Saturday, 18 April 2015

Things I Miss #1

In the 1970s and 1980s one could not walk down a street without seeing the spool from a broken cassette tape spilling along the pavement and wrapping itself around lampposts and trees. I suppose most were thrown from car windows after getting jammed in cassette players. It was sometimes possible to rewind the tape into the cassette using a hexagonal pencil or a Bic biro.

A friend tells me they were also used for voodoo: one would record onto a blank cassette the person’s name and what ills one hoped would befall them; and then the cassette would be stamped on and the tape left to unravel in the wind and, it was hoped, the enemy’s life would then also begin to unravel

1 comment:

  1. Yes, I remember these. I once idly picked up a prolapsed cassette tape I found in the park, rewound it and refixed the broken join to the spool. It had no writing on it but I decided I rather liked the music. In time I discovered it was "Machine Head" by Deep Purple.

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