8 tracks?

Just kidding. I don't have any of those but I do have plenty of cassette tapes. I just can't let them go. I even have a two cassette stereo component with my music equipment.

Yeah it is true that at least I do not have any eight-tracks but still. I should throw in the towel with the cassettes and let all that go. Part of my inability to chuck all this stuff that I never use out the door is an old habitat.

When I was growing up with LP's, cassettes and eight-track tapes I was always very careful to protect my recordings. Part of that was often times recording a new album to a cassette so I did not harm the album by playing it too much. Not that they were that fragile, but every time you play an LP (especially with butter fingers like mine) there is the risk of a scratch. I was also dealing with this stuff when the quality of most vinyl records were pure crap. Poor quality control, cheap materials and a commitment to try to make the cheapest material that the medium could stand.

Another matter was that when I had records, I had a record collection. That soon expanded into a cassette and record collection but still the records were the core. I never bought a record, did not like it and got rid of it. There were plenty that went the one-two step but instead of heave hoing the bad, they backstopped the better things. They remained a part of the "collection." Kind of hilarious because I bought some of the most mainstream crap that you could imagine. Me and millions of others had the same records, with most of them pressed on crappy vinyl. It all eventually got lost in the shuffle of moving long after I got rid of my last record player.

Somehow a box or two of cassettes hung around. Later they grew larger as I would occasionally buy a cassette for what was then my car player. Later still I started listening to other kinds of things on cassette – talks and lectures. Those too were added to things. It is almost like this stuff grew larger of its own accord. Where did it all come from? Years of accumulation, lots of time in the car and my love of listening to stuff – music, spoken stuff, whatever.

Weird to even write all this in the age of mp3's, CDs and DVDs. Maybe writing this will motivate me to get rid of this stuff! Somehow though I doubt it. They are not as heavy as albums, are a little easier to hide away in a box, in a corner in a part of the house where stuff like that can be stored.