Holy crap!

[spatch]

Cassette tapes!

See how many you remember. Even just staring at a few of these brings back memories like you wouldn't believe.




This was the mix tape staple.


These were pretty crummy, but oh so trendy! Especially the 120 min tape. Hissy and crappy, and I can't imagine hearing Jane's Addiction on anything but.


We had every single Steely Dan album on this type of cassette.


The guy who gave me the Pink Floyd collection did so on these.


August 1996 / Bob is a very big cat.



What do you remember?

Comments

[tully-monster.livejournal.com]

I had every single one of those at one point or another! But not for mix tapes, though. I didn't know what mix tapes were. I was a dork.

My favorite was the fourth one down--that's what I used to record CDs so I could play them in the car tape deck. We had one CD player at home in 1986, and my first CD was Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in music from Wagner's Ring cycle.

[off_coloratura]

I had every single one of those. The cheapass Memorex ones recorded many of my voice lessons in college as well as most of my listening for Music History, as did the Fujis. The final Memorex ones were pretty nice. My first They Might Be Giants album (Flood) was on that tape. The chromium dioxide Memorex was the one my fourth-grade friend and I used to make silly radio plays on.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the funky Memorex (I think my sister used those a lot) and the Maxell XL90 look pretty familiar. But I think I did most of my own duping of my friends' late-Eighties CD collections on some variety of TDK cassette that isn't displayed on that page.

Also, I remember that TDK had a variety that was specifically labeled a "DATA CASSETTE" for use in your Atari 410 Program Recorder or equivalent.

[manfire.livejournal.com]

I have one of these bad boys left over from the '70s; my mom used it to pirate somebody's Engelbert Humperdinck album back in her wild and crazy late twenties or early thirties. That's the tape that taught me about my love for "The Hump", as I call him.

When I was in junior high school, on the other hand, my friends and I somehow convinced ourselves that those Maxell XL II 90 tapes seen above were higher in quality than any other tapes EVER.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

They were really really popular, and I remember them being rumored to be extra-good too. I'm sure that at least 90% of that was snake oil.

re:

[zorndeslammes.livejournal.com]

The Maxell 100s lasted me awhile. I have copies of The Hour Of Slack on 'em from like, 97? 98?

The Yellow and Pink Memorex all deterorated many years ago for me.

I have a ton, I mean, a TON of these bulletproof cheapo Maxells or something laying around that my mom got free for smoking Fiberglass Tubes Of Doom. I have more random college radio on those from the late 90s than any sane person should.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Oh, the '80s funkyosity of the yellow Memorex! I still have a Beatles mix tape I put on one of those (for myself). Wow.

[subbes]

OMG the top and bottom ones. I still have some, in fact. And a tape deck in my car... maybe I should put it to use.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I bought more Maxell XL-2-S's than any other type because that was what my brother (who was a serious Deadhead with hundreds of tapes) said to get.

[laurenhat.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. I had lots of all of those. I'm embarrassed to say that on the funky colored Memorex tape, I definitely had an Amy Grant album at one point. My friend made it for me, but I played it lots. And now I have "Baby, Baby" in my head.

The last one is most strongly associated with Shaking the Tree in my mind. And listening to "Mercy Street" and "Solsbury Hill" and "Here Comes the Flood" over and over, falling in love.

There's some Sonys and Fujis and others that are on the linked page that are also very familiar.

[grumqa.livejournal.com]

I had my one Pink Floyd tape on an XL-II just like that. Dark Side of the Moon/Final Cut. And a million other things on those tapes.

I bought them by the box, and if I remember right you got one XL-IIS with the box, and I saved those for the really *good* music that had to sound good, like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

I had the Repo Man soundtrack on a metal tape. Hardore!

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

Er. HardCore. I meant.

[sernin.livejournal.com]

You've given me a very large lump in my throat.

[pecosy.livejournal.com]

So many tug at the edges of my memory, but this one really hits home:



When my dad was managing a pizza restaurant he made a deal with the manager of the nearby Radio Shack to exchange free pizzas for a HUGE box of floor samples. It had remote control cars, a keyboard, a SIMON (beep boop boop), an assortment of handheld games and so many blank cassette tapes it was incredible. A bunch 120s too. Score! Dividing up the cassette bounty proved tricky - did one 120 minute tape count the same as two 60-minute tapes? I think this was still back in the days of putting our tape recorder up to the big stereo speakers to record songs of the radio. I still can't listen to David Bowie's "Let's Dance" without hearing our dog Roulette barking in the background...

[alphacygni]

I had Dead Milkmen on one of those 80s-o-rama yellow Memorex tapes. That makes me a truly charmed child of the 80s, eh?

The XLII-S 90 was my mix tape standard for years and years.

I have a BASF tape frm the 1970s that isn't in that list. Perhaps I should take a picture of it.

[dogofthefuture.livejournal.com]

Oh man... the clear Memorex tape with the blue triangle and the pink... holy camoley. A while back I had to toss out a bunch of cassette tapes because, well, they were casette tapes, and almost all of them were that. The ones that weren't, were the Maxells with the gold label and the running bars or whatever you'd call it.

Jesus, I remember making mix tapes and sitting down trying to calculate song running times and thinking, "Okay, so, 3:45 + 4:22 + 4:33 + 3:05 equals... aw crap... um... well, I can probably squeeze in 6 more songs on side A easily."

[shoeburyness.livejournal.com]

Were those Clear Memorex the tapes that had the little yellow slidy thing on the tape? When you'd start the tape, they'd snap up either to the little plastic wheels in the top, or the reel of tape, depending on direction.

[minkrose]

Oh man. I still personally own 2s, 4s and 5s. I love me some tapes. I still have all the mix tapes I made off of the radio back in high school when I was too cheap to buy CDs.

Unfortunately, this ends my trip down memory lane cuz I need to go to bed NOW.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

Man, did I use a bunch of those Fuji DR and DR-II tapes. A fair amount of Maxell's at one point in time, too.

C30! C60! C90! Go!

[mrschurch.livejournal.com]

OMG-I had a crap load of those crummy memorex...my favorite one i still have has a radio version of this one song by Slaughter that i absolutely loved...i think i even woke up to it one morning before school and ran to my tape player to tape it..

I have many of the maxell tapes. We recorded alot of Drill Team routines on those tapes...very good quality.

GOOD TIMES MAN

[mrschurch.livejournal.com]

i must add that i still have that memorex tape...i think i played it for my husband a few months ago...

[glowkitty]

Oh yes, the hip Memorex tapes. I was probably 10 when those were out, and I insisted that my dad buy those kind of tapes for me even though they blew. And I think I still have a few of those last Maxells laying around, blank.

[suzepie.livejournal.com]

Remember the Home taping is killing music campaign?

Yep, killed it dead all right.