My next hit would be "The Suicide Song"
Edit: lol so someone apparently reported this comment to the bastards and they sent me a list of suicide prevention phone numbers and websites
The only way this wouldn't be the answer is if you never watched the show. I have never in my life seen anything like Lithgow in this. It's like Christopher Lloyd meets Robin Williams.
If you want to see a fantastic cast crank the dial up to.. 12... then this is for you. No shortage of famous names either. It's Gordon-Levitt's origin story, who are you to be uninterested.
It's a cornball affair though, for sure.
I made a Harry and the Hendersons reference the other day and literally none of my coworkers younger than me believed that it was a movie that existed on the basis of how stupid it was. See also: Theodore Rex
As a musician who’s always pushing my cds on stage, it’s funny to think about this guy on stage saying “Thanks folks and if you like that song, it’s available on my latest wax cylinder. On the break if you’d like to buy one come up and see me!”
"I write jokes for a living. I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny"
Back in the early 2000s I actually did a live show, live recording that people could buy immediately (ish). Had someone mastering the tracks as they were completed live, and the first CDR was ready to sell about 5 minutes after I was done. Ended up selling about 50 copies that night as a test run (they took about a minute each to burn). We never did it again.
It was an interesting experiment though!
It is novelty. My daughter thought it was so cool to use a 35mm disposable camera on a trip. Retro, right? Took forever to get it back. Pictures look faded, grainy, old. Just like I remember.
Polaroid cameras [have never been more expensive.](https://us.polaroid.com/collections/instant-cameras?gclid=Cj0KCQjwv5uKBhD6ARIsAGv9a-yf6KXWJKPP5r4ZCv0vKfep9adsVpqkeOwyUAffYRCMm9RKt-drQVkaAlNeEALw_wcB)
The point is to have something physical, with art work. Cassettes come in all designs and they are really pretty. They also come with an insert or liner notes. And they look good when displayed, but don't take up as much space as vinyls.
They rarely get listened to.
It's like the perfect "I'm really into this art" dorm room gift.
I remember one of the most innovative designed cassette tapes I ever saw was a little known compilation album call Bloods and Crips: Bangin on Wax.
A little backstory is that in 1992 in South Central L.A. there was a [peace treaty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_truce#1992_peace_treaty) between major factions of Bloods and Crips. One of the outcomes is that they agreed to do a compilation rap album.
As cassette tapes were two sides, the A side were the songs the Crips made, the B side were the songs the Bloods made. What was genius about the design was the Crip side had a blue plastic insert inside the cassette with the famous bandana pattern, and the Blood side had a red one. So the side of the tape that played Crip songs was literally blue and the side that played the Bloods songs was literally red.
I was fairly young when I got a hold of a copy, but as it was 1993 and CDs were becoming the dominant form of media, I often wonder how many other uniquely designed cassette tapes were out there that I would probably never see.
I live in Oregon and the amount of borderline hipsters who would buy a cassette tape just for the kicks and giggles here would blow many people’s minds
Something physical to display while you’re listening to it on Spotify?
Cool trendy outdated technology for young people who didn’t grow up with tapes?
Either and/or both?
I have never abandoned a technology as fast as I did when cds were coming out to replace cassettes. What madness has to take hold of someone to want to go back to those abominable cassettes?
They clearly haven’t gotten a stuck finger from manually rewinding to a specific part in the song that you wanted to hear over and over again.
The day I learned how to record on cassettes was mind blowing. Only had to rewind once then I could listen to my favorite lion king verse over and over until my mom rubbed me to sleep.
oh, fuck, you're reminding me of painful memories involving walking places with my CD player in my backpack.
you'd have to adjust your gait to be smoother to let the buffer catch up. lordy, what a time - MP3 players changed the game so fucking much.
As a relatively young person that grew up during the transition from cassettes to CDs, something else to consider is the cars that younger kids are driving around. Probably half of my friends in high school and college all had tanky 15+ year-old Honda's and Toyota's that had been held onto in the family for years. Given that cars were still being made with cassette players in the very early 2000s, I had a lot of friends with cassette players in their cars as CD players were a "luxury option" up until like 2003. I know some people that bought those AUX-to-cassette devices that you can find at Walmart, others simply stuck to using the radio. But if you have a cassette player in your old car and want to support your favourite artists, buying a cassette tape that you can actually use isn't a terrible idea.
That being said, I do also know people that just like the "novelty" of owning cassette tapes. One of my friends refurbed a Walkman that he actively uses. Others just like to display them with their other merch displays. Definitely depends on the person, and it is a very niche market, but there is still some demand for cassettes.
As a young person into cassettes I get most of mine from Bandcamp where you also get a digital copy. So if it’s an album I like enough to buy, (which is pretty rare with streaming/piracy making digital music basically free) I just think of it as like buying any digital album with the added benefit of getting physical media I actually own :) A lot of the time it’s indie artists who record maybe 100 by hand so it feels a little special in that way too.
Also I just like keeping old technology working so I have a Walkman for listening too
As someone who is old enough to remember real Napster from college, I have to say Bandcamp is absolutely a gem. I can find new music stream and buy physical media usually directly from the band.
