Tonight I've been going through all music-related holdings in my personal library. This was definitely one of the parts of moving I didn't want to do. It's a bit out of sight / out of mind, but there has been more than one occasion that I thought about a CD or record I used to have that I got rid of three or four moves ago. It makes me question what I was thinking.
I've stacked a few LPs and 45s that I don't want and have a fairly substantial box 3/4 full of CDs (actually, more than 3/4 because they're above the fold line) that I wish I had more time to sell. The cassettes...
I could barely look at the cassettes because there's stuff in there that I wish I had on CD or a format more easily accessible. The hardest part about the cassettes is the mixed tapes. Up until I came back from Japan, mixed tapes were it for me. I liked poring over liner notes as I tried to make a seamless transition from song to song. When my stereo broke down it marked the death of my cassettes and I'm not sure I'll recover now that I'm tossing all but a small handful of my mixed tapes. Unless someone wants them... ?
The interviews with bands give me pause. Will I need that interview with the Inbreds for prosperity? Will listening to Don Pyle talk about the Shadowy Men be worth something some day? Does anyone care about Sally Struthers talking about everything other than South Park? I'm guessing no. Still, I struggle with throwing away perfectly good cassettes.
Does anyone buy used cassettes anymore?
2 comments:
Pretty much my entire childhood and all its collections are stored in my parents' basement. Every time I come to visit, they guilt me into going down there to see if I can give them things to throw out or sell. This trip I decided one way to try and quell the guilt and get rid of at least one giant box was to shuck out all the liner trays from the CD jewel cases I left down there (I took the CDs and cover booklets years ago). Many hours later, there's a gigantic box filled with jewel cases of all kinds -- but all are empty. There's another big box filled with cassettes and another one with records. I don't have a turntable in Cali, and those early 80's REM bootleg records don't call to me as much as they used to. The tapes worry me -- will they even still work? I long for the day when micronization technology makes such worries as obsolete as those tapes, and I can just carry it all down with me in my carry-on luggage to put on a shelf somewhere.
I actually have tried to convert some of my most prized tapes to mp3, but my gear is too crummy to really do anything any justice.
I've decided to keep Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet cassettes, though I'm not sure why those are the only thing I'm keeping. I'm eliminating my college rock collection! I've totally lost it! :)
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