Complete Madness

This one is strictly for the audiophiles out there. A bunch of crazy Russian geezers have been scanning and photographing cassette tapes and their cases.

Possibly for posterity’s sake, I wouldn’t know though as my understanding of the cyrillic alphabet leaves a lot to be desired. This, folks, is what we call a labour of love.

It certainly takes me back a couple of years or so. When I was but a callow youth and didn’t even possess a means of transcribing vinyl records onto cassette I had to resort to flattery to get portable versions of my long players.

I would procure new records (usually from WH Smiths) and TDK tapes (usually from Woolworths or a certain entrepeneur in my tutor group) and give them to my good friend Russell. He would then sit on them for several months and eventually the items back to me for my audio pleasure. Occasionally (for instance when tape copying was involved) I used to go straight to the school audiophile. Who is usually referred to around these parts as the 70s Throwback.

There was one time when I borrowed a cassette from the library, and liked it so much that I wanted my own copy. I gave the borrowed pre-recorded tape and a shiny new AD90 to the Throwback who promised to faithfully "back it up" for me. Which he did, about five months later. The late fees on the tape where more than it would have cost to buy an original one myself.

This was, of course, the period when home taping was killing music. Sadly we didn’t do a good enough job and the industry is thriving to this day. Although now they inform us that MP3s will finish the job we started. I can’t say I believe the latest argument any more than the old one though.

So here you go Molly, the page of TDK Tapes including our all time favourite of all time the AD90.

[Courtesy of Stavros the Wonder Chicken]

Oh, and the tape I borrowed from the library? Dare by the Human League. I’ve got an MP3 copy on my iPod if you’ve got a spare tape.