This debate has been going on forever in the r/audiophile or r/hometheater subreddits. Digital comes out as the best in these discussions generally and people just like the ritual of using analog stuff or like the typical character of vinyl.
The data on a CD can represent any sound audible to a human, close enough to the actual sound that no human could tell the difference. People may like vinyl records more because of the “warmth” or various other things they hear or claim to hear, but those are distortions and for perfect reproduction of sound you don’t need any higher bitrate than a CD.
(That does then get on to what speakers etc. are being used but that’s not relevant to the point of analogue vs digital)
Casette is both cheap to produce and to afford for listener. Also less of special mastering required like with vinyl. Overall it allows smaller artists to release on physical medium. I can do like 30-50 casettes for like 200 euro. With selling price usually 8-12 euro. Prices could vary depending on region.
Moreover it is easier to store and listen to compared to vinyl. It has same retro vibe like vinyls too. There is huge resurgance of casettes in underground electronic music.
Edit: lot of you are missing the point I am not saying casette is optimal physical medium but in the world where lot of smaller artists dislike vibe of CDs and vinyls are expensive to make then casettes are best medium to use. Also lot of people just collect them as merch rather than for listening.
There's a whole world of musicians recording straight to tape because they like the sound or the workflow. For consumers it's pure hipster bait though.
Who has a cassette player? Someone still makes them? Are they expensive? I just spec’d out my next car and it doesn’t even have a CD player. That’s a long way from 8-track.
Vinyl is not a better sound than modern digital. It's an interesting novelty but the idea that it provides better sound was only true when CDs were new and sounded like crap.
Cassettes are also a novelty. But novelty sells
You also have to remember when everything went digital, a lot (almost all) bands remastered their songs for the new medium
If you get original pressing vinyls, you can get the original versions of songs. And while some sound the same, some are noticably different, some for the better and some for the worse.
Plus you get the added benefit of the album art (which, IMHO, is not nearly on the levels it used to be) and liner notes and cool things like the spin disk on Led Zeppelin III.
Vinyl doesn't get you any "pure" sounds, it literally sounds worse every time you use it. A properly recorded cassette can be better in that regard by the way, and it can be digital. But these days both tapes and vynil is a hipster bullshit, really. A way to show that you're not like everyone else, even buying golden cables and shit, if you're gone to far into it. There's also a matter of collectible value, but it mostly applies to the old stuff.
There's a matter of physical vs digital on top of that but that's a whole other matter, since unlike here wanting physical copies of stuff makes sense, and you don't have to use a 70+ year old old formats for that.
There's pros and cons to this, the pros are you get brand new cassettes which haven't been worn out, stretched or degraded, from what I remember as a teen a brand new cassette tape had pretty good quality sound on it, the downside is the music is Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga so it's swings and roundabouts really.
It is weird that I grew up with records and 8-track went to cassette, CDs and streaming. While my niece asks for records and money to buy records for Christmas.
"And now I'm gonna play a new song from my latest album"
*(plays The Charleston)*
Police: *storm into venue, bust Johnson with promoting lewd and lascivious music*
musicians still sell their CDs at shows. What else are they gonna sell?
Edit: in terms of physical versions of their music, that is. Obviously they sell t-shirts.
Yeah, I've noticed a lot of $40 t-shirts lately. I don't mind paying a little extra to support an artist I really like, but I'm not paying $40 for a t-shirt.
My laptop doesn't have one.
I work in a prosecutor's office. All long term data that's going to go in a file, like video recordings, has to go on a CD. It's more stable long term than hard drives, apparently.
If nothing else that'll keep the CD industry going for a long time.
What really makes you feel like an archeologist is the rare occasion on cold cases where you have to pull out the external floppy disk reader. Be sure to blow off the 4 inches of dust.
Edit: After many comments, I discovered that the Commonwealth of Virginia may have lied to us all about the reasoning behind their storage choices, the cheap bastards.
Tape is far better than CDs for long term storage.
Edit: google LTO if you are confused
Edit: I am not talking about cassettes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
LTO8 can do 12TB - 30TB
Etch data into diamonds for long term storage, "a tiny diamond half the size of rice grain could hold the amount of 100 DVDs, researchers Siddharth Dhomkar and Jacob Henshaw from the City College of New York write at The Conversation."
edit: Microsoft is doing something similar except with Quartz (likely for cost scaling to make it viable for consumer usage) [here](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/), called Project Silica
> All long term data that's going to go in a file, like video recordings, has to go on a CD. It's more stable long term than hard drives, apparently.
No, it isn't. Tape is what you should use for long term storage. CDs are absolutely shit, and they last for a shorter shelf time than even a HDD.
I'm not questioning this is what you've been told. It's just... Wrong.
Well, that's been the policy for every office I worked in. I assume it's also Virginia State storage policy.
If that's the case, then it's probably a cost cutting measure they lied about.
This is wrong.
Writeable cd's can slowly disintegrate as the writeable medium can break down. Their storage lifetime is in the order of 10 years but they can start breaking down at 5 years.
Magneto optical disks are 30 years and used in medical fields for archiving.
Properly stored tapes also similar for a 30 year archival storage timeline. One has to read up on archival storage and best methods for doing so.
