I came up with the idea for this latest series a couple of weeks ago when I realized just how many cassettes I have stored away in my living room closet. Then yesterday, the New York Times published an article about the demise of the cassette as a viable format for audio books. There seems to be no better time to begin culling through my great audio cassette archive in an attempt to begin digitizing–or just recycling–the music and sounds that brought me safely through the ’80s and ’90s.
Every cassette has a story to share and is encoded within some biographical context that grew around the musical content of the two-track I was listening to at the time. In sometimes perfect symbiosis, I couldn’t always tell where the song ended and my life began.
Each Tuesday, I’ll pull out one cassette tape–or perhaps a handful–and begin working through some of the stories that remain encased inside the little plastic coffin.
I invite my dear readers to contribute their own stories and their own musical collections stored away in a box somewhere.
Next week’s cassette: K-Tel’s Reflections.