So recently I was looking to possibly purchase a boombox and, like I always do, I had to go research this matter and determine what is the coolest possible boombox as a point from which to work backwards in determining my final choice. And I totally found the coolest boombox. Ever. In world history. It’s this:
Ever been jealous of a present that you’re giving to someone else? This tape collection is totally like that.
My buddy Bill acquired a boat some time back, and since I knew I’d be chillin on it with him over my Wiscotrip this summer, I wanted to bring along some hot jams. Deadly hot jams. As detailed previously, being able to provide the proper musical playback format involved getting a cheap tape deck and makin tapes. And here’s the results:
The tapes:
“70’s Cactus Vinyl Funk” Mixtape / “So Funky It Hurts!” Mixtape
“BOATCHASE!” Mixtape / “Modern Funksters” Mixtape (not shown–it’s in the player!)
“70’s Vocal-Funk” Mixtape / Donny Hathaway: Live
Orgone: Cali Fever / Orgone: Killion Vaults
Greyboy / New Mastersounds
Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles: Live (Sides A & B)
Curtis Mayfield: Superfly (Sides A & B)
“Heady Downtempo” Mixtape / Scientist Dubtape
Easy Star Allstars: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band (Sides A & B)
Click on the linked titles to Listen!
Some of it is taped directly from vinyl, others are recorded from the PC, where I’ve got a nice retro-wamrth compressor/limiter program that brings out the detail on those tracks. As you can see, there’s a definite genre theme here with a heavy amount of funk. That’s what Bill digs the most, and also I wanted to stay centered there so the whole collection would have its own ‘vibe’, as the soundtrack to the boat. The two exceptions to the funk theme would be the Heady Downtempo/Scientist Dub mixtape, which I envisioned as something you’d want to put on while floatin on the lake after the sun’s gone down, and the Easy Star, which is just such a killer record I had to throw it in.
There’s a veritable cornucopia of killer jams here, a substantial portion of which will eventually get posted on the site. Stay tuned for the full lowdown. In the meantime, check out the SS Advanced Manoeuvres
So since I got this cassette deck, I picked up a box of high-bias blank cassettes and I’ve been taping some hot jams direct from the turntable. Interesting thing about cassettes; since your recording time is limited, there is maybe a bit more pressure to make sure that every song which goes onto tape is a badass track, worthy of ferromagnetic imprinting.
I had forgotten how making cassettes track-by-track is fairly labor intensive–you can’t really walk away from the deck for more than a couple minutes at most. There is something rewarding about finishing a tape though–one where you think to yourself, damn, every song on there is tops, and I’m pretty sure I nailed the order too. This tape’s got FLOW, baby!
I just completed one that’s a combination of two double LP Orgone releases. If I don’t say so myself, the track listing is AWESOME.
Side A: Cali Fever
1. Cali Fever
2. Time Tonight
3. Lookout
4. The Cleaner
Side B: Killion Vaults
1. Cruel Intentions
2. Wanting Wondering
3. Shopping Spree
4. K. Irin
5. Counting On You
6. Done Deal
7. Dark Falls
Total playtime: only 40 minutes. Make it count!
Since these cassettes didn’t come with stick-on labels, I used metal-ink pens to label them, then put transparent tape over the writing so it can’t get scratched off. I’m pretty sure that should keep the labeling in mint condition for the life of the tape.
And–AND–I’ve got three little mini-mixes that I whipped up for these tapes. After the goods have all been delivered, they’ll be posted on here. Stay tuned for that in the latter half of August.
So a few months back I bought a turntable and now I’ve technologically regressed even deeper–Cassette tapes!
Okay, okay, there’s an explanation for this. I’ve been really digging on the finds I’ve been picking up in the local $0.97 record bins (seriously, 97 cents!) and accordingly looking for a way to share them with some fellow funk and soul addict friends of mine. My buddy Bill has recently acquired a boat. I’ll be heading back home to Wisconsin for a week in mid-August and we’re gonna go out for a day on the lake. I asked him, what kind of musical playback formats does your nautical stereo accept? The answer – cassette tapes, dogg.
Jeez, cassette, wow. I’m not sure I remember the last time I used a cassette tape, or recorded one. I think it’s been since like junior high. Well over a decade, whatever it was. So I needed to dig up a cassette recording device to bring along some hot jams I excavated from dusty 1970s vinyl obscurity. Enter craigslist! Some dude was unloading this NAD 6130 tape recorder which belonged to his father-in-law who recently passed on. Like a lot of good transactions on CL, the vibe I got from him was pretty much, ‘whatever man, I don’t care what this is, just get it out of here’. That’s the attitude I’m looking for! Twenty bucks, yeah that sounds cool.
Kind of a funny thing about reading up on the Dolby NRs; I learned that there are a lot of variations in cassette tape technology! There’s Dolby A and B types of noise reduction, and then there’s Dolby C, which actually sounds WORSE if you play it back on a deck that doesn’t support Dolby C. There’s different types of cassettes too, metal ones, ferric oxide ones, Type II, etc. Whoa. This is all way more complicated than I expected. Fortunately, thanks to it’s utter obsolecence, I was able to pick up a Cadillac of a cassette recorder that should handle all of the above for dirt cheap! Yay antiquated technology! Check out the green reel to reel style cassette loaded in :D