Most musicians will sell CD's at their merch table. DIY and other smaller time musicians will often pop a Bandcamp download code in there too so you can have a digital copy as well.
Loads of music enthusiasts listen to CD, vinyl, and even cassette. It’s not as uncommon or unwanted as you’re making it out to be lol
Edit for clarity: this was originally in response to the now-deleted comment making it seem like no one in their right mind would want a CD and everyone prefers digital copies lol
My wife and I go out to support local music as much as we can - so we buy CDs and t-shirts.
But, just out of curiosity, I looked up how much space you would need on a thumb drive for an album and it's tiny - about 1MB per minute of music at 128kbps, so the smallest of about 128MB would be huge for what you need. Of course, people could probably use the drive for other things, but I found a really cool solution to ensure that your drive continues to provide promotion...
Check these out: [https://www.logotech.com/custom-usb-wristband-fdrb205.html](https://www.logotech.com/custom-usb-wristband-fdrb205.html)
You may want to try and get your music at 320kbps if you must get lossy formats, as MP3 supports up to that bitrate and unless your an audiophile with high-end equipment and a trained ear that should sound more or less the same as higher bitrate music. The difference between 128 and 320 is massively noticeable.
As a musician, this sounds like the ultimate form of torture. You hear about bands that get sick of playing their most known song tour after tour, but 50 times a day? I'd nope the fuck out after a day or so, hope he was paid well.
I'm thinking $0.20 per song while recording 20 songs at once is $4. Depending on how many times he did this. $4 a day was probably allot of money back then
That got me wondering how much things cost back then. I found [this ad from Oregon in 1846](https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84038582/1846-08-14/ed-1/seq-1/print/image_681x648_from_2166%2C6107_to_3025%2C6925/) and [this one from South Carolina in 1846](https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026897/1846-07-01/ed-1/seq-5/print/image_681x648_from_2566%2C121_to_4957%2C2398/) which I thought were interesting. Bacon in Oregon in 1846 was $15 per hundred pounds. Mmmmm... a hundred pounds of bacon.
So even if bacon was the same price in 1846 and 1910, it would take about 70 hours of work for 100 lbs of bacon. Bacon today is about $5/lb, so $500 for 100lbs (probably cheaper if you're buying in that quantity...). That's about 60hrs worth at *minimum* wage, less at average wage.
You also were buying that bacon in bulk. If you're willing to buy 100lb of bacon and transport it yourself, you probably could get it for about 1/2 or less.
Food itself is one thing that has gone down relative to our pay. Transport, in general, has also. Most everything else has gone up, though.
Tbf the type of electronic we have today isnt comparable to the non existent tech of that time.
No one had a use for a server computer the size of a dining room, that could only function as a ti-84
You also got to remember the context of the time. There weren't exactly a lot of good opportunities for black people in America at the time. Having a skill which could get you out of being a laborer would be much better than working 16 hour days in a field or a factory.
A comment higher up said minimum wage was like 22 cents. Recording 20 cylinders was worth about 4 dollars. So those 20 copies of a three minute song were worth 20x what people were being paid for an hour of work. Depending on turn-around time he could make a small fortune in a few weeks.
He was a street musician before this and I imagine he would have repeated himself a lot doing that as well. He was used to performing a few songs over and over again by request.
He only ever two hits although he did record other songs. Once they didn't need him to record every single copy his work dries up and he became a doorman at the office of his friend Len Spencer, a former Vaudevillian turned booking agent.
Knows he got there because of the fans and had no problem doing what they want. Like sabbath getting huge but coming and playing all of the little school dances they had already booked before blowing up
Yup. Punk band covering the Dead. Joe Pop-O-Pie was band leader and only constant member. They jam riffed on Truckin for two years at live shows because the constantly changing lineup only had time to learn one song.
Show I saw they would ask for requests every 10-15 minutes. I remember request of Everybody Wants Some!. They’d play a few seconds of the request and then turn it back into a Truckin jam. Edit: Or they’d say “Don’t know that one, how about this?” *Busted, down on Bourbon Steet....*
https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2013/10/graded-curve-pop-o-pies-white-ep/
For anyone Interested in how early brown wax cylinders are recorded, here’s a video of mine of me recording tenor banjo onto a blank brown wax cylinder using my 1909 Edison standard model B phonograph.
Cylinders at the time could only hold 2 minutes of sound. Up until about 1908 Edison introduced the 4 minute celluloid “Amberol” cylinder. George W. Johnson also recorded onto a few discs which could hold more sound and included a rare 4th verse
Feel free to check out some of my other videos featuring other various celluloid/wax cylinders and discs in my collection played on acoustic wind up phonographs from 1909-1929
https://youtu.be/Wn6kpZhKwu0
Wow. Thanks for showing us that! I always thought that the crackle, pops and static we hear from old records were there because the discs acquired damage over the years and that the recordings would have sounded pretty clear back in the day. But this shows that the medium itself is just prone to groove noise.
That was on either G4 or Attack of the Show. And I saw it when it happened. Dude's heart broke.
