Talking to the Wall Street Journal
Published March 31, 2008 @ 16:09 in Miscellaneous
I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal today. Reporter Matt Phillips was collecting info for a story he's doing on cassette tapes and how mix tapes compare to today's MP3 playlist. He came across this picture of my old tapes and asked me if I would talk to him about my memories.
I found the timing interesting because just yesterday, at the tail end of a little podcast I was recording with the kids, I told them how I put such things together in the 80s. I told them about the dual cassette deck and the dubbing and all the analog effort and how lucky they were to be living in this easy breezy digital world. Then, this afternoon, I heard something different come out of my mouth when being interviewed by Matt.
I told Matt how much I miss the old cassette deck days when a mix tape meant a lot of rewinding and fast forwarding, practices that are completely foreign to kids today. You had to get to the right spot, time it perfect, and you don't want any noise in front or tagged on the end. It was a lot more work, but somehow it seemed more romantic. It seemed to matter more.
We'll see if Matt's article gets the WSJ's blessing and if I make the cut. It was fun to revisit 1984 regardless.
Anonymous
April 1, 2008 / 11:56
wall street journal? very impressive.
i remember making tapes back in the day. two friends and i used to do this all the time. you would actually get used to the differences in the delay of each others' deck. we even put together clips from different rap songs in a way that would be "sampling" today. i used to say "if only there was a machine that would take this part and isolate it". if i made that machine, i would be rich now. i'm even dealing with analog to digital conversion today, but with a hip "heksenketle" vhs tape. it never ends.