Then there is the
issue of getting around to transferring this to digital later on. I feel
like I used to be more prompt about it, but when you do 30 shows in a row
you come "home" with a box full of tapes, hoping you didn't lose any or tape
over the wrong sides of some, then they sit there for a couple years cos I
don't have the time to re-listen to hours and hours of shows that I might
already have mixed feelings about, just to have em suck away all the space
on my 30 gig hard drive...
There is this
completely ridiculous Toecutter recording from Rotterdam I have been
meaning to find in a box of mostly unlabeled tapes from this year, and I
know it would be really cool to track it down for him, myself,
friends... but man just looking at the box of ??? tapes, then at my list
of more pressing obligations... next thing I know the tape is in
Cincinnati and I wound up back in LA. There are too many recordings that
have fallen into similar scenarios over the years. I have bad thoughts
of the flimsy tape crumbling and all the little magnetic shit turning to
dust cos I couldn't deal with it sooner. Any sentiment is totally
outweighed by burden.
One thing I have
appreciated about the taperecorder is that it's battery-powered, and I
have been rocking some re-chargables for a few years now. My old
computer's battery could not hold a charge so if it was unplugged during
some audience's bodily surge in a basement, the recording was just gone,
no way around it. There were a couple instances in which the guy running
sound (I swear I will murder him yet! Who's with me?) was for one reason
or another determined to cut the band off. First they cut the power to
the house's system, but we are usually also playing out of our own
system. There was one time in particular the sound guy just came over
and started randomly pulling out plugs, frantically trying to stop
anything even remotely similar to gabber from happening. Another time I
remember a guy, frustrated that we had our own PA after he'd turned the
house's off, cut the power to the whole room, even the lights... So the
recordings were lost cos of the computer's need to "save" the wav data.
That doesn't happen with the physicality of a tape; what you've got is
what you've got. The only thing that can take it away is taping over it
when you forgot which side is blank.
Someday, like
other grueling and questionably worthwhile projects, I will sift through
all those tapes and probably find a few really cool things that I had
completely forgotten about. Kind of like a time capsule or some shit.
Hopefully it won't suck quite as much as most time capsules I've heard
about, but I won't get my hopes up. Half the time I probably put the
recorder too close to the PA = it will be utterly unlistenable and
undecipherable.
So, in
conclusion, to anybody reading Cassette Gods who ironically hates tapes
and recording shows with them, please feel encouraged to donate to me
some kind of mini-disc recorder or whatever is more current and reliable
technology for field recordings. My taperecorder is from Target and can
suck it once I find something better to rely on.
PS. I am involved
with CG to review HARDCORE tapes and related styles such as grind,
gabber, noisecore, powerviolence, speedcore... If you send me something
asking for a review that is not within this "ballpark" you will be
fucking sorry. There are other writers in CG who do a great job with
tapes as far as noise and the less-aggro avant-garde, so keep them in
mind for that instead of me. If I ever write about something completely
unrelated to HxC on CG it should be seen as a special case and not
something sent to me with a request attached. But if you have HxC or
anything remotely related, hit me up and it's on.