todd33rpm
07-29-2008, 08:10 AM
...for not a lot of money, at yard sales and thrift stores.
I share this in the hope that I will be among fellow travelers, and that this won't come off horribly strange.
One of the fascinating things for me is not just acquiring the soon-to-be blanks, but also checking to see what had been left there before. It's like listening to a time capsule, things that someone else held dear, and sometimes it's revealed songs I hadn't heard before, or completely forgotten. I'd hate to bulk-erase music that might have some value to me, in my anxiousness to get tapes for my own use. (I hasten to add that if it's a private correspondence, an audio letter or diary, I erase it forthwith, as the contents aren't really any of my business.)
Around 2005, I went yardsaling and purchased, for five dollars, a box with something like 100-odd tapes. A substantive number were sealed blanks, reason enough to shell out the funds, but there were also a lot of classical recordings and the like - the seller had been a music student or professor, and had amassed a wide selection of music over time, including a Tom Lehrer performance and some decent Billie Holiday transfers. The down side: a lot of the recordings were in dbx, and therefore not all that usable for me.
A couple years ago, I found a TDK MA 110 at a Goodwill, at a fire sale price. Popped it in to make sure it was in good shape, and was surprised to hear a Waterboys concert recording that appeared to be taken from a radio or TV broadcast, probably around 1993-ish. Further surprise towards the end of the tape was the band covering Prince's "Purple Rain" in an almost letter-perfect version.
(Off-topic, there was also a time where some stranger walked into the record store I was working in, dropping off a boxful of vinyl albums he'd acquired, some from other people, for a yard sale. The man, in his sixties, didn't want them and couldn't sell them them at the yard sale. So...the box came to us, to see if any of our staff wanted to add to their collections. Basically, no one else was interested, so I went through them. Found a copy of Tusk in good condition, a couple of live albums...and tucked into the gatefold of one, a pack of rolling papers, $100+ in cash and a slew of checks, all out-of-date by a good 15 years or so. Near as I could figure, whoever owned this live Kinks album was using the gatefold for something else :) and ended up tucking his lawnmowing money in there, promptly forgetting about it in the ensuing fog.)
Now to you...what were your surprising finds when you acquired a tape you were intending to erase?
I share this in the hope that I will be among fellow travelers, and that this won't come off horribly strange.
One of the fascinating things for me is not just acquiring the soon-to-be blanks, but also checking to see what had been left there before. It's like listening to a time capsule, things that someone else held dear, and sometimes it's revealed songs I hadn't heard before, or completely forgotten. I'd hate to bulk-erase music that might have some value to me, in my anxiousness to get tapes for my own use. (I hasten to add that if it's a private correspondence, an audio letter or diary, I erase it forthwith, as the contents aren't really any of my business.)
Around 2005, I went yardsaling and purchased, for five dollars, a box with something like 100-odd tapes. A substantive number were sealed blanks, reason enough to shell out the funds, but there were also a lot of classical recordings and the like - the seller had been a music student or professor, and had amassed a wide selection of music over time, including a Tom Lehrer performance and some decent Billie Holiday transfers. The down side: a lot of the recordings were in dbx, and therefore not all that usable for me.
A couple years ago, I found a TDK MA 110 at a Goodwill, at a fire sale price. Popped it in to make sure it was in good shape, and was surprised to hear a Waterboys concert recording that appeared to be taken from a radio or TV broadcast, probably around 1993-ish. Further surprise towards the end of the tape was the band covering Prince's "Purple Rain" in an almost letter-perfect version.
(Off-topic, there was also a time where some stranger walked into the record store I was working in, dropping off a boxful of vinyl albums he'd acquired, some from other people, for a yard sale. The man, in his sixties, didn't want them and couldn't sell them them at the yard sale. So...the box came to us, to see if any of our staff wanted to add to their collections. Basically, no one else was interested, so I went through them. Found a copy of Tusk in good condition, a couple of live albums...and tucked into the gatefold of one, a pack of rolling papers, $100+ in cash and a slew of checks, all out-of-date by a good 15 years or so. Near as I could figure, whoever owned this live Kinks album was using the gatefold for something else :) and ended up tucking his lawnmowing money in there, promptly forgetting about it in the ensuing fog.)
Now to you...what were your surprising finds when you acquired a tape you were intending to erase?