The clearing-out continues. After today’s thrift store donation visit, I own zero music cassettes. I had for years intended to copy some of them to disc, but then reasoned that it had been years since I’d played any of them, and that when I do miss the music on them, I can find it on the web.
Having said that, I just checked and found that neither Small Town Romance nor Daring Aventures is available in MP3 form from Amazon. Yes, I know that doesn’t mean that there are no MP3s out there.
I got the other two tapes in the pile I photographed via tape trading, an archaic procedure whereby fans would actually exchange tangible objects in order to expand their music collections. The 1994 Cat’s Cradle show was in some ways the best of the booty things thus obtained.
Anyway, I donated the pre-recorded cassettes, along with most of my CDs. Again, I intended to do a lot of copying to disc, but again decided that time was too short, and the web too good a source of music, for that to be worthwhile. When I choose to keep a CD, it was usually one with good liner notes, track details, etc. For example, I did keep my Watching The Dark: The History of Richard Thompson box set.
And yes, I do have music by other people…