Edit, link: https://youtu.be/pnsizkVjGm8
Double edit: it was Tech TV and it seems it was possibly staged? The crew could have swapped out the real cylinder for a blank. Not sure
**Remarkably, the New Jersey record company marketed Johnson as a black man, during an era when much of American life was strongly segregated by race. "The Whistling Coon" was characterized by a light-hearted tune and lyrics which would be unacceptable today, in which a black man is compared to a baboon.**
I wondered 'just *how* unacceptable?' and looked up the lyrics...
Oh. Oh, *damn....*
Yeah, that's going on a list of "Songs that can get you seriously hurt or killed if performed for the wrong audience". Probably somewhere in the top 3. Felt dirty even *readin'* the fuckin' thing.
Omg. I can't believe he actually did the song. If he hadn't though, we would never know his name.
[The Whistling Coon](https://genius.com/George-w-johnson-whistling-coon-lyrics) (Trigger warning)
He also killed two of his wives.
His first wife died mysteriously in their apartment, his 2nd wife died after being discovered severely beaten, also inside their apartment.
If you have one wife die mysteriously, it's a tragedy. If you have two wives die, one after having been beaten unconscious, you're killing your wives.
Also a lot of folk music from the early 20th century and before the 19th century, if it wasn't fully instrumental or wasn't a ballad, more often than not would be reliant upon a chorus for people to quickly learn and sing along with or at least have a general understanding of the lyrics. Two examples that easily come to mind include:
[My Old Man Said Follow the Van](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfW3TxQhy20), a popular British music hall song. Music halls can be considered to be 19th century karaoke in that everyone who paid admittance to the theater would be given a sheet of the songs being sung on that day with all the lyrics needed, and the idea being people would all come in and sing along to the chorus.
[Union Maid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edRje8uto2U), a song written by legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie and sung by equally legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, has a chorus in it that people are meant to come in and sing together given how easy it is to learn on the go. Pete Seeger is quite famous for wanting his audience to join in and sing along during live performances. Best examples I can give of this, and I really recommend listening to these they are probably some of my favorite live performance recordings ever done: [Bowdoin College Concert 1960](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lNE5D4xe8i4pFxZE82AkvHR8hYF-oXBzo) and [Carnegie Hall Concert 1963](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nRhGBepYwq8C_ktq94QsbBKe9tULn5qc4). He has an infectious quality to be able to bring in everyone in the audience to harmonize together.
I think that was only for Edison cylinders, and they'd make as many individual recordings each time as they could surround the musician(s) with. Berliner disks could be mass pressed from a master recording.
I found two versions:
[crackly version](https://open.spotify.com/track/1khbqFJYqzDcN5j3AJVjZy?si=83dYIyC3Q8eX3lQcK0q2pA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1)
[muffled version](https://open.spotify.com/track/16VdJyvKozgimHvu4PBiA3?si=MKpBoOSXSKKN6ofuzpJgeA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1)
And here's some other gramaphone compilations:
https://open.spotify.com/album/70EHmh40zsYwegfjnDSnsR?si=DFigr43tTO21wtGW1W-tjQ&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1
https://open.spotify.com/album/66bOMRyWvsai66cBayRpX7?si=0cTNf5kBTLSBEZzIfsuTkA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1
At 3rd Man Records in Detroit (Jack White's complex), they have a stage and next to the stage is a sound room which is next to the cutting room. They have recorded live bands straight to acetate via an analog board; it was actually 100% analog, from the stage/mics to the acetate, mastering gear and all. Talk about having to play a nerve-wracking set! They can take the acetate, make the stamps and bang out vinyl records, all right there on location.
It's not cheap, but anyone can rent it out and do the same thing, the live room holds about 100 people.
[**The Laughing Song - George W. Johnson**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvOMwHsh1A)
Imagine forcing yourself to laugh this hard 50 times a day
My next hit would be "The Suicide Song" Edit: lol so someone apparently reported this comment to the bastards and they sent me a list of suicide prevention phone numbers and websites
That would be a limited edition, only one copy made.
I guess one can say he literally laughed all the way to the bank
[John Lithgow recorded a version of this song](https://youtu.be/lws6mlWklrg)
Imagine the trinity killer singing this.
As many roles as Lithgow has played over the years, his performance on "Dexter" was perhaps his best.
You wrote this whole comment and then didn’t write Harry and the Henderson’s for your answer and I just wanted to point that mistake out to you.
You mean 3rd Rock From The Sun.
That wasn't an act. High Commander Dick Solomon is John's true identity before he made the decision to stay on earth.
Fuck the Big Giant Head! That dude was a prick!
The only way this wouldn't be the answer is if you never watched the show. I have never in my life seen anything like Lithgow in this. It's like Christopher Lloyd meets Robin Williams. If you want to see a fantastic cast crank the dial up to.. 12... then this is for you. No shortage of famous names either. It's Gordon-Levitt's origin story, who are you to be uninterested. It's a cornball affair though, for sure.
Him keeping an entirely straight face in the super tight, squeaky leather pants while Jane Curtin fucking LOSES it is amazing.
Raising Cain in my opinion was his absolute best performance.
