Converted a few more cassettes today. Some in a series called "Life Tape" featured bands I had not listened to the last time I listened to the tape. My "Life Tape" series came as the successor to the "College Tape" series. I used to have an answering machine that used cassettes. I would transfer messages from the answering machine tape to a separate cassette and then fill in the rest of the tape with the songs I listened to at the time. In hindsight, it was like an audio diary. I can hear voices of people I haven't seen or thought about for over 20 years.
But today it was listening to Life Tapes from 1995, 1996, and 1998. I'm sure there are others. The difference between a College Tape and a Life Tape is that a Life Tape has no answering machine messages because that machine was replaced with a micro cassette machine and after then a machine with no external storage like a cassette. You press the Play button and the message plays. Like those College Tapes, the Life Tapes are an audio diary of what music and what bands I liked at the time. A lot of the bands are no longer together and that's too bad.
What I'm converting now is a 60 minute cassette called "Assume's Greatest Moments Vol. I" and what a trip. There's the first song I ever *EVER* played with James, the first time James and I *EVER* played with Ken and, unfortunately, the last time Assume rehearsed, which was late August 1989 when it was just James, Ken, and I butchering Whitesnake's "Slide It In" with desparately out of tune guitars. James' guitar string breaks towards the end and it's up to Ken and I (yes, the same Ken from the other day) to bring the song home.
There's also the hilarious time James and I tried to play "The Shortest Straw." It was, at the time, the fastest I had ever tried to play. I stopped and complained that it was too fast and that it hurt to play. The always sympathetic James snarls, "Well play it any way! No pain no gain!"
Isn't that the way it is in life? No pain, no gain.
