I’ve had quite a few discussions about music with my fellow authors from this site. It’s lead to a few posts like that one mentioning Maxell UD XL/II cassette tapes. In fact, this is another post mentioning Maxell UD XL/II, but has little to do with them.
As a side note I’ve been trying to talk one of my fellow authors into actually digging out is album collection, spinning them one more time and writing a review of each now that he is not the same teenager who bought them. The “then and now” perspective would make for some interesting writing (and reading.)
Phil Collins …But Seriously
You see, I and at least one other author on here used to play albums once, record them to Maxell UD XL/II 90s and put the album away for safe keeping. Yes Millenials, they are albums, they just happen to be made of vinyl. Yes, like everyone else I had tapes suffer heat fatigue in cars or stretch because I used them in different tape decks. Other than the blanks I’ve never used, the only cassette I still had was this one which had Phil Collins But Seriously on one side and the Indigo Girls debut album on the other.
Tape is still around
I have to say that I’m rather surprised this tape is still around. Played this tape quite a bit in my Eagle Premier Ltd. back in the day and then it spent a number of years sitting in the armrest of my 1990 around the farm beater Jeep. Now that I have a 2002 around the farm beater Jeep with a nicer stereo, I decided to try the tape out.
Maybe one day I’ll even get nostalgic enough to dig out some of those albums I haven’t heard in decades and record them onto the remaining blanks. No, I didn’t get CDs for most of them. No, I didn’t stream or download for most of them. Many of them are ancient “best of” type albums of groups which were nostalgic in my youth like “Bread” and “The Band.” I even have Gwen Stefanni’s original No Doubt EP in that box. Yes, there are some “Kiss” albums too. Most of the Kiss albums were overplayed and scratched if I remember correctly.
Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls
The Indigo Girls was actually a CD when I originally got it. I remembered having a love/pain relationship with it. Closer I am to Fine okay, the album lists it as Closer to Fine, was a mega hit which still finds its way onto juke boxes around colleges. If you’ve ever been to college for a degree you cannot help but feel and have lived most of the lyrics, especially the spike:
I spent 4 years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free.
About the time the CD used to get to Love’s Recovery or Land of Canaan I just had to stop it. On a good stereo something about the pitch/tone/whatever just grated on me. Never really knew what it was, just knew I couldn’t take it.
Phil Collins
Conversely, I love Phil Collins both with and without Genesis. Own an awful lot of that stuff. Actually ruined a few of those CDs due to constant use in a vehicle. In fact, I think But Seriously is one which got ruined because I haven’t seen it in ages.
So, while driving over to visit my father I put the tape in the deck. I was shocked at just how bad the Phil Collins side sounded. I don’t tweak the sound settings between albums. Just leave it set for NPR and it does a fine job with that. After it hit the end of the tape the Indigo Girls side started playing. Shocker! “Closer to Fine” sounded just as fantastic on that tape as I remember it sounding. I remember the Phil Collins side sounding awesome too but that was in vehicles with much better factory sound systems. (Sadly this Jeep has what was the premium sound system including the remote 10-disk changer.)
For the first time ever, I made it all the way to the end of the Indigo Girls’ debut album in one setting.
I just couldn’t do it on higher end systems.
If you’re old enough to remember single speaker factory radios you probably noticed this same thing. Some music played on the radio sounded as good or better played through that one little speaker. Other music which sounded great on that one little speaker sounded wretched after you put in that high end (for the day) sound system. Lately I’ve heard of some groups actually releasing albums recorded in mono because of the rich sound. Everything blended together arriving at the listener at the same time instead of each piece coming out of a single speaker in an N speaker arrangement all hoping each listener is in the exact center of the speaker axle crossings.
