Cassette Tapes and Compact Discs

 I grew up into pop culture with cassette tapes. The first tapes I bought were Duran Duran's "Rio" and Phil Collins' "Hello I must be going." Another was "Reach the Beach" by The Fixx. I can still recall the tiny red light of the tape player glowing in the dark as I listened. This tape player/radio was a poor second cousin to the much more compact, convenient Walkman. I recall vividly Cheri letting me listen to hers in a taxi cab in Guangzhou, China. Peter Cetera was singing "And along came a woman." My personal tape player, bought that same year (1985) could not really be put into a pocket. To listen to the radio, you had to pull out an antenna. Still, it felt important. I took listening seriously. I think I bought those three tapes out of a catalogue, although I don't remember how I did it. There were no record stores in Madison or nearby towns, and I was too young to go to New Haven on my own or with friends. I believe the tape player was also bought out of a catalogue. 

Records were part of my growing up, but by 1985, when I was a freshman in high school and felt the pressure to join American pop culture or risk being laughed at, they were slipping away. Stereos had both cassette decks and turntables. Suzanne, Cheri, and Janice had already left home, taking their records with them. Kathleen was buying cassettes. I remember her playing a Police album as we drove in the night past the Four Corners in the back of the Sno Commander, with lightning striking everywhere. I believe that was in 1984, or maybe 1983. I can still remember some record album covers. I remember ABBA, especially the inside, which featured the four band members making out in pairs. The beards and bell bottoms and platform shoes were an interesting sight. I remember Linda Ronstadt, Captain and Tenille, Carole King, "Free to be you and me." In eighth grade (1983-4), I chose an Eagles cover -- belonging to one or more of the older sisters -- for my art project. The cafeteria walls at Brown Middle School were hung with massive copies of album covers. It was a point of anxiety that I didn't really know current music. Was The Eagles acceptable? No one said anything. And it was a pretty cool picture -- an eagle skull and the band name in sharp yellow, forked lettering.  

Another project, in fifth grade, aroused similar feelings of being behind my classmates. Our music class assignment was to be disc jockeys, playing several songs and giving little spiels  in between. I remember one kid playing Queen's "Another one bites the dust." Even today, though I like the song, it still carries a whiff of the illicit with it. What did I play? Scott Joplin music from the soundtrack to "The Sting." It is great music, but I was really clueless about pop music. Or I felt like that.

When CDs appeared, cassette tapes began to fade the way records had. In college, my first roommate Mark had a CD player. But tapes were so easy to record, that I carried around tapes well past 2000. By that time, tapes were sold by the shoe box full at tag sales and Goodwill stores. Mark laughed at my miserliness: I would often record just parts of songs, from the radio. And then I would decide I didn't like it, and record -- part of a new song -- over it. It got so that, with my favorite tapes, if I was listening to it on the radio or someone else's normal tape I would be conditioned to expect the song after it to cut in at the very moment the first song got interrupted on my mix tape. Or if there wasn't space for a whole song I would stop recording at "boring" parts of the song, so the listening experience would be full of skips and jumps. Mark had fun with that. 

I had mix tapes that were given to me, too, so it reminded me of the person. Tapes were more mechanical, and less mysterious, than CDs which are played by laser. The CD itself is a rainbow-colored disc; country people in Taiwan use the reflective things, tying them to the front or back fenders of their bikes, for visibility. The tape is a little contraption with turning gear wheels and a long plastic ribbon that shrivels up in a fire or soars out into space when the tape is thrown off a hill or a cliff.

A few tapes I can still remember, both how they looked and how they sounded: Neil Young's "Harvest," which I listened to all through my two years in Indonesia (I wish I could remember who gave it to me); "Belum Ada Judul" by Iwan Fals; a bright orange one by Kim Guang Seok; "Silence" by Yang Nai Wen. I didn't want to throw them away. As objects that had accompanied me near and far, they seemed to hold meanings. But increasingly, there was nowhere to play them: cars only had CD players; cassette players broke down, and could be seen forlornly decorating the shelves at Goodwill.

Sara's Dad had a stack of records he loved -- American folk songs like "Turkey in the Straw," "Old Kentucky Home," and some classical composers -- but his record player was broken. I think it was in 2008, when I was there with her waiting for her visa, that we were on a mission to get it fixed, driving down to Taichung (where Pax would be born) to a repair shop. So he would listen to his records loudly, and play them for Toby and Pax. But some of the records were too old and scratched up. And Toby did something to the needle. So now he listens to music on Youtube. It is a library at your fingertips.

And on the shelves at DI or Goodwill, what do you see? CDs. Less than two decades ago they were the bright shiny sound of the future. Now? Tied to the fenders of Taiwanese farmers' bikes.