Ridin' the cassette train

I have to share the story of my Tunnel cassette...

In May 1993, I went to Munich for my first Bruce gig with a former boyfriend (bad idea, but I was 18) and another Bruce fan.

The gig took place on a Sunday afternoon, pretty early, and we drove back home immediately after it had ended. I remember dozing but not really sleeping in the backseat of my Mom's car while the two of them exchanged for driving.

The car looked similar to the one in the photo below, and the approx. 500 km highway is cut through the Alps, so it was evident that it would be a whole night adventure. I was finishing high school, with lots of exams and studying, so I planned to go directly to class the following Monday. I didn't want to skip school because of Bruce (bad idea, but I was 18).

On a fabulous May morning, I came to school in an elevated state, still buzzing from the night before. There are various highs in life, but this was my first Bruce high, and I acted appropriately. I was either explaining overly enthusiastically about Bruce to people who couldn't care less or was I floating somewhere under the ceiling, not present mentally in that classroom...

There was a girl. Every class has a few of them, right? Popular, good-looking, pretentious bitches.. She walked towards me with a look on her face saying "do you think you are special because you drove to a concert to Munich last night?" But out loud, she said: "I hear you are listening to Bruce Springsteen. He is sooo old, and sooo past his prime days, and he isn't popular anymore, and have you seen the way he is dressed?" At that point, she took the Tunnel cassette from her pocket and shoved the cover into my face. I was a bit shocked, didn't know how to defend Bruce back then, as she went on: "You can have this. It's worthless. Nobody listens to him anymore."

I was 18 and naive. I should have said thank you but fuck you, but instead, I just took the cassette without uttering a single word. I still didn't own Tunnel at the time, so I thought, why not, I guess...

Karma is a bitch. She used to rave about INXS, and although I like the group, Hutchence is almost a quarter of a century dead now while Bruce is still making albums and doing other exciting projects.

Listening to Tunnel now. ❤️

Gary's big stero still in a moving box has double tape decks plus a 10 cd stacker and a record player

i have i think 4 Bruce tapes but still factory wraped

GOTJ, HT, LT and i think ToL

i got them for 99c each but $12.99 postage

now find me a pencil

One of my mates had a "dumped" mix tape which got passed around to the guy most recently binned by a young lady.

It passed through my hands a few times.

I forget the listing, the only two that stuck with me were "Here I go again on my own " by Whitesnake and "I hate everything about you" by Ugly Kid Joe.

Man, the time I used to spend figuring sequencing, timing, transitions...my tape deck had both a 5-second auto fade-in/fade-out function and I'd practice getting the fades just right. But then I also would sometimes do a smash cut.

I had a Pink Floyd mix that had all three parts of "Another Brick in the Wall," but just as he inhales during the telephone ringing at the end of "Part 2," it would suddenly cut to the final TV exploding and go into "Part 3."

I love CDs. I love love love my mp3. But there was something really special about a lovingly and well-crafted mixtape...

Your love of an own made tape was measured by the black tabs you could snap on the cassette case, which stopped you from being able to reuse the tape. Once those suckers were snapped, you were committed and locked in to that cassette.

(Although I think in some cases you could place simple sticky tape over the holes left by the snapped tabs and start re recording again).

I used to send away to the places that advertised in the back of Stereo Review the TDK metal 90-minute cassettes, as the prices were a few bucks cheaper. I think I still have a few unopened bricks.

When I first had a computer, but no CD burner, I was downloading shows night and day from the SPL FTP. I would record them to tape by running the audio out of my PC to the audio in of my cassette deck.

I saved my money and bought bricks of TDK SA90 cassettes, for every 90mins I wanted, I sent Joe Crawford two 90 minute tapes. The first group I got was in January 1987. I got a warped copy of Stockholm night 2 from 1981, Roxy 78, and the Bridge Benefit from 1986...

I bought the River on tape after my Mom left us. I specifically remember riding the RTD bus from Alhambra up to Pasadena on a rainy day. I also got the White album that day. I played all of the River on the bus coming home. All I remember was the snare shot on Ties that Bind and all the secrets of the universe that followed.

I had so many cassettes and then suddenly in 1990 they were gone replaced by piss poor cd transfers. Bruce had the worst CDs in the early digital days. In 2014 all of those records were remastered. Some better than others.

