Tape Over It

Like a lot of people my age, I’m prone to bouts of nostalgia. And like people my age, I am inclined to believe that my generation was the best. 

Don’t matter if it’s thermonuclear physics, politics, music, film, books or bicycles. Fact is, when that old time blues gets me down, I’m inclined to believe that my generation rocked, and the current one, well, the current one sucks.

Yes, despite the bubble tea and satellite TV and internet porn. 

Depending on when I’m asked and depending on how much or how little I’ve had to drink, my reason(s) for this generation’s unquestionable suckiness will vary. Today though, I believe it sucks because cassettes no longer exist. And the direct repercussion of that, I believe, is that no one really listens to artists any more. Yep, not even the artists you claim to love.

You don’t agree? Fine. Try this little test on for size:

1. Write down (or type) the name of your favourite artiste. (For the purposes of this test, it would be useful to pick someone who has more than one recorded album.)

2. Now, write down (or type) the name of your favourite album by said artiste.

3. Done? Now, write down (or type) the song titles, starting from the opening track.

4. OK, assuming you’ve managed to list all the songs, write down, from memory, a line from every song on said album. One line each will do.

If you’ve managed to do everything here, then, congratulations. You’ve managed to piss all over my theory even before I’ve had the opportunity to properly espouse it. 


Chances are though, you, like almost everyone from the CD/MP3 generation, wouldn’t have gotten past Step 3.

I’m no different. My favourite record of 2011 is arguably Girl’s Father, Son, Holy Ghost but the fuck if I could tell you what number Vomit is in the tracklisting, if Just A Song is before or after it, or indeed, how many cuts there are on the album. The reason is simple: I’ve probably listened to the Girls record between two and five times from beginning to end. Every other time, I’ve spun it, I never really spun it but instead, listened to a selection of tunes, skipping over the boring stuff.

Had this been the cassette era though, there’s no question that I’d have known the entire tracklisting. Forwards and backwards. As I’ve written before, because you couldn’t skip over the boring stuff with cassettes, you listened to the entire record. Listen enough times and you’d know everything by heart. I mean, I haven’t listened to Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet in 10 years, possibly longer, but I could still list out the tracks for you. No problem. 

It’s true too that albums were crafted a little differently back in the day and perhaps, that helped as well.

CDs might have been the preferred format since the early ’90s in Malaysia (mid-late ’80s in the rest of the world) however, artists tended to still view albums from a cassette/vinyl point of view. Meaning, they knew how important Track 1 on Side A was. How to build to a crescendo. How to kick-start Side B. That sort of thing. 

Now, I know it’s naïve to suggest that advances in technology have resulted in less dedicated fans, but look at the evidence. CDs and then, MP3s and the iPod were designed to make us love music better. They were supposed to make being a fan easier. No longer did one need to worry about things like: how many cassettes can I fit into my carry on? With the iPod, you just chucked everything into this little thingumajig and voila, 50 albums you could wheel through! So how come, I don’t know what song follows Just A Song on the Girls’ record? How come though I know The Black Keys’ El Camino kicks off with Lonely Boy, I have no idea where Gold on the Ceiling sits in the tracklist?

Am I a bit bitter? I don’t know. I don’t think I am. But I am a little sad that I don’t take the time anymore to listen to artistes. To really listen I mean. It’s much too easy to skip tracks. Like today, when driving home form work, playing the new Jack White record, I went straight from opener Missing Pieces to Sixteen Saltines (Track 2) to Love Interruption (Track 4) to Trash Tongue Talker (Track 9). 


Why did I do this? Why did I listen to Blunderbuss this way? Who knows? I had the technology to and thus, did. And as a result, if there is a concept and/or theme running through the record, I completely missed it... 

So anyway, my generation had cassettes. And bitches, we were better because of it!