As soon as I got a small portable cassette recorder in the 1970's I started to tape the charts on the radio. Did you readers?
The charts or top forty were always on a Sunday afternoon on Radio 1. You could stand a microphone next to a radio and record the whole thing on a couple of blank C60 cassettes. That's 2 hours of solid chart gold to listen to later on, which I did all week. The only work involved was turning the tapes over.
A C90 tape might have got the lot on as well if you were lucky. You just had to be around to turn the tapes whilst recording. It was slow and dedicated work performed in the sanctity of our bedrooms mostly. If your Mum walked in and said 'Teas ready Paul!' then that went on the tape too! Personally I loved it. It was our technology like the PS4 nowadays.
The machine itself was a boxy rectangle of plastic and electronics, with half of it encased in fake leather topped by a carrying strap. The five push-down buttons were huge and white and above them was a weird silver toggle for rewind and fast forward. It looked like a small piano and was the bees knees at the time.
Those glorious music tapes have sadly vanished from my own life but somewhere out there are the charts of a generation religiously recorded for posterity on millions of cassettes across the globe.
What did you record readers?
I recorded tv shows! I had Blakes7, Star Trek and Doctor Who! It was 1981 before I got a video recorder!
ReplyDeleteYes surree Woodsy, fingers always on the Rec and Stop buttons to edit the talky bits out. ABBA, Baccara, David Bowie, Donna Summer... Disco all over! Got a heavy beast of a blaster for Xmas in the late 70's, with built-in REC function. At first I wanted all the spoken intros out, but later on there were some super dj's that you wanted on tape as well. Still got some of those c-cassettes somewhere.
ReplyDeleteBoney M!!
ReplyDeleteYes I recorded TV Shows, and it was in the days just before Cassette Tapes where the norm. Unfortunately, that meant on Reel to Reel tapes which were expensive. We had a second hand Reel to Reel machine which came with already recorded tapes by the previous owner which we weren't that interested in. And as the tapes were so expensive I stupidly recorded over the stuff that we had no interest in; 1960s radio programmes!!!!!!! - It was only a few years later, I realised what I had done.
ReplyDeleteI still have nightmares about it...
Hi Woodsy, I once managed to capture most of American Pie by Don McLean on a TDK C60. I loved this track. Sadly its swan song came in the form of shredding and entanglement around the hungry innards of my cassette player. I never understood why this always seemed to happen to my favourite cassettes and songs?
ReplyDeleteHmm... playing cassettes could be a risky business :)
I used to record a radio show called Dr. DeMento which used to play funny songs and parodies of regular songs.I think Weird Al Yankovick got his start playing his tune "Another one Rides the Bus" on this show.
ReplyDeleteI remember taping the audio soundtrack of Son of Paleface from the telly, back in the days before home video recorders (1970s). Only taped over it with some music a few years back when I got the DVD of the movie.
ReplyDeleteHey fab guys! So much recording going on! Who knows what os out there on cassettes and reel to reel tapes. Lost radio programmes? Lost soundtracks? Lost TV audio? Do you think everything's already been found that can be?
ReplyDelete