A cassette memory: Steely Dan released their Greatest Hits in 1978. It was a double LP, and was one of the first records I can remember that contained a previously unreleased track, Here In the Western World. I really wanted that song, but c'mon man, I'm not buying an expensive double album full of songs I've already paid for. One night I called WHCN in Hartford, and explained the situation to the DJ. I asked him to play the track on the air so I could record it. "And um, could you make it the first song of the set? And say a few words about it so I know it's coming?" He laughed and said sure. Plus, he told me approximately what time he'd do it. About a half hour later, he came back from a commercial and spoke about Western World and what made it special. Then he said "and here it is...right...now." He left a couple seconds of silence before starting it. And then he left a couple seconds of silence after it finished. This is during an era when DJs ALWAYS faded one song into the next. What a guy!! I called back and thanked him. I'm ashamed to say I can't remember his name.

I believe an 8 track was the only place to hear this version back in the day

I never used to buy many original cassettes prior to the early 90's because the quality wasn't great. It was that cheap plastic casing, and it was sometimes a crapshoot as to how many plays you would get before it started to drag, or worse. Vinyl was a much better bet, lasting longer and you could always record it to tape anyway.

Come the early 90's, if you hadn't gone CD yet (and I hadn't), vinyl was getting harder to come by but the commercial tapes had become much hardier and reliable. They had the see through but hardier plastic and were no longer the 'afterthought to vinyl' they were earlier... they were there for those who couldn't afford the new CD technology yet.

So I started buying original cassettes then. Achtung Baby on release day might’ve been the first. I know that Human Touch and Lucky Town in 1992 were the first Bruce original cassettes I bought.

Anyway, long story short, I was starting to collect the Stones back catalogue at this time also. I'd just bought Love You Live and was playing it in the car on a hot day. Now, they said not to leave the tapes in the player when the car wasn't running. So I ejected it but left it 'popped out' in the tape player.

Two hours later, I came back to the car and the exposed cassette had melted. That's the cassette casing, not just the tape. Literally drooping down and misshapen, never to be played again. I mean, sure, Love You Live is pretty poor for the most part, but the damn sun melted the Moccambo live tracks as well as the dross...

My dad had a stereo system incorporating an amp, vinyl player and tape deck in the day (purchased late 70's or early 80's at best) that I spent a fair swag of my teenage years hooked up to in the 80's. The tape deck had an adjustable volume meter for both the left and right channel. So, you could make mixed tapes from vinyl with various volume levels and use the meters to adjust volume up and down as needed in either or (most commonly) both channels to get even volume from varying sources.

The golden rule was to have the meter hovering between the top end of the black and bouncing just into the red. Basically, take the loudest part of the song or album, have that going into the lower part of the red and you should be sweet.

Oh, those were the days. Hour upon hour lost. Creating a playlist on Spotify and selecting the 'equalise volume' setting just doesn't have the same romance. (Plus, that feature doesn't understand that the loudest parts of The River are not meant to be at the same volume as the loudest parts of Cadiilac Ranch).

Went scratching around, sadly not too many tapes left, I think a few might be in the storeroom. Most of what I have is pre-recorded. I did not find any of the ones I did with Letraset, but I was reminded that I graduated from Letraset to typing when I bought my first typewriter... It was cheaper too.

I was once seeing a girl and made her three cassettes that I called "The Voice Of God" Parts 1, 2 and 3. The cassettes comprised my favourites from Live 75 to 85, as well as a bunch of my favourite album tracks at the time (up to 1990, when I made said tapes).

Pretty pathetic, yes, I know.

And what happened to said girl? Well, she ended up marrying the dude that made her those three mixed tapes and they now have two beautiful daughters. And have attended several Bruce shows together in the years since.

Thank you, cassettes.

Who else?

I'm laughing because I have every album in that stack.

What I loved about the Chimes Of Freedom cassette was that it had the full EP on both sides. I don't know how many times I played that and flipped it over to listen again and flipped it over to listen again and...

I'm remembering now the early U2 albums up through Under A Blood Red Sky were formatted that way, as well.

If it weren't for cassette tapes, I couldn't have carried my Bruce collection around the countryside with me for six years and, believe me, there were days when those tapes sustained me. Hungry days, rainy days, no cigarettes, no rides. I had Bruce.

Does anyone still have a functional cassette player in the house?

@Mario Brega, you've inadvertently brought me a lot of joy and fun memories with this thread.

I had dozens and dozens of cassettes... I used to buy them and record vinyl and/or CD to them... I was so excited when the 100 minute tapes became more readily available. It meant I could usually fit two 'normal' albums on, one on each side. Maxell 100 minute chrome tapes were my poison of choice.

Even when I owned the CD, I still put it on cassette because the car CD player was still a few years away. I'd ask my dad or brother to play whatever tape was my current favourite in the car.

Being OCD, and a nerdy teen who was very clearly not even close to getting laid, this is how I labelled them, because, they had to match, of course. I don't have photos, sadly. Wish I did.