Home taping is killing music

It is easy to forget that before cassettes went out of fashion, recording audio used to be very popular. Nowadays, recording is done mostly on mobile phones or ipods. The recording is done digitally and can be saved to a computer or sent via email or text message to someone. Most of the time people are just recording voice notes or funny things their kids are saying etc.
Back in the day though, we recorded music! Why? Well i suppose it was a rather primitive type of illegal downloading. The technological landscape was rather different at the time.
In these days of itunes and mp3s, audiophiles scowl at each other over what bitrate they are ripping CDs at or whether you should ever listen to lossy audio formats. Perfect copies of CDs can be made now by anyone with a computer. In a few minutes browsing on your computer you can download a digital copy of any song you are looking for, whether it be legal or illegal.
In the 1980s though, you only had the choice of actually going to the shop and buying the music or going down a more controversial route.

more to come...

Two sides to every story

I said I would come back to talk about sides later. Well, here I am...
In the days before CDs, albums were released either on vinyl or on cassette. Neither of the latter two formats were capable in length of holding a full album's content on one side. What do I mean? Well I mean that in comparison to a CD where you can put it on and hear the full album from start to finish, with vinyl or cassette you had to turn over to the other side approximately halfway through to hear the second half of the album.
Thus, in the days before CDs, more effort was put into engaging the listener with the entire album, well I think so anyway.
According to wikipedia - "The first Compact Disc for commercial release rolled off the assembly line on August 17, 1982, at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, near Hanover, Germany. The first title released was ABBA's The Visitors (1981)".
However, CDs didn't really become big sellers until 1985 when "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits became the first CD million seller. But CDs only became the market leader in 1993.
Ok, stay with me here, If you look at albums pre-CD and post-CD you will find that the layout of tracks on albums has changed a lot. When recording artists laid out tracks for vinyl or cassette, they thought of the album in terms of sides. Each side had to stand on it's own merit. If you had listened to side 1 all of the way through and were now switching over to side 2 then it had better be worth listening to. This was more true for cassettes than vinyl. With vinyl you could very easily lift the needle and return it to play the same side again or indeed pick out your favourite track. However, the necessity to fast forward/rewind on cassettes meant that artists really needed to have strong tracks on both sides.
In my opinion, cassettes were the ultimate way to listen to and get to love an album. Because of the mechanics of their operation, you ended up listening to albums over and over without skipping tracks. There was no easy way to skip tracks on a cassette. Sure, you could fast forward through a song but it was usually more trouble than it was worth, as you might end up in the middle of the next track and thus ruin the atmosphere that had been created thus far. When you reached the end of side
1, you usually took out the tape and turned it over to play side 2. It was either that or wait an eternity to to rewind side 1 to play it again. If you were listening on a walkman then you definitely didn't want to be doing a lot of winding as the it really chewed up battery time.
So, in a way, you were forced to listen to the entire album the whole way through. The weaker songs that you didn't really like during the first couple of listens often became the stronger songs over time as you listened to them in equal proportion to the ones you liked more immediately. When CD came along it became too easy to skip through tracks that you didn't have the patience to listen to. I believe that the introduction of the CD started a slippery slope that has steadily decreased the patience that music listeners have for music. Because of the ease with which listeners can skip between tracks on CDs and ipods, albums are now mostly released with a couple of key tracks and lots of filler. Ok, i am generalising a bit here, but the quality of albums has definitely gone down.
Music listening nowadays has become more about quantity than quality with music fans having vast collections of mp3s on their laptops and ipods but only really listening to a small proportion of their collections. I, myself have been very guilty of this sin. I have just checked my itunes library, and there are 11,946 tracks in there!
With this amount of music, it is hard to see the forest for the trees. I recently sold my 60GB ipod. Ok, i'm not being an absolute martyr here as i got an 8GB iphone instead. Anyway, the point i'm making is that i bought this huge 60GB ipod because I thought that the idea of having my entire music collection in my pocket would be the best thing ever. How great it would be, I imagined, to perhaps randomly play through my collection, dipping into forgotten albums and tracks - how satisfied it would make me feel - what a great music lover I would be! At the drop of a hat I could display my entire collection to any passer-by or unsuspecting bystander.
I used to commute to work and listen to my ipod on the journey. Now i drive a short distance and don't really listen to an ipod at all. I am returning to listening to actual albums, whether they be on cd, vinyl or tape.
I seem to have digressed a bit her from the sides topic - more anon.

