Old Cassette Recordings..

[Spawn67]

Anyone have any old tapes lying around?
If so what's the oldest thing you have recorded and what year did you record it?

[kingdom warrior]

The Bangles live at the Ritz circa 1984 recorded off the radio from local long island station WLIR/DRE

[jds1911a1]

I still have several functioning tape decks. my oldest recording is form 1982 Doctor who the Sound effects dubbed from the LP my freind had
oldest bought tape - Tatoo You Rolling stones bought when it was released in 81

[Earth 2 Chris]

I have a tape made around 1980/1981 that has the themes from The Dukes of Hazzard, The Greatest American Hero, Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys and the Superman Powers Record "The Man from Krypton".

Somewhere around here I have a tape with me and my friends recording comedy skits from the mid-80s...

Chris

[HardyGirl]

When my mom passed, I was going thru her things and found recordings made during:

My dad's birthday, (I was around 5, so '71)
New Years Eve, (I must have been 5 or 6 '71 or '72)
Some of my dads transcripts from seminars he gave in Canada, (I was 6 '72).
and some other recordings my brother just felt like making turning the recorder on when nothing special was happening, or when my mom would chew out my foster sister for lying to her or crapping in her pants (these where made in '72 and '73),
and a re-recording of some things my brother and I did on a tape he sent my mom adn I when he moved to CA from NYC, (that tape was from '78, but he recorded them from stuff we did when I was 5 and 9, so '71 and '75)

I need to dub them on better tapes, (yes I still record on tape), so I can spend more time w/ my "family" I miss the days when we were all together! *sniff*

[VintageMike]

I have a tape with somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes to a half hour of my grandparents visiting (and a little at their house) from the early 80's. I have had my mother hold it for safekeeping and digitized it last year. I've have a few other but they are pretty random other than my best friend and I interviewing each other in the sixth grade.

[Drzsmith]

Id give anything to have family tapes of my grandparents,they are all gone now.

[megoapesnut]

I actually have some old reel to reel recordings that I inherited when my grandfather died. I also got all of his old 8mm film. There are some treasures there. My mom and dad's wedding is in film and I have the audio recording on reel to reel. Priceless stuff of me and my brother from babies on up. I digitized all of the 8mm film and we had a blast watching everything one Christmas eve.

[Hedji]

Oh... this hurts. As a kid, I was Mr. Audio Drama. Born and raised on Power Records, and later the Star Wars Radio Dramas, I used to record my own audio adventure stories. Sci Fi and horror tales with me playing all the parts. Sound effects, music, all dropped in by recording cues from vinyl records. And of course, I was my own foley artist.

I remember once recording exaggerated footfalls on the ground, stomping as some ghostly monster for the recording. I must have gotten into it, because the tremors caused an entire shelf of books to fall off of my bookcase, while the tape was running. I got the whole cacophony of destruction on tape! It was wonderful!

I used to sit the whole family down and make them listen to the premieres, and they would patiently listen to what I'm sure was a real hot mess. But they were glorious, and my family would heap praise on me for being so creative.

And those recordings are all gone now. :(

I'm sure as a teen, I recorded over them in embarrassment. I'd give anything for them now.

It makes me sad to consider all the technology and tools available to young people now to do similar things with a decent desktop computer, or even an ipad. The power of technology now makes what I used to do with vinyl records and a cassette deck ridiculously easy and powerfully. And yet, I don't know any kids who do this sort of creative thing.

[Donkey Hoatie]

I've still got tons of tapes from the 80s and 90s kicking around. In fact, I found the original model boom box I owned back in 1983 and purchase it off eBay for about $20 (Sony CFS-300). Two weeks ago, my college roommate and I were in my garage replacing the radiator in my minivan and I broke out a bunch of mixed tapes we had in our apartment back in 1992. Brought back tons of great memories and I'm really regretting the great cassette purge of 1997 after I started transitioning all my albums over to CD.

[HardyGirl]

Wow, that's really cool. I used to like to record my on radio talk shows and do voices for the guys and girls. I'd try different accents too. It's pretty funny to listen to now. And yeah, you're right...kids today could do so much w/ this stuff, but it's a 2 edged sword...technology could help them be more creative, but it also sucks the creativity out of you when all you do is text, go and Facebook, listen to your Ipod and play video games. We made this stuff up b/c there wasn't all this tech-stuff getting in the way of our creativity.

Hey, where's Dee T? He has a whole website full of stuff he recorded from the radio and TV. It's one of my favorite sites!

Oh... this hurts. As a kid, I was Mr. Audio Drama. Born and raised on Power Records, and later the Star Wars Radio Dramas, I used to record my own audio adventure stories. Sci Fi and horror tales with me playing all the parts. Sound effects, music, all dropped in by recording cues from vinyl records. And of course, I was my own foley artist.

I remember once recording exaggerated footfalls on the ground, stomping as some ghostly monster for the recording. I must have gotten into it, because the tremors caused an entire shelf of books to fall off of my bookcase, while the tape was running. I got the whole cacophony of destruction on tape! It was wonderful!

I used to sit the whole family down and make them listen to the premieres, and they would patiently listen to what I'm sure was a real hot mess. But they were glorious, and my family would heap praise on me for being so creative.

And those recordings are all gone now. :(

I'm sure as a teen, I recorded over them in embarrassment. I'd give anything for them now.

It makes me sad to consider all the technology and tools available to young people now to do similar things with a decent desktop computer, or even an ipad. The power of technology now makes what I used to do with vinyl records and a cassette deck ridiculously easy and powerfully. And yet, I don't know any kids who do this sort of creative thing.

[mazinz]

I still have my old tapes. I think the oldest might be from 1980. Most of all of them were myself and friends/family making up shows, recording "wrestling events" with G.I Joe figures. Really just anything that felt that need of expression.

Like many of you, the embarrassment most of these would cause now.... but at the same time I am very happy to have them. Though my father passed away in 1981 and on one tape for my brother and myself he was singing songs with these two girls on acoustic guitar in his hospital room. He made this tape for us. I know it was recorded over back then because the full knowledge of what he was going through was not there for us youngsters (being only 8 years old and my brother at 5) to really understand. It was the only "sound" recording of his voice that I know of. I regret recording over this, but at that age, as mentioned I did not have the understanding.

everything I have now has been properly digitized

[Bruce Banner]

Still have some old cassettes somewhere featuring DW episodes recorded from TV Ontario airings, and part of the network TV broadcast of the extended TV version of Superman The Movie.

[jds1911a1]

there are desck you can get (ION makes one) where you can dub the tape to mp3 and use a program like AUDACITY to clean up any artifacts or bump up the volume. Even their LP to mp3 turn table has an input you can put a cassette deck with an audio headphone jack through using a double male jack - I have dubbed several tapes and records that were out of print like my power records to mp3 this way

[Bionicfanboy66]

Think I still have some stuff recorded from a few radio stations from back in the 80's. A few of those stations have since flipped formats.