What should we do with our old tapes? We don’t have an answer yet, so for the moment I’ll play them one more time to see what happens.

I picked up this one with Joni Mitchell and a bit of John Lee Hooker and brought it along to my ride between Rotterdam and Tilburg. An old tape from 1991. And now I don’t know what to do with the old tapes.

Because there was a story attached to this cassette, as there are many stories attached to the other many tapes that have survived. Even the fact that they have survived is a feature difficult to replicate with our digital equivalents.
And the story goes to the making of the tape, to the moments the tape was played, and the listeners, their reactions, and all the associations.

“Shadow and Light”, Joni Mitchell live on a tape of a cd (which missed a couple of numbers from the LP Album). A tape that I recorded back there in Caracas, from a CD that Umberto Pepe lend me for a couple of weeks. Well, in those days we did that. There was this circle of friends that used to exchange CD’s or LP ‘s, just to exchange a bit of music and expand ones appreciation or tape collection. Anyway, there were these legendary collections, like that of Umberto, Oscar Rodriguez or the inaccessible César Salazar. My friend Juan Castillo had good music, but the collection he accessed was more the disperse, incomplete collection of 8 brothers. It was vast and vague, with particular owners and no owner at all.

The tape played in the car. Joni played together with her magnificient band; Pat Metheny, Don Elias, Lyle Mays, Michael Brecker and Jaco Pastorius. There on the cassette cover a couple of stars written next to “Hejira” , “Amelia” and “Pat’s Solo”. Well, stars! A little bit ahead of (iPod) time. Of course, a tape is a tape of 60 minutes, or 90. How many LP’s or combination of them fit into a tape perfectly? One had always to search the extra numbers, the additional artist who was going to fill the gap. For some people, a terrible dilemma. Not for me. So there was John Lee Hooker, with some numbers from “ The Healer”, but not the title track. I once told Umberto: “ that CD from John Lee Hooker, be careful, it is better to listen it at night, after eleven perhaps” And still there was this cassette with some tracks on it, ready to be played at any moment. Day or night.

Labels: Antonio, caracas, music, tapes

¶ 10/10/2008 04:01:00 PM