Back-in-the-day (TM) (C), the cassette was all that most normal folk had to record anything on. I certainly didn't have a computer of my own when I first got decks. My brother had one, but I wouldn't have known how to use it and I doubt it would have been up to recording a tapes worth of audio...and even if I did manage it, who would I have given it to (a massive wav file, no such thing as MP3!)?
Technology is great....but I do think the old ways had their special thing about them. The internet is great, but depending on the person, it can be a positive or a negative, even with music and mixes. For example, I can play oldskool mixes all day and night off Youtube until I can get sick and tired of it!
It may inspire some people to start mixing, but it de-motivates me to do so because I know there are just so many mixes and DJ's out there, mostly using the same tracks, what's the point of copying that or playing that, and why would anyone even care about yet another DJ and yet another oldskool mix?
Back in the days of the early 90s, you had to record things to tape, get it right too. You weren't swamped with other mixes at the finger tips. If you wanted a dance music mix tape you had to go to the right record shops or find people who also mixed records and swap tapes. You'd take them into school, college....on the walkman.
You'd get a tape pack, say, Piano Classics, Fantazia, and you'd rock that tape as the only way to really hear the tunes and get the vibe. The tape was special, a part of your life, something to keep and have a special place for. Now, everything just seems so disposable, distant, on-tap, to be expected to be there then discarded at the click of a new link.
But of course, without the net and all the tunes and mixes, most folk wouldn't know what 80% of the tunes are called lol. That's good......yet also frustrating as somebody who used to trek to record shops all over the northwest and Wales trying to find tunes, spending hours on my knees in floor-boxes and subsequently stacking a pile as high as my head on the counter, waiting for some decks to come free to check them all out on, because that "unity" titled track, or that "take my body" titled track may just be that holy grail you've been looking for!
There's not much of that any more. Discogs, HTFR etc killed it. Things are just a click away, or on a "recommended for you" banner. Record shops, what's left of them, tend to even use laptops and Discogs to price items up before they sell you anything, to make sure they haven't missed some sort of gem!
But, because things have changed, we have to use these things now to get hold of stuff. I have gained a fair few names over the last decade or so thanks to the net and such sites. It's a mixed bag.
I still have a few hundred TDK, BASF, tapes of radio shows, essential mixes, but I am doing another major purge. I do not want to take these forward in my life and into my new home. I plan to cut it down to 50 or 60 tops...which means recording into the computer! (Ironically). Will I ever play it all though? Probably not. I probably own more music (tapes, CDs, records, downloaded mixes) than I could ever listen to in what's left of an average human lifetime.
