alphastreet said:

purplethunder3121 said:

My Dad was strict and religious but he didn't stop us from listening to the music we wanted. I don't think he paid much attention... He even got my sister and I eight-track players one Christmas. That was right before they stopped making them.

Aw that sounds like a sweet memory

I think he got them because they were dirt cheap since eight tracks were due to be discontinued. Eight tracks sucked.

[Edited 12/19/20 19:04pm]

JayCrawford said:

Buying records will always overcome "streaming" platforms easily. Nothing beats buying records at the shop and just looking at the album cover itself, it had that theme to it to describe what this album is about. None of the easy skip bullshit through singles like you can now. Man I miss the vinyl era (60s-80s). Cassettes were awful (unless you didn't have the money to buy records then sure it was convenient for recording stuff off the radio and playing it later). But nothing tops records.

You got that right. They didn't have nearly the power, strength, and thump of the vinyl. That's because they were homemade. When I was growing up, there was so much good stuff of the radio that naturally, I wasn't going to be able to buy each and everything I liked....although I sure hell tried to. For me, cassettes were something for recording songs off of the radio for the purpose of hearing them whenever I wanted to until I was able to get the money to eventually buy the record. Cassettes were only a temporary fix for me because I was never satisfied that the recordings weren't perfect. Kids these days have all these expensive gadgets like their own cell phones, computers, and other gadgets that costs hundreds of dollars but the average kid didn't have all these different gadgets of their own when I was growing up unless they were rich. Remember back when it was a major dream of so many teenage girls to have a phone in their room and their parents would tell them "hell naw"? We weren't spoiled like these kids these days. A lot of kids didn't have a stereo of their own so they listened to their parents' stereo. If they had something of their own, it was either a boom box or a simple tabletop stereo. Nothing with real power and thump like component systems or console stereos of their own because they cost too much money and those things were usually owned by grown people, not kids.

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I started out with a little Snoopy record player. Remember those? I think every kid started out with something like that in those days. They closed up like a little suitcase. There wasn't just Snoopy, there were record players with all sorts of cartoon characters on them. My sister had a Raggedy Ann record player. Then I advanced to putting a tape recorder up next to my mother's stereo speakers and recording songs off the radio. When I graduated elementary into junior high, my grandmother bought me a tabletop stereo. It had a radio, 8 track player, and record player on top. 8 tracks were the thing back then and the majority of stereos didn't have cassette players on them unless they were extremely expensive stereos. Even a tabletop stereo with a cassette player was going to be over $200 and a child was definitely not going to get a present that cost that much. If you got something that costed $100, it had to be something major like a graduation or something. Hell, you didn't even get something that expensive at Christmas.

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I eventually got a boom box and was able to directly record off the radio without background noise from the room. I wasn't satisfied because I couldn't play the recordings on something more high powered like my mother's stereo because it had an 8 track player, not a cassette player. That's why records were more important to me because I was able to play them on something with power and feel the thump of them. When I graduated junior high into high school, my grandmother finally bought me a tabletop stereo with a cassette player/recorder and also not just an 8 track player but the 8 track player had a record button on it. I had worried the hell out of them for years wanting an 8 track recorder because that was going to be the way for my to finally achieve my goal of being able to play my recordings on something bigger and more high powered. I noticed that when I played the recordings I made on my boom box on my tabletop stereo, they sounded weak with not much bass. They didn't have the thump and power that I wanted. And when I made recordings from the tabletop stereo, I brought them to a friend's house who had a component sytem and they sounded weak on his stereo so I STILL wasn't satisfied.

