Be Kind, Rewind

We, as a family, have always had a stereo system in our household. In the mid-eighties, my step-father gave my mum a combined CD, vinyl and dual cassette player as a wedding present. I know what you’re thinking, “A CD player in the mid-eighties; wow that must have state of the art.” Well, it was, but as a wedding gift (or maybe it was an anniversary, I can’t remember exactly which it was now), my fancy-pants step-dad had little choice but to pull out the big guns. However, it wasn’t mine, it was my mother’s and that meant that very little other than Phil Collins and Gloria Estefan ever graced its beautifully crafted Sony-engineered speakers. Consequently, despite being repeatedly informed that the ‘the rhythm was going to get me’, I remained massively sceptical regarding both rhythm and, unsurprising given my early influences, music in general.

This changed around about the time of my eighth Christmas. Together with a football shirt, I received an Alba Walkman and, thanks largely to my brother’s efforts, a Queen’s Greatest Hits tape.  My brother has since tried to impose a fairly large selection of pretty dodgy recording artists on me, but in the very beginning I must confess he did well. The decision to get a Walkman must have been something my entire family vigorously regretted for the next six months. The decision not to get me more than one tape was a mistake of such magnitude that I don’t believe anyone in my family can listen to Queen without thinking of me. I suspect that visions of a rather gangly eight-year-old boy, belting out Bohemian Rhapsody at full volume are just too strong to forget. After all, I was completely oblivious to the fact that the outside world could neither hear Queen singing nor, more importantly, could hear me singing and as such I really went for it. I apologise unreservedly for putting you through those awful renditions, although in my defence I wasn’t aware I was quite as tone deaf as I am!

In the interest of preserving the sanity of the family, for my following birthday I was gifted a small, ‘cheap as chips’, dual cassette player. The dual cassette functionality allowed me to record my own tapes, as well as from the radio. I’m fairly sure the latter wasn’t strictly legal, but I was ten and considered myself well and truly rock ‘n’ roll by then. As such I didn’t give a damn.  Sadly, the recorder also had a small microphone located somewhere near the top of the unit. What this meant was that if you started to speak, or the phone rang, or your old dear decided to call you downstairs for dinner, then your recording would forever be sullied with this snippet of noise. It made for some interesting playbacks when I dug out some of these tapes a few weeks ago. Anyway, after Christmas and for the next few years I spent a large proportion of the evening hours locked in my bedroom making mix tapes. I created in the night, and listened in the morning, on my Walkman en route to school. The days I would spend constructing tapes would always be followed by hours more pleading, along with my brother, for our parents to play it when we took family trips in the car.  We named our tapes and coloured the covers with newspaper clippings and pictures. We cherished them, used them and re-used them.  As I got older my tape deck was replaced with a CD player, then a mini disk player (yes, I had one of those) and finally, during university, a PC.

As I got older the tapes became more elaborate. I started to understand the concept of genre and as such dedicated whole tapes to certain moods. This was a practice that followed me right the way through to my adult life and across a variety of mediums. It is also a practice that resulted in a very embarrassing incident. A young, fresh-faced, undergraduate version of myself was publicly humiliated during a house party we were hosting, when a gobby former flatmate discovered a playlist called the ‘Sex Album’ on my laptop. This was a discovery he vocalised to the entire party. Needless to say, the ‘Sex Album’ didn’t get any plays that evening. I have since chosen the names of albums and playlists a little more carefully. Although, for the record, I still maintain that Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Al Green et al are still the men to get things going, if the situation requires it.

A little over a week ago I found a couple of CDs I’d been given by a friend of mine, probably whilst I was still a fresher at university. He’d been trying to convince me of the merits of reggae and as such had made me a very nice mix CD of ‘classics’. It hadn’t persuaded me, but having it in my hand made me appreciate the effort that had gone into compiling and burning it, and as such how passionately he must have felt about reggae. Of course, today you’re still able to compile a playlist for someone. However, the lack of physical presence will always be a downfall. I can think of a case recently where I created a playlist of vetted tracks for a (now) ex-girlfriend. It had songs we both liked, and we’d occasionally listen to it together. However, the playlist title contained my name and, given that it only exists on her computer, it would be easy to remove in a moment of flippancy (or if my successor takes offense to it). This is just not the case with a tape or disc. When’s the last time you threw away a CD? I know I hardly ever throw them away, which is probably the reason I have so many awful compilations in my CD collection. But in many respects, the music is not why I held onto them. They are effectively time capsules, reminding you of things that have happened. The songs tell a story and, although you may not always want to remember, every now and again it can be quite fun.

I’m well aware I’m coming off a little sentimental here. As an IT ‘specialist’ I should try and embrace change. Only recently I bought a Kindle, but after almost a month and a half it’s sill sat in its packaging. In time I am sure I will use it, but it will be an adoption born of convenience rather than love. It is this convenience that has seen iPods and MP3 players quickly dispatch of the analogue formats. After all, having over a hundred albums on a device is something that a tape could never really compete with. Moreover, tapes are clunky, easy to break and, well let’s face it, impractical. The technology was limited even its hay-day and this made not only tapes but also tape players infuriating. For example, my first tape deck didn’t have a rewind button. The upshot of this was that you had to take the tape out, change sides, fast forward, and roughly guess how long you thought the track on the other side would last. You never got it quite right. Another drawback that is often forgotten during starry-eyed-reminiscences is just how many tapes were lost to a crappy player. They simply chewed up albums whenever they felt like it, the blooming things! CDs are easily scratched and snappable, and as for Mini Disks, well, they have been confined to the commercial failures list alongside the likes of Sony’s Betamax.

That said, vinyl records are making a comeback and have been for a number of years now (according the Evening Standard). I also read an article just this week on a company that has started to once again selling cassettes tapes, whilst CDs are still hanging on despite the digital age. Apparently, the superior sound quality combined with the deliberate nature of having to change music manually (versus simply allowing a computer to select a track for you) results in a better ‘user experience’. For sure, the physical format has it flaws, with portability being near the top of that list. But in some respects it is these imperfections that help make the physical format so endearing. In many ways it is comparable to Shakespeare’s mistress in Sonnet 130; oddly alluring despite being littered with faults.

On that note, and before I really start to prattle on, let me leave you with one final story. Years ago, I wanted to say sorry to some I cared about very much. I wasn’t a teen anymore and the woman of whom I speak was, well, a woman. I remember turning up at her house one evening with a mix CD. I had spent hours thinking about the songs to put on this album. Songs I knew she’d like, not just songs I liked. I can remember being fully aware of just how mushy this gesture was, even as I was doing it, but I didn’t care. At the time I didn’t really write and I’ve never been able to play a musical instrument. Selecting songs was a way of showing how I felt. In hurtful situations words sometimes just aren’t enough, they can get drowned out in a river of craziness and feeling. That CD, on the other hand, said pretty much exactly what I wanted to say, and I reckon she understood it. Things didn’t really work out in the long run, but there’s a small part of me that likes to think that she held onto that CD. Maybe it still makes her smile. I can’t imagine the same situation ever existing without the existence of a physical ‘something’ you can hold and play, and therefore it will always have its place.