Going back a little further

Ok, i want to talk a little about music that was in my house or that i was exposed to in my cousins house. In my own house growing up we didn't have a record player. We had a Silver Sanyo Radio/Cassette deck something like the one pictured. I see this particular model is referred to as a "Boombox". So, i was really reared on cassettes.
Cassettes in the house and more importantly in the car. Don't forget that you could record onto cassettes (more on that later).
My Dad's choice of music to listen to in the car has had a big influence on me whether i like to admit it or not in some cases.
I remember my cool cousins from the States visiting one Summer. We were out driving in the car with the latest (i kid you not) "Foster and Allen" tape playing in the car. The song "Old Flames" had been a staple on radio that year and i have to admit that i did love that song. Imagine the horrified looks on my cousins faces when all my family started to join in with the song. The lads had been rocking out in the USA to Van Halen etc. and were experiencing a culture shock in the heartlands of Offaly.
Funnily enough, when I was visiting the them in the States in 1983, i brought "Thriller" with me. I thought i was really cool, being into Michael Jackson and all that. However, upon being collected in JFK and on sight of my copy of "Thriller", I was told - "how could you like Michael Jackson? He's so gay!". I don't think i really understood at that point what gay actually was but it probably affected my enjoyment of his music from then on. I did persevere with "Bad" but let go of Michael soon after.
I had a huge musical education from my cousins in the states over the years as i stayed there on holidays and experienced the various musical trends of the time, which were often drastically different than Ireland.
Another favourite of my Dad's in the car was Charley Pride. We played his Greatest hits collection to death. All the family loved that one. Years later, i heard Kris Kristofferson sing "Me and Bobby McGee" - I though Charley wrote that one , I had no idea that it was such an iconic song written by Kris and sung by Janis Joplin et al. To me, Charley's polished Nashville treatment of the song was the definitive. I don't think many purists would agree.

I did get to listen to records, however, when I visited my Grandparents house and also when i visited my cousins house. I had a cousin who was the same age as me. The crucial difference was that he was the youngest of four children, the oldest of which was five or six years older than him. They had a good few current records in their collection.
I remember their record player well. You could line up several records to play one after the other. The awaiting records would be suspended on a plastic arm above the currently playing record and the next record in line would drop onto the platter after the previous one ended. It was beautiful to watch such mechanical precision in action.
We listened to a lot of ABBA in their house. I distinctly remember the "Arrival" album with the four members of ABBA in a helicopter (arriving i guess) on the front cover. My oldest cousin was into "Horslips" and i remember being into the track "Trouble with a capital T". He had a few albums of theirs including "The Belfast Gigs" and "Tracks from the Vaults". I remember thinking that this collection of records was so exotic. I had never heard of half of the bands. It was a time when people used to wear the little badges on their denim jackets of their favourite bands. This was all around the late 79/80/81 i guess and i remember seeing little badges with "U2" and "Stiff Little Fingers" on them. I hadn't a clue who they were, what they did or why they were on badges.

Too much media on this blog

I am aware that i am posting a lot of youtube videos. Please be assured, dear reader, that i shall use restraint in future in relation to this transgression.