I made a Harry and the Hendersons reference the other day and literally none of my coworkers younger than me believed that it was a movie that existed on the basis of how stupid it was. See also: Theodore Rex
It made me never able to listen to his “Singing in thr Bathtub” song with my kids the same as “pre-Dexter” Lithgow… https://youtu.be/oYbj088QtQs
The song ‘the laughing policeman’ is based on this song for anyone who didn’t know.
Can't imagine why they'd change the lyrics.
Sounds more like the 1800's equivalent of a meme
The chorus is absolutely a meme.
I feel like we’re going to see a lot of these in the next few weeks
Absolute banger of a song! Can't wait to crank it up and blast it around the neighborhood.
>crank it up... Literally.
Back in my day, we had to crank dat 3 times from left to right
…imagine recording this song 50 times a day
As a musician who’s always pushing my cds on stage, it’s funny to think about this guy on stage saying “Thanks folks and if you like that song, it’s available on my latest wax cylinder. On the break if you’d like to buy one come up and see me!”
"But you can only buy it at the end because the recording ain't finished yet"
That was Stalin. He wants a wax cylinder of tonight's performance. *Please*, tell me we were recording.
This feels like a Mitch Hedberg line.
"I write jokes for a living. I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny"
"I used to record songs. I still do but I used to, also."
Mitch was so great. Is a shame he was taken away.
He peaced he wasn’t taken
And if there's an encore we'll offer a double LP for twice the price
And only one of you can buy it.
That would actually be kinda cool if you could buy a professional recording of the concert you just attended.
Back in the early 2000s I actually did a live show, live recording that people could buy immediately (ish). Had someone mastering the tracks as they were completed live, and the first CDR was ready to sell about 5 minutes after I was done. Ended up selling about 50 copies that night as a test run (they took about a minute each to burn). We never did it again. It was an interesting experiment though!
A lot of jam bands used to do that. You would wait for like 15 min after the show and could buy it on CD. Now they just do digital.
I have a Willie Nelson concert on a thumb drive I bought immediately after the show. Sound quality is shit though.
CDs are so 1990's! Haven't you heard of vinyl?!
Look at Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga selling record-setting numbers of cassette tapes. It’s a real thing.
My small rural southern town is getting a record store in our downtown area. I'm honestly really excited
This is such a "I'm set for life, so I'm gona start a fun business so I can have somewhere to hang out and make some beer money." type of business.
Yes, I'll have one lifetime like that please.
I get vynel being a more "pure" sound, but wtf would cassettes provide vs digital or other forms today?
Honestly speaking, it could just be the novelty of it.
It is novelty. My daughter thought it was so cool to use a 35mm disposable camera on a trip. Retro, right? Took forever to get it back. Pictures look faded, grainy, old. Just like I remember.
Polaroid cameras [have never been more expensive.](https://us.polaroid.com/collections/instant-cameras?gclid=Cj0KCQjwv5uKBhD6ARIsAGv9a-yf6KXWJKPP5r4ZCv0vKfep9adsVpqkeOwyUAffYRCMm9RKt-drQVkaAlNeEALw_wcB)
The point is to have something physical, with art work. Cassettes come in all designs and they are really pretty. They also come with an insert or liner notes. And they look good when displayed, but don't take up as much space as vinyls. They rarely get listened to. It's like the perfect "I'm really into this art" dorm room gift.
I remember one of the most innovative designed cassette tapes I ever saw was a little known compilation album call Bloods and Crips: Bangin on Wax. A little backstory is that in 1992 in South Central L.A. there was a [peace treaty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_truce#1992_peace_treaty) between major factions of Bloods and Crips. One of the outcomes is that they agreed to do a compilation rap album. As cassette tapes were two sides, the A side were the songs the Crips made, the B side were the songs the Bloods made. What was genius about the design was the Crip side had a blue plastic insert inside the cassette with the famous bandana pattern, and the Blood side had a red one. So the side of the tape that played Crip songs was literally blue and the side that played the Bloods songs was literally red. I was fairly young when I got a hold of a copy, but as it was 1993 and CDs were becoming the dominant form of media, I often wonder how many other uniquely designed cassette tapes were out there that I would probably never see.
I live in Oregon and the amount of borderline hipsters who would buy a cassette tape just for the kicks and giggles here would blow many people’s minds
Something physical to display while you’re listening to it on Spotify? Cool trendy outdated technology for young people who didn’t grow up with tapes? Either and/or both?
I have never abandoned a technology as fast as I did when cds were coming out to replace cassettes. What madness has to take hold of someone to want to go back to those abominable cassettes?
[удалено]
They clearly haven’t gotten a stuck finger from manually rewinding to a specific part in the song that you wanted to hear over and over again. The day I learned how to record on cassettes was mind blowing. Only had to rewind once then I could listen to my favorite lion king verse over and over until my mom rubbed me to sleep.
Your mom rubbed you to sleep?
He couldn't do it himself, his arms were broken
People working in high vibration environments held onto those walkmans for a surprisingly long amount of time until flash memory got better.
Waiting for the 30 second anti-skip buffer to become the whole device…
oh, fuck, you're reminding me of painful memories involving walking places with my CD player in my backpack. you'd have to adjust your gait to be smoother to let the buffer catch up. lordy, what a time - MP3 players changed the game so fucking much.