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After many years of working as an adult, I finally bought a component stystem with the works and the recordings I would make on that thing, I could take the tape into a nightclub which had amps that would play music much louder than anything I owned, and the music on the tape sounded great coming for their speakers. But even then, cassettes are no match for records or even CDs because of all that fast forwarding and rewinding. You could never throw a party with continuous music with cassettes because you would spend all that time fast forwarding and rewinding between the two decks trying to find another song to play before the current song ends. Unless you recorded a cassette of your own with various songs by various artists before you had a party and just let the tape play, which is mainly the only reason I liked cassettes. Cassettes for me, were stictly a format for me to make my own mixes but I certainly didn't see them as something that could take the place of having the record or CD.

lastdecember said:

purplethunder3121 said:

Yeah, but unlike streaming I could record whatever I wanted off the radio on cassettes as a kid and then play them when I wanted since I couldn't afford to buy albums and could only to buy 45s for two for a dollar... Didn't discover used vinyl until I was older...

yeah my older brother did this all the time and then I started trying to tape things off the radio always starting a second too late or the dj talking over something but that was how I collected till I started saving my allowance and buying 45s at first then albums and then on to cds etc...

A DJ talking over the music has been a major complaint of people that recorded songs off the radio. I never worried about trying to stop a recording before the DJ would start talking at the end of the song because I knew I could always rewind the tape to an earlier spot before he started talking and when I started recording the next song, it would record over that portion. What I hated is if he talked too much at the beginning of the song. I was so obsessed with my tapes being perfect that I would stop a recording of a previous song at a point where it didn't sound like it stopped abruptly. Then for the next song, I wouldn't start the recording until it sounded like it was beginning naturally so the flow between songs would sound natural. Some DJs though, would talk all the way through the intro of the song until the vocals started and I wasn't about to begin a song with none of the intro.

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And the afterwards when I would listen to the finished tape, I would be pissed because I didn't like the order of which the songs were placed on the tape. I kept thinking.... "This song here would sound good behind that song and the song that is on the tape doesn't sound like it belongs behind that song."..... But when you are recording off the radio, you have no choice of which order you want the songs on the tape. You either record it when the DJ plays it or you don't get to record it at all.

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[Edited 12/19/20 19:01pm]

phunkdaddy said:

JayCrawford said:

phunkdaddy said: Exactly

I remember when CD's took off in popularity around 1993 and 1994 Circuit City always sold

cassettes cheaper than CD's.

A large portion of the 1990s was the only time I bought pre-recorded cassettes because CD players were still too expensive and vinyl was almost extinct so it was either buy the cassette or do without. The very first thing I did when I bought a CD player around the time of Prince's "Crystal Ball" album, was to go back and buy all the Prince CDs of the 1990s before they went out of print and get rid of those damn cassettes. Then, of course, I had to go back and buy all the previous Prince albums on CD so I could have the entire collection on the same format. And no, I did NOT do away with the Prince vinyl like I did with the cassettes.

purplethunder3121 said:

Try having your ass beaten by your mum with a belt because of Love To Love You Baby 😂

vainandy said:

Snoopy record player was my best friend for years lol, even though it looked like a lunch box but I remember it. They broke pretty damn easy on me though lol.

Another problem with tapes is that they never lasted that long and it would go all ape shit retard mode on you and then the strings would come out and that's it. Bye bye worn out tape.

Running a party with a cassette mix tape was a pain in the ass because of the sound quality and having rewind since there wasn't no instant skip bullshit like there is today lol. Not only that but how it would stay stuck on a certain song and you think to yourself "what is going on why is only on 1 hit" next thing you know... Worn out

That base the record player had when you put that needle on and you hear the song 😍 magical. Nothing can replace it.

But tapes were only good for recording shit off the radio if you wanted to hear any upcoming news for music or even BBC news on the radio which I ended up doing more than music then. Recording stuff off the tape was too much hassle as well. Everything had to be on point.

I thank the lord my dad worked at a record store because those bad boys weren't some cheap shit then lol.
[Edited 12/19/20 20:55pm]

JayCrawford said:

[Edited 12/19/20 20:50pm]

JayCrawford said:

Omg!!! Imagine the look of your dad’s face after accidentally hearing foxy brown moaning in pain on a CD that automatically started playing. That was my similar moment in my teens, I’m lucky he didn’t take the cd away from me

domainator2010 said:

Come on, mate. I appreciate the sentiment in your post, but all that is a fraction of the total music that today's young people consume, isn't it?

