People often attempt to impress you by saying: ‘Oh yes, I’ve got that too, but on the original vinyl. You can’t beat the original vinyl, etc.’

And while you’re busy repositioning yourself as the all-surface-no-feeling, johnny-come-too-lately neophyte you’ve unwittingly just revealed yourself to be, they continue by insisting that they still only ever listen to that particular piece of music on aforementioned vinyl, since vinyl (thus, discreet cough, themselves too) are an authentic audiophile of impeccable authenticity. You can never have too much authenticity. Unlike you, with your vapid, digital CDs which, by the way, sadly define you. Exchanges like these take place every day in Hoxton, Shoreditch, Camden, Stoke Newington and Hackney; indeed wherever status-bores gather in conurbations all over the world. Having a large collection of vinyl, no matter what’s within the actual grooves, makes you a credible music lover, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t, you’re at best an idiot, at worst actually a music hater. Just check out any at-home photoshoot in The Wire magazine – endless shelves of battered records are the elitist musician’s equivalent of the well-manicured lawn, or hubby-and-wife-posing-outside-the-stables in House & Garden. Yeah we get it thanks. You’re officially cool. Well done. Leave us alone. (For the record, my, um, records were all stolen in 1991.)

But what about tapes? When I grew up (pre-CD), it wasn’t all gatefolds and Porky’s Prime Cuts; sure you had records, but you also had cassettes. One’s cassette collection never followed the same obsessional collector’s (or at least momentum-driven) logic that came with records and later CDs – I don’t ever remember specifically meaning to go out and buy something on tape; I just kind of ended up

‘Well you say all that, and I admire your pale and stubbly pallor, but you should see my collection of cassettes. They really are something, all lined up there on my minimalist maple shelving. You’ve never seen so many milky, scratched-looking plastic boxes!’

Had it not been for Sony’s Walkman and subsequent variations thereupon, the whole notion of the audio cassette would be consigned to the same socio-historic scrapheap as the 8-track. Instead, we’ve all got some tapes. I am prepared to put money upon the suggestion that everybody reading this has, somewhere amid the exhaust fumes of their lives, some old suitcase, holdall or dirty old plastic bag full of their old cassettes; plus half as many again empty plastic boxes, quite possibly hidden away in their parents’ attic. Mine are in my basement - I have one large grey canvas bag and three dirty plastic ones. Every few years I delightedly ‘stumble across’ these unidentifiably sticky receptacles, and spend a good hour rediscovering their s**te contents sitting alongside an old cassette player. The first thing that always strikes me is that not one single tape is rewound back to the beginning; the vast majority are, maddeningly, exactly two-thirds of the way through Side A. So that in order to listen to any of the glorious music encased within these shaky (often, literally, Shaky) plastic containers, you must first sit there and listen to lots of whirring. Whirring and waiting, waiting and whirring – in our instant-access-to-everything culture, all this pointless sitting around just won’t do! Also involved is guesswork: is this the beginning of the song I like? No, gone to far, back a bit; too far; oh no hang on, this machine can play tapes backwards too, so rewind actually means forwardwind, on this side at least. I think. I also like track seven, but I think I’ll just go for a walk instead now.  

And tape covers. These days people complain about the lower-spec artwork reproduction of the CD booklet, but I think these people forget how fundamentally unappealing cassette inserts were. By the mid-to-late 80s, when tapes were at their culturally most significant (‘Chrome’, ‘Position II’, ‘Scotch’, ‘High Resonance-Damping & Heat Resistant Cassette Mechanism’, ‘Hi-Level Bias’, ‘Acoustic Response Cassette’, ‘MRX3 Oxide’, ‘that Maxell advert’ - gah! - what memories!), the cassette box itself used to creak, crack and bulge with all the glossy, concertina’d wads of paper with all the compressed artwork, lyrics, band photos, tour photos and so on. You could have sat in your bar in Hoxton and flicked your folded cassette insert at your vinyl tormentor across the table and thwacked it into his face – some of them pulled out to a good metre-and-a-half. Sadly the lyrics etc themselves were far too small to actually read, but never mind, they were usually s**t anyway, and still are, cuz that’s rock ‘n’ roll, kids. The music still sounded OK; at least when the tape didn’t get chewed-up (that heartbreaking, masticated gurgle), or when the sound didn’t ever-so-slightly quiver. Wow and flutter; sounds better than it was; as it were, it were.

