GROWING UP
The school bus tape swap and the one guy who had everything
Trading mixtapes on the school bus ran on trust, not rules. Somebody always had the good collection, and you paid for access.
Yoav Gal
TAPE CULTURE
How to fix a cassette tape a deck ate
A deck ate your cassette and left a loop of ribbon hanging out. Here is the pencil-and-patience rescue, and when to let it go.
SOUND
What the loudness button on a vintage receiver really did
The loudness button boosted bass and treble at low volume because your ears miss both when it's quiet. Here's when it still matters.
GROWING UP
The first record you bought with your own money
Not what you bought, but the twenty minutes before it: the aisle, the math in your head, and the walk to the counter.
GROWING UP
The number on your arm: waiting overnight for tickets
Folding chairs outside the ticket outlet, a payphone as your only clock, and the Bic pen number on your forearm that decided your luck.
TAPE CULTURE
Nebraska: the desert island record cut on a Teac four-track
Springsteen's Nebraska (1982), recorded alone on a Teac 144 cassette four-track, is the one album I would never trade for the full-band version.
SCREEN
Is Spinal Tap based on a real band? No, all of them
This Is Spinal Tap isn’t one band’s story. It’s built from a hundred real tour disasters, which is why road musicians can’t laugh at it clean.
STYLE
Band logos on your book cover, and on your Chuck Taylors
The brown paper book cover and the rubber toe of your Chucks were the real canvas, long before anyone said battle jacket.
RADIO DAYS
Why college radio lives at 88 to 92 on the FM dial
The FCC walled off the bottom of the FM band for noncommercial stations, which is why your college station sat way left of the dial.
VINYL
How to clean a used record without wrecking it
Discwasher brush, correct direction, and what never touches a thrift store find: the real difference between filthy and damaged.
GROWING UP
Calling the radio station to request a song, over and over
Redial, busy signal, redial. What it actually took to get a request on the air, and why hanging up sometimes felt better.
VINYL
Desert island album: The Cure’s Disintegration
The Cure’s Disintegration earns its four sides: the long intros, the dead center of the sequencing, and what to check on a real 1989 pressing.