I’ve started digitising some old cassettes and came across this lovely snippet at the start of what the inlay said was a collection of songs by Madness:
An illustration of why it is (was) important to poke out the tab at the top-left of the cassette so that you didn’t accidentally press play and record when you meant to only press play.
That was probably 1981, so I was about ten and my sister, whose tiny first voice you hear 33 seconds in, was about seven.
I’m surprised how well the cassettes have survived so far — I thought they might break or be somehow unlistenable after 35 years, including a few years sitting on a heated floor by a window. I’ve attached a second-hand Kenwood cassette deck to my MacBook using a Griffin iMic, recording the audio with Amadeus Pro. This seems to work fine, apart from the iMic occasionally getting stuck and playing the same half-second over and over until I unplug it and start again. Technology, eh?
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