There is one cultural context in which the cassette has retained a cachet of ‘cool’, and that’s in the realm of the personally-compiled mix tape, whose romantic, nerdy iconography continues to linger. In this context, the cassette’s kooky versatility is still occasionally celebrated, and its ability to cipher - through dogged and generally lovelorn application and felt-tip pens – often intense and fundamental intimacies is still, mostly on America’s north west coast, held dear for its inherent, lo-fi emotional authenticity. That word again. Beyond the hipochet dogma of the mixtape, zero cassette romance exists. You bought them at garages and very often soon wished you hadn’t. The tapes end up in the holdall; and you really ought to have thrown the holdall away years ago, but for some illogical reason you can’t bring yourself to.

There are many albums that I can still only think of in their cassette formats. For example, the idea of anybody owning Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque on anything other than cassette seems to me bizarre. Same with AC/DC’s Powerage; The Stooges’ Raw Power; Black Sabbath’s Born Again. Sometimes mere ownership itself is baffling: I’ve never owned Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood, ever, yet still I appear to own it on cassette. How very cassette-like. And maybe it was just me, but even after paying for it, possessing an album on tape never felt like you owned it 100%, like having the vinyl, or subsequently CD did. It kind of felt like you owned maybe 66% of it. Any potential deeper mystique (of which, of course, there was lots) would always be denied you; partly, as above, because you couldn’t read the lyrics; but also because you couldn’t play it backwards to unlock the backward-masked Satanic messages from the lads. Actually your tape would often play itself backwards, but not on purpose; it was more to do with arbitrary mechanical tape / equipment failure. Wasn’t it great though, that a humble pencil fit exactly into the little holes, and that its hexagonal shape delivered just the right amount of torque required to manually spool the thing back together again after your precious £5.99 investment had just been chewed up by your father’s twin-decked Pioneer system, and for the third f**king time?

So, just why exactly (aesthetics aside) are these bagfuls of tapes sitting up there in our parents’ attics? Why aren’t they on display in our houses like the rest of our books and CDs? If we hadn’t already realized, I am beginning, this afternoon, to discover all over again. As a purely subjective experiment in personal musical archaeology, I have just emptied out my large holdall of basement tapes (ahem) onto the floor and I’m going to go ahead and list them, right here, right now, and it’s going to take me a long time and be extremely embarrassing as well as horrifically solipsistic, I apologise. But now the idea’s there, I have to follow it through. (Allow me to mention that a number of these are my wife’s, and my wife was a goth back in the mid-late-80s.) OK, deep breath. Here’s the kinked magnetic tape (with the see-through reddish-pink run-offs) - laugh all you like - in the order I lift em out in.

Proper cassettes manufactured by record companies etc

Hank Williams Snr The Very Best of (empty box)

Electronic Raise the Pressure

The Great Composers and Their Music: Tchaikovsky (empty box)

Back to the 50s, Volume 4

Homer’s The Odyssey, read by Derek Jacobi (6 x cassette, 2 missing)

The Gun Club Miami

Primal Scream Give Out But Don’t Give Up (empty box)

Ken Kesey The Acid Test

Stereo MCs Connected (empty box)

Reading Present 1995 (free with Melody Maker)

Gimme 5 (free with Melody Maker)

A load more free with Melody Maker tapes

The Rave Generator (18 Pulsating Rave Tunes)

David Bowie Diamond Dogs

Kylie Minogue Confide In Me (cassette single, boxless)

Daryll-Ann Seabourne West (empty box)

David Bowie Let’s Dance (empty box)

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor (boxless)

Teach Yourself French

The Doors LA Woman (boxless)

Spiritualized Lazer Guided Melodies (boxless)

Muscle Mixes Music (Lo-Impact 36)

A Vous la France!

