All things Metallica

Not too safe to have your music on such format.

I buy some cassettes by barely play them.

I've bought a few when I have absolutely no alternative (as far as physical product goes) but these have all been Bandcamp purchases where you get a nice Flac download to go with it, I listen to that and the cassette is just a nifty little collectable.

I still have about 100 tapes at my parent's house (in varying stages of decrepitude) but don't foresee myself ever purchasing anymore. The last time I bought a tape was probably '06 as the car I had then (an '02 Grand AM GT) had both a CD and a tape deck and it was a cheap alternative to get some stuff to listen to back and forth to work.

Plus, a long time record store had just reopened it's doors after a few year shut down. The guy had been in business for over 30 years before closing up to do flea markets in the early 2000's and now had a grand reopening sale. It was a favorite place of mine back in the '80's and everything was 1/2 price for the first full month of new business. However, the place was really picked over, even though it was still full of albums, tapes, posters, cd's, mags and other ephemera like it was still 1991. Some of the prices hadn't been changed since then either. My friend and I made an offer to buy all the tapes at $1 each (there were probably about 650-700 total) but he declined. He closed again about 6 months later before doing the same thing again a year later. He's closed for good now.

I've bought a handful of tapes in recent years. Most are just cool collectibles, like the 20 Years of One Truth cassette Strife put out last year. It's just a neat, inexpensive collectible. Most of the tapes I've bought cost about $5.

I bought tapes last year. They took up space, broke, got eaten, wouldn't play right, tape heads on the stereos got screwed up--out in the dumpster they went. They're just as much as pain in the ass as I remember haha.

I don't even have a working cassette player anymore.

007 wrote:

I don't even have a working cassette player anymore.

I haven't owned a cassette player since 1996....and I didn't use it for like 3 years prior to throwing it in the dumpster.

Yeah the only tape player I've had in the past five years is in my pickup.

Got a tape player in the mini-van and use it every time. In fact, I was listening to a Zappa comp a buddy had given to me that he had made. It helps that there are a ton of tapes in the compartment under the passenger seat.

Good thing I still have a few old boombox's around.

S.D. wrote:

007 wrote:

I don't even have a working cassette player anymore.

I haven't owned a cassette player since 1996....and I didn't use it for like 3 years prior to throwing it in the dumpster.

I have a dual cassette player with my Pioneer component stereo but I couldn't tell you how long it's been since either one worked. I hold onto it since it has my receiver .

The "No Life..." cassette thingy is obviously intended as a fun novelty item. Like when Cheap Trick released their last studio album as an 8-track. ...not something that's gonna get a lot of play, but future generations of collectors can fight over it.

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was responsible for turning down the sound of Jason Newsted’s bass on 1988’s …And Justice For All, according to mixing engineer Steve Thompson.

He was behind the desk at Bearsville Studios, New York overseeing the final stages of the album, which has often been criticised for its lack of audible bass.

And Thompson insists that while he was happy with the bass sound when mixing the record, it was Ulrich who wanted it reduced.

He tells Ultimate Guitar: “What I wanted to do and what Lars wanted to do was totally different, which kind of upset me a little bit. I loved Metallica and was very familiar with them.

“I listened to the tracks and said to myself, ‘These sound like ass.’ I chased everybody out of the room and redesigned the drum sound and brought the guitars up. Jason Newsted killed it on bass. Perfect marriage with Hetfield's guitars.

“Lars comes walking in a couple of minutes later and listens to about a minute of it and goes, ‘Turn that off. What happened to my drum sound?’

“We had to get the drum sound up the way he had it. I wasn't a fan of it. So now he goes, ‘See the bass guitar?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, great part, man. He killed it.’ Lars said, ‘I want you to bring down the bass where you can barely, audibly hear it in the mix.’ I said, 'You're kidding, right?'"

Thompson was so concerned by the move that he called the band’s managers Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch that night and threatened to walk away from the project.

He continues: “I said, ‘I love these guys. I think they’re amazing and they’ve created a genre of their own but I do not agree with the direction Lars is pulling me in. My name’s going to go on it so why don’t you find somebody else?’

He was persuaded to stay but Thompson says he regrets not getting the sound the album deserved.

He adds: “My only regret is that we didn't have enough time to at least mix it the way we heard it. I wanted to take Master Of Puppets and blow that away.

I always heard that it was a mutual decision with James and Lars and they laughed about how they were blocking out the new guy.

The engineer I believe, the old wive's tale about James and Lars purposely screwing the new guy? Not a chance.

Temple of Blood wrote:

I always heard that it was a mutual decision with James and Lars and they laughed about how they were blocking out the new guy.

I never bought that excuse. There are plenty of other ways to haze the new guy. I can't imagine a band purposely sabotaging their album for a prank.

S.D. wrote:

The engineer I believe, the old wive's tale about James and Lars purposely screwing the new guy?  Not a chance.

Ditto. I can see it being an ego thing ("My drums aren't loud enough! Turn them up!" "Now my guitar's not loud enough! Turn THAT up!"), and the lack of bass may simply have been collateral damage due to over-tweaking...

...but the idea that James/Lars actually sat down and said something like "Hey, I got an idea! Wanna completely f*ck over the new guy? Let's sabotage a multi-million dollar recording session - and therefore, potentially, our budding mainstream career - as a prank to honor our dead friend. It'll be hilarious!"

Nobody... not even Lars... could possibly be THAT much of a douche.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:

I always heard that it was a mutual decision with James and Lars and they laughed about how they were blocking out the new guy.

I never bought that excuse. There are plenty of other ways to haze the new guy. I can't imagine a band purposely sabotaging their album for a prank.

Not everyone would think that the lack of bass is "sabotaging the album".

I don't think it held back sales.

Quote :

I don't think it held back sales.

Obviously not.

It was simply "their" time. That album could've been an hour of the band members farting into kazoos and banging on major appliances with sticks and it still would've sold like cold beer on a hot day.

Nah, it was a good album and different than what others were putting out.

I've never heard the problem with Justice. To my ears, it is the masterpiece among masterpieces. One of maybe 5 albums that has never left regular rotation since I first got it in 1990.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

I've never heard the problem with Justice. To my ears, it is the masterpiece among masterpieces. One of maybe 5 albums that has never left regular rotation since I first got it in 1990.

It never took away anything from it for me personally, but I did notice the lack of bass early-on, when I typically never noticed that sort of thing, production issues and whatnot.

When I compared to it all the Megadeth and Anthrax I was also playing at the time (or even earlier Metallica), where the bass was very prominent, I couldn't help but notice the lack of it on Justice. Still a fine album as far as I'm concerned though.

Now that they are in the midst of remastering all their albums, I'm sure they'll remix AJFA and we'll all run out and buy it because we are suckers.

It always pissed me off. I loved how prominent Newsted's bass was on Garage Days Re-Revisited and was looking forward to something approximating that balance, but sadly it was not to be. It's still a good album, but my least favorite of their 80s releases and one I rarely revisit any more.

One of my favorite albums.........even with the lack of bass.