Posts Tagged ‘cassette’
Monday, June 29th, 2009
This is Thriller. For those who believe the myth that Michael Jackson was a perpetual 9 year old, perhaps you should listen to this album. Excluding Paul McCartney’s terrible track, The Girl is Mine, it is pretty obvious that a brilliant adult conceived these songs, not to mention the music videos that he designed, choreographed, and performed. The perpetual child discussion is a farce. I guess I am suggesting that his various oddities were a result of some other imbalance, and that his dealings with children were nefarious. So be it.
Thriller was and is awesome. I remember being so young watching the videos from this album at my grandmother’s house in Lansing, IL. She had cable. She was sort of weirded out that I liked colored music, but hey, Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t get it either and he is only three years older than Jackson! My grandma was probably 80 at the time. Whatever, Colbert would call him double-white. Can you imagine, being so white and so self important that you feel compelled to write a memo recommending that the King of Pop should not be invited to the white house? I digress, as usual.
I never had a jacket or a glove, but I still can listen to Wanna be Startin’ Somethin’ any day of the week. Whatever happened is unfortunate, but it was not unpredictable, obviously.
Let’s do a little project. Can you email me your scans of Thriller? Send them as a high resolution scan and I will clean them up and post them. Don’t forget to include a narrative to go with the scan. I will be posting the scan of the tape itself next. Perhaps I will include audio too, especially if the tape is distorted.
Submitted by:
Nick De Pirro
Tags: cassette, cover, crack, Epic, Michael Jackson, MJ, Paul McCartney, scan, tape, Thriller
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes | No Comments »
Monday, June 15th, 2009
Does this album really need explanation? This was Bjork before all the red carpet events, before Matthew Barney, before overwrought movies. Sort of pop, sort of cheesy, but pretty good. A 1992 release date, I can hardly believe it. I remember that Hit was often played on XRT in Chicago back then. Johnny Mars really knew his stuff. This tape is still playable.
Submitted by:
Mike Lamfalusi
Tags: Bjork, cassette, Johnny Mars, Stick Around for Joy, tape, The Sugarcubes, XRT
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes | No Comments »
Monday, April 6th, 2009
As you can see from the various tapes I have posted on this site, my labeling of individual tapes was pretty atrocious. I used to know exactly what was on each tape just by these simple labels. Some of these are now a mystery, but a quick run through the Walkman clears things up. This tape has an R.E.M album on one side and a dub of U2’s fan club-only release called Melon, which was later released commercially over a year later. Melon was an electronic remix album of songs from Zooropa and Achtung Baby. I got the dub from Pat DiMichelle when he got the envelope from the U2 club office. I have to say, Achtung Baby and the Zooropa interlude was what we thought of as good U2. Most U2 fans complained, as the story goes, and electronic U2 faded away after the release of the Passengers album.
Submitted by:
Nick De Pirro
Tags: cassette, DiMichelle, dub, fan club, Maxell, Melon, Nick De Pirro, Pat, tape, u2
Posted in All Tapes, Dub Tapes, Live Recordings | No Comments »
Monday, April 6th, 2009
This is where my love of industrial all started… KMFDM. Mr. De Pirro first introduced them to me in high school. From there I had a long and great relationship with Sacha, En Esch, and Nainz, not to mention Brute’s artwork. I also think this is where my love of all things German started.
Submitted by:
Mike Lamfalusi
Tags: cassette, Don't Blow Your Top, En Esch, King Kong, KMFDM, Mike Lamfalusi, Nick De Pirro, Oh Look, Sasha, What a Race
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes | No Comments »
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
This is a dub of Cure for Pain that somebody left in my cheap radio at the Columbus College of Art and Design when I was doing a one year sabbatical replacement teaching position there in 2001. I don’t have too much to say about it. I guess it is just a relic from that year of teaching in a private art school. I really enjoyed it, but I have lost contact with most of my old students. Posting this tape has put a little string around my finger to reach out to a few of the old sculpture crew.
Posted by
Nick De Pirro
Tags: 2001, cassette, CCAD, Columbus, Cure for Pain, Morphine, relic, sculpture, tape
Posted in All Tapes, Dub Tapes | No Comments »
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
This is my dub of the original Naïve album with the orange cover art, not to be confused with the later remix album Naïve Hell to Go with the green cover art. I was never quite sure what that was all about, but it gave us long time fans something to mark our history as fans of the band once they briefly became popular nationally, and especially in the Chicago area because it is where Wax Trax was. Everybody got the Drug Against War single once the video hit MTV. Some people bought some other albums, but ha! They all got the green cover graphics.