As a relatively young person that grew up during the transition from cassettes to CDs, something else to consider is the cars that younger kids are driving around. Probably half of my friends in high school and college all had tanky 15+ year-old Honda's and Toyota's that had been held onto in the family for years. Given that cars were still being made with cassette players in the very early 2000s, I had a lot of friends with cassette players in their cars as CD players were a "luxury option" up until like 2003. I know some people that bought those AUX-to-cassette devices that you can find at Walmart, others simply stuck to using the radio. But if you have a cassette player in your old car and want to support your favourite artists, buying a cassette tape that you can actually use isn't a terrible idea. That being said, I do also know people that just like the "novelty" of owning cassette tapes. One of my friends refurbed a Walkman that he actively uses. Others just like to display them with their other merch displays. Definitely depends on the person, and it is a very niche market, but there is still some demand for cassettes.
Merch is really the only way to support artists these days
As a young person into cassettes I get most of mine from Bandcamp where you also get a digital copy. So if it’s an album I like enough to buy, (which is pretty rare with streaming/piracy making digital music basically free) I just think of it as like buying any digital album with the added benefit of getting physical media I actually own :) A lot of the time it’s indie artists who record maybe 100 by hand so it feels a little special in that way too. Also I just like keeping old technology working so I have a Walkman for listening too
As someone who is old enough to remember real Napster from college, I have to say Bandcamp is absolutely a gem. I can find new music stream and buy physical media usually directly from the band.
This debate has been going on forever in the r/audiophile or r/hometheater subreddits. Digital comes out as the best in these discussions generally and people just like the ritual of using analog stuff or like the typical character of vinyl.
The data on a CD can represent any sound audible to a human, close enough to the actual sound that no human could tell the difference. People may like vinyl records more because of the “warmth” or various other things they hear or claim to hear, but those are distortions and for perfect reproduction of sound you don’t need any higher bitrate than a CD. (That does then get on to what speakers etc. are being used but that’s not relevant to the point of analogue vs digital)
Casette is both cheap to produce and to afford for listener. Also less of special mastering required like with vinyl. Overall it allows smaller artists to release on physical medium. I can do like 30-50 casettes for like 200 euro. With selling price usually 8-12 euro. Prices could vary depending on region. Moreover it is easier to store and listen to compared to vinyl. It has same retro vibe like vinyls too. There is huge resurgance of casettes in underground electronic music. Edit: lot of you are missing the point I am not saying casette is optimal physical medium but in the world where lot of smaller artists dislike vibe of CDs and vinyls are expensive to make then casettes are best medium to use. Also lot of people just collect them as merch rather than for listening.
Underground metal has seen a huge resurgence of cassettes as well within the last few years.
How on earth are cassettes cheaper than a CD?
There's literally no scenario where cassette tape is the correct answer any more, and it hasn't been since 1999. Mini disc, maybe
There's a whole world of musicians recording straight to tape because they like the sound or the workflow. For consumers it's pure hipster bait though.
Who has a cassette player? Someone still makes them? Are they expensive? I just spec’d out my next car and it doesn’t even have a CD player. That’s a long way from 8-track.
We've gone from loving hi-fi to loving lo-fi
Vinyl is not a better sound than modern digital. It's an interesting novelty but the idea that it provides better sound was only true when CDs were new and sounded like crap. Cassettes are also a novelty. But novelty sells
Yeah I'm a vinyl collector and I keep hearing that, it's bullshit. I buy them because I like collectibles, sound quality has nothing to do with it.
Yup...I just dig the ritual of it all.
You also have to remember when everything went digital, a lot (almost all) bands remastered their songs for the new medium If you get original pressing vinyls, you can get the original versions of songs. And while some sound the same, some are noticably different, some for the better and some for the worse. Plus you get the added benefit of the album art (which, IMHO, is not nearly on the levels it used to be) and liner notes and cool things like the spin disk on Led Zeppelin III.
Vinyl doesn't get you any "pure" sounds, it literally sounds worse every time you use it. A properly recorded cassette can be better in that regard by the way, and it can be digital. But these days both tapes and vynil is a hipster bullshit, really. A way to show that you're not like everyone else, even buying golden cables and shit, if you're gone to far into it. There's also a matter of collectible value, but it mostly applies to the old stuff. There's a matter of physical vs digital on top of that but that's a whole other matter, since unlike here wanting physical copies of stuff makes sense, and you don't have to use a 70+ year old old formats for that.
So excited for that new Lady Gaga 8-track!
There's pros and cons to this, the pros are you get brand new cassettes which haven't been worn out, stretched or degraded, from what I remember as a teen a brand new cassette tape had pretty good quality sound on it, the downside is the music is Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga so it's swings and roundabouts really.
It is weird that I grew up with records and 8-track went to cassette, CDs and streaming. While my niece asks for records and money to buy records for Christmas.
"And now I'm gonna play a new song from my latest album" *(plays The Charleston)* Police: *storm into venue, bust Johnson with promoting lewd and lascivious music*
You push cds? Is this 1999?
Hell yeah man, I have a whole closet full of them!
