Sometimes it seems like many parts of our culture come back such as fashion, musical styles, films and lots of other aspects. In some ways that can be a good thing and in others it just seems like some clueless person let their love of nostalgia get the best of them and they tried to bring back something that probably should have been left in the past. Remember cassettes? Yes, you have to be of a certain age to and I fall in that category. Unfortunately I bought far too many releases on this fragile, poor sound quality type of format. I have heard and seen too many of these plastic monstrosities being twisted, mangled and eaten by merciless stereos and boom boxes. Then I was left with bent or ripped black tape in my hands as I stared at the now gutted cassette. So when these went away it was a good thing. Okay, CDs can get scratched, but they are a better format because they are far more sturdy and digital is even better in many ways. Wait, cassettes are coming back. No, don't bother going to your calender to see if it is April 1st. It's not and this is no joke although I do think it is a fad. Some bands are releasing their new albums on cassette. The first I saw this was from some thrash band's Myspace page and they were selling their own demo on cassette only. Wow so not only do some of these band's want to look and sound like it's 1986, but they also want the sound quality to sound it came from then with all that pleasant hissing and the potential for the music to be devoured by your likely old cassette player. Most of the bands I have seen doing this are smaller bands and mostly it's self produced efforts done in limited quantities. However Enforcer's Diamonds was released by Heavy Artillery on a limited number of cassettes and they are a fairly known old school style metal band at least well known on the metal underground.
So what do you think? Will cassettes come back in style or will this trend be done and gone a year from now?
Why I ask Mark? I had more cassettes than I can even remember. They got warped,they wore out and broke down. I don't miss them a bit. I will take vinyl over them any day!
ReplyDeleteAndy-My guess is it's passing fad from bands who loved the metal of the 80's and thought highly of the days of tape trading and demo tapes. I don't see any sense in it though. I agree that vinyl has always been better.
ReplyDeleteIt is a nostalgia thing. That and it's a lot more affordable than putting out vinyl. I've been working on making pissfork.net a cassette label for the last year. It was originally a place where you could download free music from selected bands. I also still have a dual head cassette deck in my living room and nearly all of the cassettes I grew up with. I think that cassettes will sell better than CDs nowadays, and vinyl is not an affordable option. Especially with some of the bands that I plan on releasing in 2011. Most of the releases will be limited to around 25 cassettes. People are going to download records regardless. I think that cassettes are more fun and challenging than CDs. You have to factor a side A and a side B rather than putting a 32 minute long song as your second track you'll have to think of how it will flow as a 2 sided album rather than how you can get people to pay for your song on itunes. Sorry for the rant.. it's late and I'm a little stoned. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is, I recently found an old cassette that some crazy dude made for me, of him singing a bunch of really old Pink Floyd (with Syd Barrett) songs. I don't know what to do with it - maybe I can trade with some band.
ReplyDeleteI still buy cassettes all the time, i never stopped doing that. I buy old tapes but also new ones, specialy demos by thrash/death and black metal bands, but also heavy metal bands of today release stuff on tape. WITCHCURSE being one of them.
ReplyDeleteI had fashion, to me its all timeless and forever.
I'm a vinyl guy first and foremost. The thing I hate about CD's is spending $15-20 on something that will be worth $2 in two years. Yet, for some reason (and I'm assuming it's because of limited quantities), vinyl goes UP in value as time goes on, so even though I don't plan to sell them, I like knowing I'm not just throwing money away. I have the new Iron Maiden, Ratt, and Danzig albums on vinyl (among other newer releases), and I always check to see if a new release is coming out on vinyl before I buy it. (a lot of them come with free download codes as well, so I don't have to buy it twice.)
ReplyDeleteAs for cassettes, most of them I see turn up at church rummage sales and Salvation Army thrift stores for .50 appice...
Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing vinyl come back. You always seemed to "get more" when you bought a vinyl album, especially a release from Kiss, for example.
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