This is another dub from Randy. The other side is a dub of What Do You Know, Deutschland? We saw KMFDM play numerous times. I will never forget the first KMFDM show that I saw at Metro in Chicago that was part of the Money tour. As far as I know, they really had only done the Ministry tour before that, but I could be wrong. I had been to a few big concerts before that show, but maybe not too much in a little hall like Metro. It was simple and amazing.
I should have been more careful with this tape. It appears to have a chunk missing from the upper right.
Submitted by
Nick De Pirro
Tags: Cabaret Metro, cassette, Deutschland?, dub, KMFDM, Maxell, Naive, Nick De Pirro, Randy, Wax Trax, What Do You Know, XL II 100
Posted in All Tapes, Dub Tapes, Live Recordings | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
Yeah, so this was one of those tapes I bought randomly at some used music store. I was into metal but a pretty narrow selection, But Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth… all up my alley, so I bought it. I had never heard Hook In Mouth until this tape, but it’s been a favorite since. I had never listened to Death Angel until this tape either… and probably haven’t listened to them since; sounded like a first grade girl screaming on vocals. There was a time that I tried to get into Nuclear Assault because of Dan Lilker in SOD, but I think I was one metal generation too old and never found a liking for them. Anyway, this used tape was of course terrible quality, but I cranked it in my Cutlass nonetheless… plus, my buds at Al’s Diner were all into it, so it was in regular rotation when I was on the schedule.
Submitted by:
Chris Janus
Tags: Anthrax, cassette, Chris Janus, Death Angel, Megadeath, Nuclear Assault, Slayer, Thrash Metal
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes, Mix Tapes | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
A tape of beats from ‘97.
Submitted by:
Substandard
Tags: beats, cassette, CD IT, SONY, Substandard
Posted in All Tapes, Live Recordings | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
My oldest cool tape. I bought this at the PX on Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Alabama sometime in 1980. Freedom of Choice by Devo was my first vinyl purchase, this was my very first tape purchase. The packaging is a slim cigarette type cardboard with a flip top. It still plays great (as do most of my cool tapes,) I listened to this tape yesterday as I did some yard work.
Submitted by:
Peter J. Daley
Tags: cassette, devo, Devo Live, Freedom of Choice, Gates of Steel, Girl You Want, Peter J. Daley, Planet Earth, Whip It
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes | No Comments »
Friday, March 20th, 2009
[audio:mix.mp3]
This is one of the mix tapes that I probably made for myself, but I am not sure. The cursory and careless treatment of the label just about guarantees it. I would estimate that this is from as far back as 1991 or 1992. It had to be pretty close to the Ten release date. All the other songs are 1990 or earlier. I generally split alt rock from industrial when I made tapes. I am not exactly sure why, but they seemed pretty incompatible. The tape is just labeled with the word mix. It is pretty standard stuff that I liked and still like for the most part. The best thing on this tape is a live track from R.E.M that I recorded from WXRT. It is a pretty rough recording. Radio recordings are pretty cool. A definite thing of the past. I have not listened to anything from Ten for years, but I think I will revisit it after hearing Once on this mix tape when digitizing it. Maybe this tape was just a way to get some variety while mowing the lawn. I have no idea.
Side B is Revolting Cocks Beers Steers and Queers that I dubbed from Randy. That album also has a 1990 release date so it all makes sense, I guess.
Submitted by:
Nick De Pirro
Tags: cassette, Maxell, mix, Nick, Nick De Pirro, Once, Pearl Jam, Rev Co, tape, Ten, WXRT, XL II 90
Posted in All Tapes, Dub Tapes, Live Recordings, Mix Tapes | No Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
A fine product of Sheffield studios in Northwest Indiana. These guys were one of my ultimate idol bands in high school. I was/am still friends with the bass player, Art Hernandez, who I met while working as a line cook at Al’s Diner in Merrillville, IN (which was actually quite the musician hole somehow.) He actually signed the tape for me then.
Art once sent me to an audition with his friends’ band who was looking for a drummer – I didn’t even get to any playing with them cause I was so out of my league and embarrassed (I was like 16! I ran home.) Although the lineup had changed since that audition, these guys ended up turning into Gravelbone a year or so later, and Art was now playing bass for them. I went to their practices over in Calumet City next to Redline Raceway, Mike Sheffield’s house and later studio in Gary, whichever shows I could get into, and I also remember being a roadie for a big show they played in Racine, Wisconsin. I saw Mike Sheffield a number of times because my bands/friends all recorded at his studio.
Eventually, they recorded a full length CD consisting of a few new songs and redone versions of all the demos they put out; I picked it up on eBay several years ago and was severely disappointed – the demos were way better. I caught a show once while in Indiana over Christmas. They had a few new members, they were all crazy skinny, and they played everything several notches slower than I was used to. Years later, they slightly regrouped while nu-metal bands were all the rage and added a rapper for dueling vocalists. They put out a CD and played a few good shows from what I understand, but nothing came out of it and eventually they split up.