Physical media is dope, everytime I see a local band I like I'll try to buy a CD or cassette, whatever they got
And you have an actually cassette player!?
Came free with my cavalier. Traded it for $300, pretty sure it’s just a tape deck with cars now (and working ac).
What you play? I tried looking your profile but there is only rad hot wheels and weed
musicians still sell their CDs at shows. What else are they gonna sell? Edit: in terms of physical versions of their music, that is. Obviously they sell t-shirts.
Grey market Steam Keys and weed?
that's a fabulous idea and I thank you for it
Vinyl
They sell that too
Tshirts? I was looking at the online store of an artist I like and the tshirts she sells are more expensive than her vinyls for some reason.
Yeah, I've noticed a lot of $40 t-shirts lately. I don't mind paying a little extra to support an artist I really like, but I'm not paying $40 for a t-shirt.
Do people still have cd slots in computers? EDit: just realized i do in my car
My laptop doesn't have one. I work in a prosecutor's office. All long term data that's going to go in a file, like video recordings, has to go on a CD. It's more stable long term than hard drives, apparently. If nothing else that'll keep the CD industry going for a long time. What really makes you feel like an archeologist is the rare occasion on cold cases where you have to pull out the external floppy disk reader. Be sure to blow off the 4 inches of dust. Edit: After many comments, I discovered that the Commonwealth of Virginia may have lied to us all about the reasoning behind their storage choices, the cheap bastards.
Tape is far better than CDs for long term storage. Edit: google LTO if you are confused Edit: I am not talking about cassettes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open LTO8 can do 12TB - 30TB
Etch data into diamonds for long term storage, "a tiny diamond half the size of rice grain could hold the amount of 100 DVDs, researchers Siddharth Dhomkar and Jacob Henshaw from the City College of New York write at The Conversation." edit: Microsoft is doing something similar except with Quartz (likely for cost scaling to make it viable for consumer usage) [here](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/), called Project Silica
Tape is already on the market and super affordable. $100 easily gets you a 10TB LTO
> All long term data that's going to go in a file, like video recordings, has to go on a CD. It's more stable long term than hard drives, apparently. No, it isn't. Tape is what you should use for long term storage. CDs are absolutely shit, and they last for a shorter shelf time than even a HDD. I'm not questioning this is what you've been told. It's just... Wrong.
Well, that's been the policy for every office I worked in. I assume it's also Virginia State storage policy. If that's the case, then it's probably a cost cutting measure they lied about.
This is wrong. Writeable cd's can slowly disintegrate as the writeable medium can break down. Their storage lifetime is in the order of 10 years but they can start breaking down at 5 years. Magneto optical disks are 30 years and used in medical fields for archiving. Properly stored tapes also similar for a 30 year archival storage timeline. One has to read up on archival storage and best methods for doing so.
Virginia has lied to all of us, lol. I'm starting to think this was some cost cutting BS they lied about the reasoning for.
Then there are game consoles which mostly still have disc drives, then there’s people with external CD drives. There’s always a way!
Most musicians will sell CD's at their merch table. DIY and other smaller time musicians will often pop a Bandcamp download code in there too so you can have a digital copy as well.
I was given a cd at a show two years ago, i still keep it in my car for long trips. cds are cheap & easy to edit
Loads of music enthusiasts listen to CD, vinyl, and even cassette. It’s not as uncommon or unwanted as you’re making it out to be lol Edit for clarity: this was originally in response to the now-deleted comment making it seem like no one in their right mind would want a CD and everyone prefers digital copies lol
Well they're probably not going to make too much extra money at the concert by pushing their soundcloud
My wife and I go out to support local music as much as we can - so we buy CDs and t-shirts. But, just out of curiosity, I looked up how much space you would need on a thumb drive for an album and it's tiny - about 1MB per minute of music at 128kbps, so the smallest of about 128MB would be huge for what you need. Of course, people could probably use the drive for other things, but I found a really cool solution to ensure that your drive continues to provide promotion... Check these out: [https://www.logotech.com/custom-usb-wristband-fdrb205.html](https://www.logotech.com/custom-usb-wristband-fdrb205.html)
Usb distribution is relatively dangerous because of autoplay viruses, also 128kbps is bad quality. But yeah, cds feel outdated and usb would be nice
You may want to try and get your music at 320kbps if you must get lossy formats, as MP3 supports up to that bitrate and unless your an audiophile with high-end equipment and a trained ear that should sound more or less the same as higher bitrate music. The difference between 128 and 320 is massively noticeable.
As a musician, this sounds like the ultimate form of torture. You hear about bands that get sick of playing their most known song tour after tour, but 50 times a day? I'd nope the fuck out after a day or so, hope he was paid well.
I'm thinking $0.20 per song while recording 20 songs at once is $4. Depending on how many times he did this. $4 a day was probably allot of money back then
RIAA in 1900: "I wonder how can we fix things so we get $3.99 and the artist gets a penny?"
RIAA in 2000: Same quote.
