“Tape Archives, Revisited”

c. 2019 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(2-19)

Personal Note: A recent episode of ‘Cult Radio A Go-Go Live’ featured a vintage program on cassette tape from the early career of Terry DuFoe. A tribute to Elvis Presley, shortly after his death. While listening, I began to puzzle over unearthing some of my own past recordings. What follows here is the story of that adventure.

Cassette tapes.

Around 1970, I first experimented with this analog format, after using reel-to-reel recorders and while flirting with the popular, but flawed, 8-track brick. It was inexpensive, portable, and user-friendly. For song ideas, it made a perfect audio notepad. Twenty years later, I was still using the same method to capture demos of my crude, original compositions. With a guitar, and a book of scribbled lyrics, these blank shells of magnetic tape could do anything.

Except outlast time itself.

When my father passed away in 2018, I began to ponder the journey that had taken me from childhood to the point of retirement. Sorting through the home of my parents began this process. But it continued with a nostalgic thrash through my own heap of stuff. Here and there, I discovered that cherished relics had tarnished over time. Their condition did not match the enduring perfection of my memories. Antiques were broken. Books were scattered. Magazines were shredded.

VHS videos and cassette tapes were sometimes dusty, moldy, sticky, and wrinkled inside.

I quickly learned to approach each artifact with the care and patience of an archaeologist. This meant that going through the collection was tedious. My yearning for echoes of yonder days had to be stilled in favor of caution. Every moment of imprinted tape was precious.

My own personal song archives rested in a green footlocker from the Kmart in Ithaca, New York. Carefully sorted in storage containers were volumes of work going back to 1976. The tapes traced an evolutionary path from basement doodles with guitar to more modern, fully-expressed ideas. Around 500 demo tracks were included, up to the middle 1990’s. When career aspirations took over, and my newspaper routine began to flourish, these scraps of inspiration were abandoned, out of necessity.

Then, Father Time intervened.

Due to health issues, I had to retire at age 55. A step I took without enough preparation or knowledge. The struggles that followed were many. But while handling details of my late father’s estate and the care of my mother, these treasures resurfaced.

The green footlocker was hidden under a football blanket, in the midst of my front hallway. During an interlude of winter mayhem sired by the Polar Vortex, I had become homebound for several days. Huddled indoors, with temperatures below zero, my ears were tickled by whispers from this weathered casket. “Let us live!” it seemed to plead. “Let us live again!”

Just moving the footlocker was a chore, as I could not walk without my Invacare cane. I had to flip it sideways, onto the couch. When opened, it reeked of must like an Egyptian tomb. But then, a portal opened to yesteryear. Old photo albums were inside, with magazines, cigarette cartons, Rock & Roll pins and buttons, diaries, souvenirs and… selected boxes of audio cassettes.

My stereo system had developed a malady of sorts, when being moved from the living room to the back office, a few years ago. I needed to re-wire its speakers. But the chore required more mobility and vision than I had in my present condition. So I checked Dad’s old Sony radio from West Virginia. After a cleaning, the device still would not play tapes in a competent manner. So I rummaged through the front closet for my oversized, Sanyo AM-FM-Shortwave boom-box.

That device worked well enough. Now, I could begin the excavation.

I immediately remembered Terry DuFoe’s comments about his radio tapes. “They might work, or blow up. We don’t know what to expect!” I wound each cassette through all the way, and back again, before listening. Some warbled a bit from usage wear. Others were damaged and refused to produce anything more than an electrified cry for relief. But most still yielded their contents willingly.

The first was a session in 1979. I had my $14.00 Teisco guitar (possibly a Kawaii product) and homemade amplifier fashioned from a discarded tape-player chassis. My television co-host, David Bly, played a set of bongos. He also provided the recording apparatus. We were in the control room at WTCC-13. Next was a two-song set by the Lazy Sods, also from that year, our only recording as a group. Then came a practice tape from Cayuga Lake, in 1981. A document with more polish and greater musical skills, but less authentic energy.

The afternoon passed as I captured five videos with my iPhone.

The green footlocker had only begun to reveal its wealth of vintage tapes. Yet my appetite had been sated. I decided to continue the experience on another day. For now, one goal swelled my consciousness.

I needed to write.

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