It all began back in the heyday of cassette tapes. Well,
that’s not strictly true. Music is forever. It’s only the technologies that come
and go.
But back in 1985, my wife and I merged our music collections
in Fresno California. By that time, most of our recorded music was on
cassettes. We had bought some of them, but at least half of our music had been
copied from vinyl grooves to magnetic tape spooled into an ingenious bit of
plastic – the cassette. Sometimes you had to stick a pencil into one of the
plastic sprockets to wiggle the magnetic tape. Sometimes, rarely, the tape jammed or got
tangled in the player. Mostly the cassette tapes played the music we wanted to
listen to.
We didn’t consider that our recording from vinyl to cassette
was stealing. It was more of a Robin Hood thing. I mean, it’s not like Paul
Simon or the Beatles or Cat Stevens were going to end up in the poorhouse because
we put their music onto our cassettes.
Generally, one album would fit on one side of a ninety
minute cassette. And recorded music was generally about albums in those days,
not 99 cent single downloads. And, of course, once upon a time, it had once been vinyl singles with an A
and B side. And if you are old enough, you remember that then vinyl LPs came along. And those short-lived 8-track tapes.
As I said, technologies change, each one had their advantages and
disadvantages for their time - and sometimes in this time.
But for one thing, in our younger days, cassette tapes had no grooves to
wear out and you could easily have a player in your car. Of course cassette tapes had no
tracks. No putting the needle down to listen to a particular cut if you wanted
to do that. You pressed play and listened. Then you pressed rewind, or perhaps
you popped the cassette out and pressed play to listen to the other side.
But mainly you could easily record music onto cassettes. But remember: it was never
really about the technology. It was and is always be about listening to music
that might indeed shape your soul. It will always be about the music.
But in the heyday of cassettes there was this thing - the mix tape. Sometimes it
was a simple love poem for the lyrically challenged handed from one person to another.
People would select a particular song from some track on an LP, and then
another one and another one until you hadstitched together a whole new album of sorts.
The mix tape was about sharing something of yourself through the lyrics and
music of more gifted artists – often given to someone you loved – or maybe someone you just
had a crush on. Sometimes mix tapes would get passed around. Anyone could do
the same very thing today with the technology available. And maybe some people
do. But there was something special possibilities of cassette tapes in those
days. Mix tapes were about music and a whole lot of time and effort. Putting
the needle down. Pressing record. Stopping. Starting. Redoing. And especially
selecting just the right tunes.
And then we come to the point of this whole story: Michael Kanz. He was his own kind of musical
genius. You should have seen all of his stuff. Electronics. Vinyl from floor to
ceiling. And the man had something to express.
One day he gave my wife and me a mix tape called ‘Peace,
Love & Brutality.’ A true gift. Michael Kanz had even put together his own amazing cover art to
insert in the clear plastic case. The music Kanz selected was revolutionary music, for lack of a better
term. We listened to the cassette again and again. One song on that mix tape followed another
like steps on a path that kept leading us somewhere. Songs that we had never
heard before. Music that we would likely never had heard if not for Michael
Kanz. The whole was much more than the sum of the parts. It was a great mix
tape.
And then time moved on. We moved to Lawrence Kansas with our
cassettes. Soon, we started buying CDs. More and more, our cassettes ended up
in boxes in the basement as CD’s lined the shelves. Then the CD player the
bulky component system black plastic cube with all the knobs and buttons died.
The dual cassette players still worked so the whole thing went down into the
basement. But the cube had been replaced by just a CD player. And then over more
time, the CDs got played less and less as Pandora became our primary source of
music. But it was all still about music.
But as things happen, the basement was a particularly good
place to get certain kinds of piddling around things done and some cassettes from
the archives still got played on the still functioning part of the cube. One cassette
was ‘Peace, Love & Brutality.’ That particular compilation of music had
never died.
And then one day, I had an idea. I took my laptop
downstairs, plugged a headset into the audio port, placed the microphone next
to a speaker and I recorded ‘Peace, Love and Brutality’ into a digital file. I
had to press pause to turn the cassette over to the other side, but when I had
finished, I could listen to ‘Peace, Love & Brutaliy on wireless headphones
through my laptop upstairs. But I still tended more often to put the cassette
into the player in the basement when I was working around down there. It's just one of those things.
And then one day, I had another idea. I took a digital photo
of the cover art and mixed it with the mp3 in my laptop and then I uploaded the
video to YouTube – a private link. Of course, the some of the songs are still
under copyright, so the bots might find my hack and shut it down.
But for now, there you have it. It might be the cassette
tape hack of all time. It’s still about the music, but now with a click, through
the current technology of the internet, you can hear what Michael Kanz particularly wanted
to express all the way back in 1985.
The magic is still the music itself.
But here's the thing: as long as my old player plays, I can play my own cassette
tape of ‘Peace, Love & Brutality.’
Here’s the playlist:
And the ‘private’ link:
But if you want go go back in time give me a blank cassette and the dual player on
the cube in the basement still works, I could still record the ‘Peace, Love and Brutality’ onto
another cassette. It’s about the music.
No comments:
Post a Comment