As I wrote before, Tina and I have been doing some either very late or very early Spring cleaning, and, in the process, came upon a bunch of old audio cassettes. This was the way we listened to music before and even after the advent of compact disks and well before the dominance of today’s digital download. CD players cost an arm and a leg back in the ’80s. Record players were a pain in the neck and the records were worse. If you’ve moved crates of albums from apartment to apartment, you know of what I speak. Cassettes were cheaper and more portable and you could put the music that you wanted on them song by song. This paved the way for the mix tape.
Here is another audio cassette compilation from the incomparable Brian Bubonic. I’ve received and recently disposed of some lousy mix tapes, but I’m hanging on to the tapes from Brian. He has a great ear and an inordinate amount of patience for finding songs just the right length to fill out a tape.
The cover is from an old pack of bubblegum cards. For some reason, everything ended up on bubblegum cards including Mork & Mindy. Not sure what this old sitcom has to do with the tape, but I certainly got a good laugh from it when I happily opened the envelope it came in.
My brother did not date this one. I know it followed Confuse Yo Neighbors. I probably got it in the late 80s or the very early 90s.
Once again, it’s another oddball mix of deliriously disparate ditties, and I think the tape outlasted a couple of self-destructing radio/tape players that I had at the time.
He could probably reassemble these tape mixes digitally being that he probably still has all of the CD’s, but would it be as fun?
It’s ironic. These kinds of eclectic mixes have never been so easy to make. But what’s the point when robots (i.e., Pandora) can spit ’em out? So much lost peripheral goodness. That Mork & Mindy graphic alone should be vouchsafed for future generations.
Thanks for commenting, Kyle!
I like Pandora and listen to it often, but it lacks the eccentric little touches that my brother would add to a tape. Of course, Pandora lasts a lot longer than a 90 minute tape.
I love the loopy graphics they used to print on old bubblegum card wrappers. Cheap, flat and hopefully recognizable as the actors.