The cassette tape is back in vogue. According to a piece in the Australian Financial Review, sales are up sharply with artists such as Taylor Swift and Harry Styles now embracing the format. Having lived through the glory days of the cassette tape, I’m not sure this is a good idea.
Writers like Nick Hornby have imbued the cassette tape with considerable romance, in particular the mix tape created for a loved one. In practice, these were often recorded directly from the radio, requiring your typical suburban suitor to sit around for hours on end, waiting for the desired track to appear. You’d then leap to attention, trying to simultaneously hit the Play and Record buttons as required, inevitably missing the first three seconds of the song. This substandard love letter, involving 12 false starts, and 12 poorly timed endings, often proved a metaphor for the relationship that ensued.
Some things are better left in the past.Credit: iStock
There was also no room for a proper track listing, especially if the chosen bands had lengthy names. It’s not by chance that the main band that flourished in the era of the cassette tape was ABBA, the only name that would fit on the tiny side of the box.
The tapes would also stretch when left, as they always were, in a hot car during summer. What began as a perky pop song by Kylie Minogue would, by the end of February, sound like the Song of the Volga Boatmen.
Oh, and you had to carry a pencil with you at all times in case the tape required tightening. Plus the hinge on the case broke as soon as you so much as glanced in its direction.
Some past technologies deserve revival. The LP record is one example. The large format cover allowed you to show off your sophisticated musical tastes to passing friends, while the need to change sides created endless opportunity for incidental exercise. The sound was better, too, even if you had to tape a 10 cent coin to the arm of the record player to stop the bastard from getting stuck on a scratch.
Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, made into a film starring John Cusack, used the mixed tape as a plot device.
But not every piece of old technology was a boon. The typewriter, for instance, was a menace. The sliding carriage seemed designed to knock over any coffee cup momentarily perched on your desk, while vigorous typing would produce tiny portholes on the page every time you hit the “o” or the “p”.
Some spelling mistakes could be fixed with correcting fluid, the inhalation of which was responsible for the flowery writing style of the time, but more substantial errors required the retyping of the whole page. This would always occur on the last line of any A4 sheet, the quiet of every office punctuated by regular screams of frustration.
The VHS tape, meanwhile, had some advantages. It allowed the taping of movies from the TV. The only problem: the tape would always include several news breaks. Having forgotten you were watching a taped version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you’d be mystified by the sudden return to power of Paul Keating.
There was also something intoxicating about taping a movie or TV show “to watch later”, with the result that most households ended up with a backlog of hundreds of only-quite-good movies that they’d never get around to watching. Open a random cupboard in the suburbs and you’ll still find six never-watched hours of Return to Eden and three educational documentaries about the rise of Hitler, just waiting for the right rainy afternoon.
At least this constant taping was better than watching the TV live on a portable set, inevitably featuring a rabbit ear antenna. These would only work if someone - usually the youngest child - was forced to stand by the set and hang onto the thing. Most of my childhood viewing was done through the corner of one eye, while standing on one leg with my tongue stuck out.
The kitchen held its own terrors, principal of which was the fondue set, a method of cooking through which you could invite your neighbours to dinner and thus ensure that any germs inhabiting their bodies would be incubated at just the right temperature before being spread to the rest of the neighbourhood. Some say nuclear annihilation was the main threat that we endured during the 1970s, but really it was the cheese fondue.
If something as terrible as the cassette tape is making a comeback, what’s next? The rotary phone, in which calling the fire brigade involved three zeros - the number that required the most time to dial.
Or the paper map, in which the place you wanted to visit always lay in the indecipherable fold between two pages.
Or the film camera, in which you’d be limited to 12 pricey shots, followed by a trip to the chemist, a weeklong wait, and then the realisation that you’d had your finger over the lens for the lot.
Taylor Swift and Harry Styles? They have my complete respect, but, when it comes to technology, some things are better left in the past.
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