It's funny how nostalgic cassette tapes make me, considering how much of a pain in the ass they were back in the day.

Kickin' back listening to music then you notice 18 feet of tape spooling out of the player. Damn.

Or worse, you don't notice the tape spooling out of the player because it's busily wrapping itself around the heads and the feed rollers so you don't know until the music comes to a strangled stop. Then you spend an hour carefully extracting the ruined tape from the guts of the player.

I'm having flashbacks right now.

Remember splicing tape with a razor blade and finely trimmed bits of scotch tape?

Remember splicing tape with a razor blade and finely trimmed bits of scotch tape?

Oh wow, I had completely forgotten this.

I'd forgotten that particular joy, as well.

Oh, I too had such intimate involvement with tapes -- splicing, respooling with a pencil, and particularly making my own mixtape labels out of an index card which you had to carefully trim about 3/8" of card off of to make it fit. Then you would collage them, draw on them, or otherwise do whatever it took to impress your tape-ee.

I was kind of thinking that's what the link would be - DIY mixtape inserts.

The drama...can you recall listening to a favorite tape only to start hearing that warbly garbly sound that meant it was about to be eaten, and then diving across the room to try to save it?

And can you remember the frustration when something you were recording almost fit but the tape ran out right before the end and cut it off? Trying to fill a side perfectly was a challenging obsession. And keeping notes while doing so...

Or trying to fit an LP onto a cassette tape with the same songs on each side ...

I've had treasured mixed tapes survive until some idiot used it as a blank.
How that song order becomes memorized.
I still miss liner notes and something to hold onto.

"until some idiot used it as a blank" Ouch. That's why you should break out the tabs as soon as you record it.

How that song order becomes memorized.

Yes! There are still songs that come on the radio, and when they end, I expect them to segue into the song that was next on my high school mixes...

And I too miss making my own inserts to go with the tape.

I haven't forgotten any of this, as I've spent the last six months digitizing all my old four-track masters and earlier cassettes. My living room is flooded with them.

I fear there are a few younger MeChazens looking at this and saying "and tell us how you used to get up at 5 A.M. to milk the cows and muck out the horse stall before walking to school seven miles, uphill, in a driving snow storm."

I came in on the cusp of CDs. I remember going to a 6th grade party, where the birthday girl got a ... gasp ... CD! In a full longbox (not that CD, I forgot what it was). My younger brother bought the first CD player in our household, and I thought it would be longer until CDs really picked up, so I signed up for BMG Music Club's cassette club.

In high school, I made mixtapes, usually for my own enjoyment. The best mixtape any of my friends had was an accident, one where the Mortal Kombat theme song blended into a classical music piece, because the tape maker really wanted to record the classical piece they were hearing, and didn't care what tape was currently in the player. Then it got over-written with something all-together different, so the magical, accidental mix is now lost.

Last fall, I started listening to some of my old tapes, because I was commuting in a van from 1990, and local radio annoyed me. Memories flooded back, it was great.

walking to school seven miles, uphill, in a driving snow storm
Uphill both ways, too!

We got our family's first CD player because my dad won it in a radio station contest. It was a big deal! They cost hundreds of dollars! We made a family trip into New York to the offices of the radio station to pick it up, and then tromped around sightseeing with a giant CD player box in tow (because it was huge, of course - regular stereo component size).

"Uphill both ways, too!"
That was the worst part about living in Escher county.