It's Cassette Store Day!

Some of my cassettes, incl several cassette-only releases

Cassette Store Day is today. It's a spin off from Record Store Day, tho the organisers of that have disassociated themselves from it. Odd. See From Vintage replay, it's cassette store day (Chicago Sun Times)

I bought a cassette deck last year off Trademe for the grand sum of $13, to digitise some old cassettes. That photo above is some of the cassettes I pulled out from storage, mainly mid 1990s releases. Roger Sings The Hits was a handful of Flying Nun bands (JPSE, SJF etc) covering other Nun acts, recorded in one day - September 19, 1991 - at Incubator Studio (now Studio 223) on Symond  St.

It was a limited run of 500 and only available for sale at Flying Nun's 10th anniversary gig at the Powerstation the following night, on Sept 20, 1991.

Then there's BFM's tape of Dad's Tips. And bottom left is a cool post punk Wellington outfit called Neoteric Tribesmen. Above them is the second album from Projector Mix (aka Mike Hodgson later in Pitch Black). That album is getting a digital reissue soon. Yay!

Here's one cassette I digitised, a wicked DLT remix of Teremoana's Four Women song.




Bonus: Letter from Radio With Pictures producer Peter Blake rejecting a video by The Neoteric Tribemen that featured use of the word 'shit'. Source: Up The Punks.

Cassette Store Day - Sept 7

From Vintage replay, it's cassette store day (Chicago Sun Times)

"... Cassette Store Day is off to the same organic start of Record Store Day, before Record Store Day got all tangled up in rules and regulations.

“The Record Store Day people sent us something months ago that said they had nothing to do with Cassette Store Day,” said Rick Wojcik, owner of Dusty Groove, 1120 N. Ashland, Chicago, my neighborhood record store. “We had never heard of Cassette Store Day. We thought it was a tounge-in cheek thing a few weeks ago (Cassette Store Day does not have much information) but now we’re looking at some products we’re putting out Saturday. We also have piles of vintage cassettes we’ve tried to sell over the years and don’t have much of a market for. We’re going to give everybody a vintage cassette while supplies last.”

... One of the most compelling markets for cassette came after the death of the 12-inch rhythm and blues single.

“No one knows how to pitch it,” Wojcik said. “Towards the end of the 1980s a lot of distributors were not selling as much vinyl to Mom and Pops. They were not allowing returns on vinyl, but they would allow returns on cassettes. The cassette single was huge in the 1990s, specifically in R&B. I know one Chicago hip-hop producer, pre-Common, who had a great act who didn’t have the money to press it on 12 inch and cassette single. So he decided to put it on cassette single. And it’s a great lost hip-hop track. DJs couldn’t play it.”