| you are not the last person to use tapes with pride. this 24-year old white boy from new york city still sees tapes as the ultimate piece of mobile urban music. i own plenty of cds -- have to admit that i
just broke down and bought one of those sad leatherette book cases for them -- but to me nothing
will top the tape. friends talk to me about their 10-second anti-skip discmen and i wonder how they hold up when you're running up stairs in a crowd for the 4 train in downtown manhattan. i loved walkmans and tapes so much that i don't even buy the models with radio anymore. i too have fond memories of hitting reverse, or of flipping the tape in one hand.
there's something to cds and digital music in general -- ethics of copyright aside, it would not be a bad thing at all if mp3s broke the digital divide a little more and we were all walking around with something like a walkman that was half the size and twice as good. but unless you're dragging that big book around on a trip in mom's minivan, there's nothing compact about an easily scratchable piece of plastic that doesn't fit in your pocket.
thanks for a great article.
- paul benzon |
