My blog on HubPages.com - Reviews of Music, Movies, etc.

Nice article on the tapes- very nice. I had a lot of the albums you had pictured and up till about 3 to 4 years ago, I still had them - then I sold most of them off - as there is a slight demand in my city for the nostalgia of tapes. I use to have around 1000 to 1200 tapes at one point as a teen.

When my cassette player died in 1998 I realized that I was never going to replace it, so into the trash went my cassette collection...I've never missed it for a second.

I never did buy many factory-made cassettes because I thought the sound usually sucked.  I used to buy the vinyl then record my own tape of it because I could run the sound through an EQ and get it to sound like I wanted it to.  Of course that didn't really help for some albums like BOC who, other than "Mirrors", always seemed to release albums I think sounded like crap even on vinyl.

The 1980s was not a good decade for vinyl either, so many labels kept going cheaper and thinner with their records to cut costs and there was a lot of bad pressings. You could compare an early 70s green-label version of the early Black Sabbath albums with the later white-label reissues and the originals were thicker, had less surface noise and just sounded better overall.

To this day I remember groaning when I heard a band on the radio and went out to find their album only to find out they were on the Polydor label.  I don't know what it was but every single Polydor album I ever bought sounded muddy with no "brightness" to stuff like cymbal or drum shots.

Polydor's cassettes were even worse than their vinyl.

I seem to remember that Capitol Records' cassettes were particularly chintzy. I can think of at least two Capitol tapes I had back in the day (Maiden's Powerslave and WASP's Last Command) that crapped out not long after I bought them, and I had to get replacement copies.

Quote :

Polydor's cassettes were even worse than their vinyl.

  
 That doesn't surprise me at all.  Man, I hated that label!  I had alternative stuff on labels like Sire that sounded 100 times better.  Hell, even some indy vinyl I bought back in the day like Georgia Satellites that was pressed on their own label or Primitons pressed on Throbbing Lobster Records sounded better than anything on Polydor.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I seem to remember that Capitol Records' cassettes were particularly chintzy. I can think of at least two Capitol tapes I had back in the day (Maiden's Powerslave and WASP's Last Command) that crapped out not long after I bought them, and I had to get replacement copies.

They probably came from the Winchester, VA pressing plant that closed down in 1984. My neighbor worked there and gave me a huge stack of leftover cassettes once they closed up shop (they had ceased making LPs at that factory some years earlier) and about half of them broke or played too slow or whatever. I think I salvaged 2 out of the entire batch she gave me.

No wonder they closed that plant...

I think the only cassette I ever bought that I actually listened to more than once was Rush 2112.  Other than that I learned my lesson and always bought the vinyl and burned my own copy to tape for portability.

That album holds my personal record for most purchased formats for a single album.

S.D. wrote:

When my cassette player died in 1998 I realized that I was never going to replace it, so into the trash went my cassette collection...I've never missed it for a second.  

Same here. When I upgraded anything I wanted to cd, the old tapes were sold-off or tossed. Can't say I've ever missed 'em. I do, however, have a few of my homemade mix tapes still sitting in a case in the garage. Not sure why, as I don't believe I have a working tape deck in the house anymore.

I thought the whole "St. Anger 2015" re-recording thingy was unusual enuff to write a piece about:

http://fatfreddyscat.hubpages.com/hub/St-Anger-2015-Diehard-Fans-Re-Record-Metallicas-Most-Misunderstood-Album

It is much better but i'm not sure i'd buy it.

Dark Horseman wrote:

It is much better but i'm not sure i'd buy it.

They're not selling it... apparently they have permission from Q-Prime (Metallica's management) to put it on YouTube but that's it. So there'll be no CD version, no Spotify, no iTunes, etc.

Sounds to me like this was just something they did for fun (and hopefully to drum up interest in their own original bands) rather than an attempt at cashing in.

Which is the way it should be if your gonna try something like this. I think they went about this right, with a lot of respect. Good on them.

New one: 1983 was a weird year for James Bond fans. We had two (!) new 007 films in the same year - Roger Moore's Octopu$$y and Sean Connery's "unofficial" Never Say Never Again - the result of a legal battle that had gone on for nearly 25 years.




http://fatfreddyscat.hubpages.com/hub/1983s-Battle-of-the-Bonds-Octopussy-Vs-Never-Say-Never-Again

I've been on a major Roger Corman movie kick since I finished reading this fabulous book about his career, so I wrote a HubPage about the book and some of the flicks I've watched recently...

http://fatfreddyscat.hubpages.com/hub/Roger-Corman-King-of-the-B-Movie

New one! Watching AC/DC kick ass on last night's Grammy Awards inspired me to finish off this piece on the new album that's been in the works for a while.



http://fatfreddyscat.hubpages.com/hub/ACDC-Soldiers-On-With-Rock-Or-Bust

^^^ As usual a great write up FF!!! I really enjoy your hubpage. Keep it comin

Agreed. That was a very surreal performance, or shall we say a very surreal crowd, especially during the pan across the seats for RoB. It also seemed a bit lacking without Malcom--or perhaps just a second guitar--supporting Angus. However they did a kick ass job and haven't lost an ounce of spirit.

Thanx fellers!
I thought their Grammy performance was pretty bad-ass, I imagine that some of the pop tarts who were waiting backstage for their turn to perform must have been saying "Holy crap, we have to follow THAT?" haha

I happened to be channel surfing by just as AC/DC were opening the show, which was good timing. As soon as they were done I sez "Well, that's all I need to see," and I switched over to The Walking Dead. Haha

I feel like you are not representing truthfully. Your ramblings aren't deranged.

I'm a middle aged guy writing about heavy metal music, bad movies, cartoons and comic books. Seems pretty deranged to me.

Hmmm. Have to check myself now.

The mentally imbalanced, deranged, unhinged all seem normal amongst their own kind.