three-bedroom apartment at Centlivre lo these many years ago. The walls were all white -- very boring -- so we decorated one of them them with . . . album covers! Staple holes are a reason not to get your security deposit back, in case you were wondering. Groovy.
Leo, that's hilarious. We pulled the same kind of trick with egg cartons glued to the walls. One of us had heard somewhere the "soundproofing" qualities of egg cartons....I don't think it helped much, ha.
Yeah, no deposit back on that one. Of course we already knew the seed burns in the carpet pretty much cancelled out that security deposit anyway.