RIP Gravelbone.
Submitted by:
Chris Janus
Tags: Add new tag, Al's Diner, cassette, demo, Gary, Gravel Bone, Metal, Northwest Indiana, nu-metal, rap, rap metal, rapper, Sheffield Studios, tape
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes, Live Recordings | No Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
I saw T2 in the theater when it came out, (with Nick, actually), and I’ve been a huge GNR fan since like 7th grade cause I’m cool like that. I forgot his name, but a friend of mine in wood shop in high school had this cassette single and let me borrow it. Well, I’m awesome and didn’t take it back to him for several months cause I listened to it constantly. One summer, I went to a swim camp at University of Michigan, and one of my daily rituals was to crank You Could Be Mine full blast every morning, which would immediately bring an annoyed friend, Mark Radio, storming into to my room from next door to give me that “are you fucking serious?” look with burning daggers shooting from his eyes. I also remember practicing You Could Be Mine when I was first learning the drums and how excited I was when I first made it all the way through. Listening to it now, I can’t believe there was a point when I couldn’t.
Submitted by:
Chris Janus
Tags: cassette, GNR, Guns and Roses, Mark, Radio, single, T2, tape, You Could Be Mine
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
So, I went to the mall with my bud, Nick, to buy a CD I think… one of those Music-Go-Round kind of mall music stores with $35 CD’s. They were giving out these tape samplers at the counter – normally, I wouldn’t care but I happened to see Testament on the label so I grabbed it as I was a big fan. I remember playing it in the car on the way home, and it must’ve been obvious that I liked it cause Nick started laughing when he saw my reaction. Every other one of the bands/songs sucked but I always kept this tape in my car just to crank Electric Crown (and then rewind and play again). This song ended up being the first song on what would be one of my all-time favorite metal albums, The Ritual, which my metal band covered a song from several years later at Berklee College of Music. This was the last album Alex Skolnick played on with Testament for probably a decade or so when they reunited. While I don’t listen to this sampler any more of course, I do listen to Testament and The Ritual frequently today still.
Submitted by:
Chris Janus
Tags: 6 song, Alex Skolnick, cassette, Chris, commercial, copy, Electric Crown, free, Metal, mix, Music-Go-Round, Nick, plastic, Promotional, sampler, tape, Testament, The Ritual, turn it up and pass it on, white
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes, Mix Tapes | No Comments »
Monday, March 16th, 2009
This is the last tape I ever bought. I picked it up on Kirkwood Ave., in Bloomington, IN when I was wasting time instead of doing work. I don’t recall the name of the record store, and I don’t know why I bought a tape and not a CD. It was probably just a cash-in-pocket scenerio. At any rate, this tape got lots of use travelling between Bloomington and Indianapolis on Route 37 in the old 5.0.
Submitted by:
Nick De Pirro
Tags: 13, 13 Above the Night, 37, 5.0, Bloomington, cassette, dance, Indianapolis, Industrial, Indy, IU, Kirkwood, Mustang, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, tape, Thrill Kill Kult
Posted in All Tapes, Commercial Tapes | No Comments »
Monday, March 16th, 2009
This is easily the dirtiest tape that I have in the tape pile. Again, studio dirt, but this time it appears to be bronze dust. This makes sense, because at the old Columbus, OH studio, this guy Shawn was subletting from me, and one time he went out of control sanding some terrible bronze sculpture for somebody and covered everything with a layer of bronze powder.
This album is a compilation of Leæther Strip’s best. I love this album. It is by far one of the best industrial albums that you can buy, or dub, for that matter especially if you are not familiar with the genre. It is not an album, in the purest terms, but it plays like one, and for me it was an album because I didn’t have any other Leæther Strip tapes at the time, and honestly, they were kind of hard to find. I have had this tape since high school, and it still plays. I now have the CD and of course, the .mp3 rip of the CD, but I will probably keep this tape forever. Why throw it out? These things don’t take up that much space, you know? Like many other dubs that I have, this one was from a CD that Randy had. I believe that I did this dub myself due to the handwriting analysis. Also, the tape runs out on side one, and I start the song over again on side two. A sure sign of my incompetent engineering.
I see that Claus has a new album scheduled for release this month. I will have to check it out.
Submitted by:
Nick De Pirro
Tags: black, bronze, cassette, citizen, Claus Larsen, dirt, dust, Industrial, Leæther Strip, Maxell, OH, powder, satanic, sculpture, studio, tape
Posted in All Tapes, Dub Tapes | No Comments »