I just remembered. It's the younger generation who came up with Rickrolling. Rick Astley probably still has a career because of that. He's the meme king.

vainandy said:

They didn't grow up with complete style changes around every five years like we did. They were born in the 1990s when music had already turned to bullshit. The same shit dominates today that dominated when they were born with no real major style changes so bullshit is all they have ever known and all they will ever accept. I'm just glad that a lot of them are happy listening to their foolishness on their little phones so I can easily ground it out with my stereo and never have to hear their mess. I also hope they keep downloading and not buying songs so hopefully these bullshit so-called artists can eventually go broke. Hell, they don't deserve to be paid anyway since they have no musical ability.

I always thought software engineers were highly paid?

purplethunder3121 said:

I think he got them because they were dirt cheap since eight tracks were due to be discontinued. Eight tracks sucked.

There's a company in Texas that still makes 8 track tapes.

just saw this thread, thought i’d share some light.

so, i’m 18 years old. here’s everything i can say about music and the young people:

most people think of rap as the main style of popular music today. right now, tho, the number one track is a ballad by a 17 year old (drivers license - olivia rodrigo). rap gets so much hate now and it kind of confuses me. sure, i understand that maybe the lyrics aren’t as meaningful as rappers of the past were, but there is some incredible talent on the production of the tracks, and rappers themselves. rappers have always been very talented, taking music of other artists and showing what else can be done with it. i think modern music gets too much of a bad rep. trust me, THERE IS GOOD MUSIC BEING MADE TODAY! people just don’t like change, so obviously you won’t like today’s music. also, prince’s influence is EVERYWHERE. all the drum machines, electronic sounds you hear in today’s music... that’s because of the 1999 album, people.

you might be surprised to know that older music is coming back very rapidly. The Beatles, Queen, Elton John, and Fleetwood Mac are actually pretty popular now. granted, these artists have been promoted heavily lately (documentary-movies, tik tok blowing up Rumors). this is why many young people see Prince as “the gay guy who did Purple Rain in the 80s” (wish this was a joke)- the estate needs to do something to get young people into Prince so he can stick around. young people (me not included) don’t necessarily want a box set of ~40 unreleased songs from a man who was in his prime nearly 40 years ago; they need to do something that will spark interest - maybe rerelease the film “Purple Rain” in theaters in the near future or something. (i’m not saying i’m against SDE’s, but they’ll need to get younger people into Prince somehow, and only releasing Parade Deluxe simply won’t get the youth hip to Prince).

since we all use streaming (hate me for it, i’m sorry), we can find virtually every song that has ever been written in seconds and listen to it. this helps older artists stay relevant, as apple music (i don’t use anything else, honestly) does push older music as much as new music on their explore pages.

as for the issue of music in schools... music isn’t seen as an important job anymore. it sucks, but it’s not a high-paying field and the jobs you can get are so uncertain, so schools are cutting funds to focus on things students are more likely to go into. i think it’s crucial for students to be exposed to music- if i never had to pick up an instrument for school, i wouldn’t have figured out how much i enjoy playing multiple instruments. if there was a way to fix this, i’m sure it would be done. but schools are all about money, and there ain’t much money to be found in the music wing.

sorry for the long post, but i don’t know how many young people use the org, so i figured i’d shed some light onto how music is perceived by the younger generations.
[Edited 2/2/21 21:28pm]

FasterThan67 said:

Wow, you really are 18
Gary Numan did that before Prince and 1999 was Prince being mainly inspired by Numan and Blade Runner.
I think Numan's first solo outting and Tubeway Army's last release is more influental than 1999 ever was.

But anyway, I don't see how 'we' are doomed when someone younger than us is listening and enjoying something we don't. My grandparents were schooled in Jazz and when the Beatles came out my dad was big into them and my grandparents said the same what all of you say about todays shitty music.
To my grandparents The Beatles and everything that followed them was formualic garbage music (a,b,a,b,c,b). But why care? It's not like classic songs are lost forever. This is really a pretentious topic