Thriller

After some research, i see that Michael Jackson's brilliant "Thriller" album was release worldwide on November 30th, 1982. So that means that I must have bought it before "Now 1". I was 7 when Thriller was released and it was the first time I really got into listening to a full album. A friend of mine had got the album and I really wanted it. He had an older brother. I find that people who had older brothers or sisters often got into "cooler" music earlier than the rest of us like me who were the eldest.
Anyway, this friend's brother proved instrumental in getting us to see the video for the title song - "Thriller".
The video is quite tame by today's standards but back in the day it was pretty scary stuff and caused all kinds of uproar. It was shown in full on MTUSA, an excellent MTV style music program on RTE television. I recall that my friend's older brother videotaped the show, which was on very late at night, and we watched the video of it in his sitting room hiding behind the couch.
I recall that the video was also shown on "Anything Goes" over two weeks, with warnings for the kids to look away if they were easily scared.
incidentally, here is a clip from MTUSA (1986) that i found. It's well worth a look. Vincent Hanley, the presenter is in New York and he cuts to a reporter in Belfast for the big Irish music news of the day. The publisher of this video puts it well -
"Ivan Martin's round up of the local music news in Belfast during MTUSA, the 1980s Irish music show presented by Vincent Hanley. In this clip the freakishly hirsute Ivan tells us, amongst other things, that Billy Ocean won't be coming to Belfast because of "prior commitments". It was tough news for all of us at the time"

Now that's what I call music!

I've just remembered the song on side 1 that got ruined. It was the
glorious Spectorish single "They don't know about us" by Tracey
Ullman. She wasn't a particularly great singer. In fact that song was
written by the great Kirsty Macoll and featured some of her original
vocals. At least Tracey Ullman was in some way responsible for
introducing "The Simpsons" to us, so any mediocrity is forgiven. That
song was a massive hit that year and Paul McCartney was even to be
seen on the video. I think he may has also been on the same cassette
with his anti-war, slushy and sentimental "Pipes of peace" - of course
I loved this back in the day! Don't hear you playing that one much
live these days Macca :-)

I wonder what the song was on side 2 that got twisted. I will leave
you with that cliffhanger for now .....

History

I got my musical education in the 80s.
My first purchase was a compilation called called "Now that's what I call music volume 1"(Michael Jackson - Thriller was also bought around this time, can't remember which came first, need to research a bit)

. This was a double cassette with all the big hits
from 1983. In fact one of the things I remember from playing this
tape (or cassette if you prefer, I always called them tapes) was that
after about 3 or 4 plays it unravelled in my Dad's silver Sanyo radio
cassette player. This was my first introduction to the joys of
analogue audio. To those of you born in the 90's, let me explain what
happens when a tape unravelles (is that really a word - must check).
Inside a tape, there are two reels and magnetic tape runs from one
reel to the other while passing through the players playing head. So,
as with all analogue audio media there is physical contact between the
player and the media. This is where the problem or the beauty lies
depending on your opinion.
Ok? Sorry, rambling a bit..
So, basically the magnetic tape jams in the tape head and because the
player keeps playing and the tape keeps spooling, all of the magnetic
tape comes pouring out of the tape. Ok, maybe I should switch to the
name cassette at this point , rather confusing otherwise.
You are alerted to this unravelling by the gradual slowdown of the
song you are listening to, to a kind of spooky satanic weirdness and
then normally the player stops or else you run to the stop button as
quick as you can.
This is where the fun begins.
So, you carefully eject the cassette to survey the damage. If you are
lucky then the cassette will come out and the unravelled tape also
without difficulty. You may have been fortunate at this point and the
tape will only have been slightly damaged.
If you have been f*&ked over by the Gods then you may have trouble
getting the cassette out of the deck as the tape will have become very
mangled and twisted and stuck. At this point you will have become
quite angry and bitter.
You may have a problem like the guy in the video below

ok, probably not as bad as that!
So, after a few minutes of careful jiggery-
pokery with the tape you manage to get the cassette out of the deck and
you are holding it upside down in your hand with the now loose
magnetic tape hanging in a long loop from it. Two jobs now left to do.
First, untwist and flatten the tape and secondly get a pen to wind the
tape back into the cassette. Of course, your cassette of your
favourite album is now irreconcileably damaged and you are forever
doomed to hearing a sonically mangled portion of the album on both
sides (that's right kids! I said sides - more on that later) of the
cassette. How's that for value for money? Ok I know you can scratch
CDs but you have probably ripped it already and you are probably
hardly ever playing the actual cd anymore.
Ok, more to follow.....

What?

Are you fed up with  buying CDs, ripping them and never playing them again? Do you pine for a time when you listened to an album from start to finish without skipping tracks? Do you find yourself accumulating thousands of digital tracks on your ipod/computer and hardly listening to any of them? 

Read on for my adventures in old hi-fi.