Guns ‘n’ Roses Use Your Illusion Part II (Geffen promo)

Total Football, the Best of Bend It!

The Bohemians Advanced Promo

Aerosmith Greatest Hits

Gene Loves Jezebel Immigrant

Kenneth Brannagh reads The Diary of Samuel Pepys (6 x cassette)

ZZ Top Fandango

REM Automatic for the People

Star Wars (6 x cassette)

The Mission God’s Own Medicine

The Cure Standing on a Beach

Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (4 x cassette, 3 missing)

Kerrang! Kollosal Komplimentary Kassette!

Saint Etienne Foxbase Alpha

Gene Loves Jezebel Immigrant (yes, another one)

TS Eliot’s The Waste Land (3 x cassette, 2 missing)

Hank Williams Jnr The Very Best of

Led Zeppelin 4 (empty box)

Teenage Fanclub Bandwagonesque

Hole Pretty on the Inside (empty box)

Teach Yourself Spanish (boxless)

Black Sabbath Born Again (boxless)

The Letters and Poems of Wilfred Owen (2 x cassette)

The Shamen Boss Drum

John Tavener Innocence

Marillion Misplaced Childhood

Siouxsie and the Banshees Hyaena

Chris Isaak Wicked Game

Peter Katin Plays Chopin

The Pet Shop Boys Very (empty box)

Good Housekeeping presents A Musical Christmas

Blank tapes (home taping was, of course, ‘killing music’, though not if the music saw you first)

Poison Look What the Cat Dragged In / ‘Sisters & Pop Will Eat Itself’

Elliott Smith s/t / Roman Candle (empty box)

‘Radiohead’ / something scribbled out (boxless)

Hanoi Rocks Oriental Beat / ‘The Gun Club’

‘Dread Zeppelin’ / ‘John Lee Hooker’ (boxless)

‘Led Zeppelin Live at the Royal Albert Hall 1971’ (boxless)

The Cure Seventeen Seconds / Boys Don’t Cry

‘Gaye Bikers on Acid / New Model Army / Sisters of Mercy / Gene Loves Jezebel’

‘Led Zeppelin Destroyer Tape Two’

Hole Live Through This / Terrorvision How To Make… (empty box)

‘Zep ‘69’ (boxless)

Silver Jews Starlite Walker / Beastie Boys Ill Communication

The Damned Phantasmagoria (spelling corrected with Tippex) / Neil Young Harvest

Oasis Definitely Maybe / ‘Punkpoptastic!!’

‘Kate Bush’

The B52s Yellow / ‘The Mission Town & Country Club ‘86’

‘Cherry Bombz’ / The Cure Faith

Jesus & Mary Chain and the Wedding Present / Ghost Dance and Sisters of Mercy (boxless)

‘Lo-fi’ / Hi-fi’ (boxless)

The Triffids In the Pines / The Go-Betweens Talullah

Led Zeppelin III / Music from The Piano (empty box)

‘Flying Saucer Attack’ / JAMC Stoned & Dethroned

‘The Cult in Concert’ / ‘The Cult’

New Model Army Vengeance / ‘Zodiac Mindwarp’

Ramones Too Tough to Die / Johnny Thunders Que Sera, Sera

Dead or Alive Youthquake

Pavement Wowee Zowee / Royal Trux Thank You

‘Led Zeppelin Destroyer Tape One’ (empty box)

‘Sisters of Mercy’ / ‘LA Guns’

The Stone Roses Second Coming (empty box)

Ride Carnival of Light / ‘Compilation’

Pulp His ‘n’ Hers / Blur Parklife

GZA/Genius Liquid Swords / Method Man Tical

‘Strangelove’ / ‘Various Peoples’ (boxless)

‘Gene Loves Jezebel’ / ‘The March Violets’

‘Happy Mondays’ / ‘Stones Roses’

‘Dogs Wolves Poly’ / ‘Jayne County Wolves Poly’

Tricky Maxinquaye / Massive Attack Protection

Wilco Summerteeth (empty box)

Patti Smith Wave / ‘Doors Best of… II’

