Cassette Revolution: Why 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World

The cassette tape: smaller than an 8-track, more portable than vinyl, and most importantly, you could record your own mix tapes. What’s not to love? Well, they did hang up occasionally and the sound quality deteriorated with use. But cassettes were special because affordable recording machines made everyone a recording artist.

The global cassette-trading network flourished in the early ’80s—with musicians like Australian experimentalist Warren Burt and the Northern Californian industrial group Psyclones, featuring Julie Frith and Brian Ladd, at the forefront. Hal McGee and his then-girlfriend Deborah Jaffe had been recording experimental music in their apartment since 1981, he says, “but at that time, we weren’t aware that there were hundreds and perhaps thousands of other people worldwide who were doing the same thing.”

Fortunately, the technology for home-recording music arrived around the same time as the widespread use of the copy machine, which allowed regular people to also publish their own zines, as well as the paper covers that wrap cassettes known as “J-cards.” Around 1982, McGee’s friend and fellow home-taper Rick Karcasheff introduced him to “OP” magazine, an Olympia, Washington-based zine, which was filled with 50- to 100-word reviews of homemade tape cassettes. Each review would include a postal address so tapers could write to each other to buy or trade cassettes.

“When I discovered the cassette network, it was a revelation,” McGee says. “Instead of corporate music, you had very unique viewpoints of not just music, but reality. Every cassette is a one-of-a-kind artifact because they’re not like digital media. Sure, an artist can make several copies of a cassette, but every copy is slightly different than another. ‘OP’ had little reviews for cassettes that people were trading, and I’d mail my own tape to ‘em. And those people sent their tapes back to us, so there was a give-and-take of creative ideas. It was really exciting.”

Believe it or not, cassettes are making a comeback! Buying and recording cassettes has become a hip thing for Millennials. The reasons why are part of the comprehensive history of cassettes you can read at Collectors Weekly.

(Image credit: Don Campau)