This week, let’s kick it old school. Sit back, wind down for the weekend, and reminisce about life when we listened to music on cassette tapes.

Anyone alive during these fabulous decades has at least one life experience they can look back on. Maybe it was a first kiss? What about losing your V-card? Bad breakup? Joyriding with your friend who just got their license? The list could go on and on. Thinking about the music we listened to on cassette tapes, and the experiences that went with it, is certainly a magical nostalgia that I’d like to look back on this week. What’s in my “cassette player” right now? Ace of Base – The Sign.

The Audio Equipment

There were so many ways to listen to cassette tapes! Growing up we had a dual tape deck and eventually I had one of my own as a teenager. I also had a Sony Walkman and this little voice recorder (NOT the Deluxe Talkboy from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, although I did have friends who had one). My friends and I would write scripts and act out various skits on the tape recorder. I still have these tapes to this day but no way to listen them. Probably for the best.

We also had a boom box at one point, an old clunky one that you’d see on the shoulders of various rap stars in music videos.

Of course, the newer cars came with cassette players. And when the day of the compact disc came upon us, the compact disc/cassette adapter for the car was a must have.

The Relatable Experiences

Recording off the radio. Nowadays would this be considered pirating? I think it was then, which is why the DJ would talk over every single song intro and outro. But who doesn’t remember practicing this skill to ensure the most perfect mixed tape? Every now and again I’ll hear an old song and remember exactly the next song that I had put on my mixed tape.

The cassette player eating your tape. What a pain in the butt this was. The hardest to deal with was when the tape got all crinkled up and twisted. That took some serious patience to put the end of your pencil or pen into the reel and wind the tape back into place. There really was no other option.

The Unique Experiences

I was a little too young for the experiences I listed up top during the cassette tape era, but it doesn’t sell short any of the cassette memories I cherish!

In the 4th grade my class took our first overnight field trip to Monterey, CA. My 4th grade teacher btw was a badass. She took the entire class (there were about 25 of us) to her parent’s house, then out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We all spent the night on the floor of her old high school gym. And then the next morning we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Pretty epic field trip. And for this trip my mom made me a cassette copy of my favorite CD of hers at the time, Genesis – self-titled album. That was the only tape I brought with me to listen to on my Walkman. The memories come hand-in-hand and this is one I’ll cherish forever.

The most recent memory I have is more unique as it occurred in the CD era. But one my bestie and I still laugh about to this day (and I told her I’d write about it here for all the Loftus Party community to read). Back in high school, she and I were driving to the movie theater one sunny afternoon. As we turned the corner to pull into the parking garage, we both saw this ribbon, perfectly waving across the ground in the wind.

It wasn’t until recently talking about this experience, we learned that at that quick moment in the car we both closed our eyes and for some weird reason thought we were going to transport into another dimension as we drove across this ribbon. Turns out it was just tape out of an old cassette that had become garbage. Talk about unique cassette tape experiences. Sure makes for incredible laughs.

A question to be asked, as certain things surprisingly make a comeback… Will cassette tapes ever make a comeback? It doesn’t seem like they will. The nostalgia of vinyl records for instance was the unique sound of the dusty needle grazing along the grooves of the record. I feel the cassette tape caused more rage than anything although someone on X brought up a fair point:

For now, I think we’re safe from seeing a resurgence of the cassette tape. They tried around 8 years ago with no avail. So, enjoy those memories. And if you have the means to bust out your old tape collection, sit back, wind down, and have a blast!