That title makes it sound dramatic. In reality, I really only regretted it from late 1982 to late 1985. To understand the original motivation, I need to explain the technological change that happened around 1980-81. The desire to make music portable had created a couple of new devices. On the highly mobile but less sharable end of the spectrum was the Sony Walkman personal cassette player. The Walkman pioneered the concept that a single person can listen to the music of their choosing in virtually any environment with a small cassette tape player and headphones. On the less portable but highly sharable side was the old Ghetto Blasters. Battery powered stereo systems in which speakers, AM/FM radio and cassette deck were combined into a briefcase to suitcase shaped format. Some of those units were quite dramatic. The common denominator though was the cassette. By this time, the once popular 8-Track had all but disappeared. The cassette seemed to be the next evolutionary step.
With this in mind, I made a conscious decision that lasted the better part of two years. A decsion that would haunt me from the latter half of my senior year until I bought my first Compact Disc player in late 1985 when that regret was rendered as obsolete as all of the vinyl records I had accumulated. My friend Adam had a boom box and I had acquired my own personal cassette player. Mine was not the famous Sony Walkman but the Toshiba version which I felt was superior to Sony’s in that mine had auto-reverse and am/fm radio built in in the form of a cassette shape module that drew power from the batteries and pumped radio through the headphones.
So here I am with a couple of great new ways to bring the music with me. Like I mentioned before, I could barely afford records, there wasn’t any budget left for blank cassettes. My course of action was to abandon vinyl records and pursue factory cassette recordings. I know, I know. I too am cringing at the thought even though it doesn’t matter in the least anymore.
Another development that occured at this time was something called Columbia House. Are you kidding 15 albums for a penny and I only need to buy five more in the next three years?! Of course if you are familiar with Columbia House of the early 80’s you recall the endless stream of flyers in the mail that had to be returned or you’d get stuck with whatever the selection was. You’d also remember that a record then went for about $7.50 unless it was Columbia House then it was $17.50. They also had frequent Buy 1 Get 3 Free specials that I took full davantage of back then.
I shouldn’t crack on Columbia House too much. It allowed me to not only acquire a bunch of music in a short span of time, it helped me developed a more risk taking approach to selecting music. I would go on to be an on-again off-again client for Columbia House and BMG for the next 15 years and develop a music selection process called Columbia House Roulette.
The big drawback of the factory cassette that made me regret the decision so much was that the shelf life of a cassette is dramatically shorter than that of a vinyl record. Part of this is due to the mobile nature of the medium. It ends up in less than ideal environments more frequently. Also at play is the nature of magentism. When you live on a planet that has a magnetic field, your tapes are affected because they rely on magentic properties to contain the data that is your music. Everytime you play a tape is is exposed to magentic forces that microsopically degrade the fidelity. Then there is the quality of the devices that play tapes. Some of them were not very good at maintaining the proper tension leading to eaten tapes. Of course the converse is also true. A cheap cassette could theoretically destroy a quality tape deck.
Danger aside, I spent about two solid years filling a couple of those big briefcase shaped cassette storage suitcases with factory tapes that came primarily from Columbia House. None of them survived but eventually almost all were replaced by Compact Disc anyway so it doesn’t matter anyway.
My inital Columbia House order was a mix of new and old. I can’t remember my motivations but I can remember some of those early tapes.
Billy Joel – The Stranger. Mom had the Piano Mansingle, Jamie had 52nd Street. My first Billy Joel purchase was The Stranger. The thing plays like a Greatest Hits album. I played this cassette until the top end squeal was so unbearable that I had to throw it out.
Movin’ Out
The Stranger
Just The Way You Are
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
Only The Good Die Young
She’s Always A Woman