Nirvana Unplugged / Van Morrison Astral Weeks

‘New Order’

‘Gaye Bikers’ / ‘The B52s’ (boxless)

No Smoke at the Mean Fiddler / Moles

Pop Will Eat Itself Poppiecock / ‘Big Zap’

‘Janes Addiction’ / ‘Rolling Stones’

‘Ry Cooder Compilation’ / ‘Paris, Texas’

‘Sea Hags rehearsal’ (boxless)

Cinderella Night Songs / Ratt Dancing Undercover

Texas Southside / Rolling Stones Tattoo You

‘Led Zeppelin Live in 1969’

‘Public Enemy’

‘Cat Ballou Demo ’91 mix one’

My Bloody Valentine Loveless / ‘Stereolab’

‘New Radicals’ / ‘Suede’

Sonic Youth Washing Machine

‘Radio Shit’ / ‘More Radio Shit’

‘David Arnold’

Ride Nowhere /  ‘Today Forever EP etc’

Suicide Twins Silver Missiles & Nightingales

Husker Du New Day Rising (empty box)

Hanoi Rocks All Those Wasted Years

‘Velvet Underground’ / ‘Ride, Reading ‘92’

Sebadoh Bakesale / Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

High Llamas Hawaii / ‘Manic Street Preachers’

‘CBGB’ / ‘Sex Pistols’

‘Guns ‘n’ Roses / ‘Black Sabbath Live’

Johnny Thunders LAMF / DTK

Saint Etienne Tiger Bay / The Beach Boys Pet Sounds

Jeff Buckley Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk

‘Death and the Maiden’

Kiss Lick it Up / Creatures of the Night

Big Star Radio City / #1 Record

‘Vibrators’

‘Late Baroque’

‘Elvis’

Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1 / ‘Catherine Wheel’

‘Weird music’

‘The Only Ones’

Faith No More We Care a Lot / Introduce Yourself

‘Portishead’ / ‘Warren G’

The Ruts Grin and Bear It

Sonic Youth Evol / Sister

‘Dogs D’Amour demo’

‘Hipsway In Concert / ‘Compilation’

‘Meat Beat Manifesto etc’ / ‘Various Radio’

‘John Peel’ (several)

‘Truman’s Water’ / ‘Various things’

‘Bach?’

The Cult Love / ‘The Cult’

Kate Bush The Whole Story / Marionette Blonde Secrets and Dark Bombshells

Empty plastic boxes

21

Unmarked blank tapes

16

Lordy what a mess.

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Download ‘Polonaise in F-sharp major, Op.44’, from Peter Katin Plays Chopin for free here

Feel free to make me an offer (any offer) on the cassette this is taken from by emailing me

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Readers’ Comments pertaining to Issue #9

The general consensus from the results of the readers’ experiment was: I liked it, but I still got a headache. 

‘You upset my dog and sister, which is always fun. My dog cocked her head and looked concerned whilst my sister scowled and told me to turn it off. I’m not sure what to make of it… I’d say halfway between stomach ache and on it.’ – Kate

‘Don’t knock the Kremlin. I played there in ’93 and it was a good gig. Wish we had thought to record a live album there. Okay, I made that up. Thanks for the laughs as always.’ – Christopher, USA

‘I’ve got a right-on sicky headache. The sound is similar to one of my specially-tuned accordions. Very comforting.’ – Andrea, USA

‘Awesome – gave me a nosebleed, made people run for cover and set fire alarms off.’ – Pierre, Sodom

‘You should hear Lucier’s Music on a Thin Wire… makes Niblock sound like the Bay City Rollers.’ – Jon, the Midlands

‘Made me think of an episode in my life. I was chatting a chick up once in Edinburgh and I said to her “I think you look lovely, you look like the girl out of Wish You Were Here.” She said “What?! Judith f**king Chalmers?” I said “No, nooo, Emily Lloyd!” She’d never seen the film and moved away. Ha ha ha. This really happened.\' - Ben 

‘Headache at first, then came peace. Have now bought CD – thank you!’ – Paul C, London