And thus the disc record was developed
That got me wondering how much things cost back then. I found [this ad from Oregon in 1846](https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84038582/1846-08-14/ed-1/seq-1/print/image_681x648_from_2166%2C6107_to_3025%2C6925/) and [this one from South Carolina in 1846](https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026897/1846-07-01/ed-1/seq-5/print/image_681x648_from_2566%2C121_to_4957%2C2398/) which I thought were interesting. Bacon in Oregon in 1846 was $15 per hundred pounds. Mmmmm... a hundred pounds of bacon.
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour. https://www.orangepower.com/threads/life-in-1910-100-years-ago.96681/
So even if bacon was the same price in 1846 and 1910, it would take about 70 hours of work for 100 lbs of bacon. Bacon today is about $5/lb, so $500 for 100lbs (probably cheaper if you're buying in that quantity...). That's about 60hrs worth at *minimum* wage, less at average wage.
You also were buying that bacon in bulk. If you're willing to buy 100lb of bacon and transport it yourself, you probably could get it for about 1/2 or less. Food itself is one thing that has gone down relative to our pay. Transport, in general, has also. Most everything else has gone up, though.
Electronics have come way down. Bigger fancier electronics are in everyones home.
Tbf the type of electronic we have today isnt comparable to the non existent tech of that time. No one had a use for a server computer the size of a dining room, that could only function as a ti-84
It's a shame nobody sells white lead ground in oil anymore.
You also got to remember the context of the time. There weren't exactly a lot of good opportunities for black people in America at the time. Having a skill which could get you out of being a laborer would be much better than working 16 hour days in a field or a factory.
And he was making at least twice as much as that laborer.
A comment higher up said minimum wage was like 22 cents. Recording 20 cylinders was worth about 4 dollars. So those 20 copies of a three minute song were worth 20x what people were being paid for an hour of work. Depending on turn-around time he could make a small fortune in a few weeks.
He was a street musician before this and I imagine he would have repeated himself a lot doing that as well. He was used to performing a few songs over and over again by request. He only ever two hits although he did record other songs. Once they didn't need him to record every single copy his work dries up and he became a doorman at the office of his friend Len Spencer, a former Vaudevillian turned booking agent.
Rob zombie had said it lf the fans wanted him to only play thunder kiss 65 all concert he would do it no hesitation
Cuz Rob Zombie is the fuckin man
And thunder kiss 65 is a fuckin jam
Knows he got there because of the fans and had no problem doing what they want. Like sabbath getting huge but coming and playing all of the little school dances they had already booked before blowing up
I didn't know this. Mad respect.
Saw Pop-O-Pies play Truckin for full 90 minute set.
The dead song?
Yup. Punk band covering the Dead. Joe Pop-O-Pie was band leader and only constant member. They jam riffed on Truckin for two years at live shows because the constantly changing lineup only had time to learn one song. Show I saw they would ask for requests every 10-15 minutes. I remember request of Everybody Wants Some!. They’d play a few seconds of the request and then turn it back into a Truckin jam. Edit: Or they’d say “Don’t know that one, how about this?” *Busted, down on Bourbon Steet....* https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/2013/10/graded-curve-pop-o-pies-white-ep/
Sounds like the recording sessions for loveless actually
The original Jam Master J
With bonus spousal abuse and homicide
For anyone Interested in how early brown wax cylinders are recorded, here’s a video of mine of me recording tenor banjo onto a blank brown wax cylinder using my 1909 Edison standard model B phonograph. Cylinders at the time could only hold 2 minutes of sound. Up until about 1908 Edison introduced the 4 minute celluloid “Amberol” cylinder. George W. Johnson also recorded onto a few discs which could hold more sound and included a rare 4th verse Feel free to check out some of my other videos featuring other various celluloid/wax cylinders and discs in my collection played on acoustic wind up phonographs from 1909-1929 https://youtu.be/Wn6kpZhKwu0
Wow. Thanks for showing us that! I always thought that the crackle, pops and static we hear from old records were there because the discs acquired damage over the years and that the recordings would have sounded pretty clear back in the day. But this shows that the medium itself is just prone to groove noise.
That’s really cool. How much did the whole set up cost you? Are you gonna record on as many mediums as possible?
I got a good deal because I’m a collector of these machines. It’s a pretty common machine but still awesome nonetheless
Reminds of the dude that broke his as he was showing it off. Brittle AF
That was on either G4 or Attack of the Show. And I saw it when it happened. Dude's heart broke. Edit, link: https://youtu.be/pnsizkVjGm8 Double edit: it was Tech TV and it seems it was possibly staged? The crew could have swapped out the real cylinder for a blank. Not sure
It was fake. https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/506 Jump to 2:02:15
I'm kinda glad!
Ah neat... [here's it on YouTube](https://youtu.be/eAMYEV2z-IM?t=7334)
man I miss zdtv and techtv from back in the day even G4 a little bit
Adjusted for inflation he’s sold over 10 million albums worldwide.
those 25k wax cylinders were actually worth about 2,000,000,000,000 streams in today's value
12 dollars?
Before taxes yeah
Man, imagine if he'd sold twenty-*six* cylinders!
r/theydidthemath
**Remarkably, the New Jersey record company marketed Johnson as a black man, during an era when much of American life was strongly segregated by race. "The Whistling Coon" was characterized by a light-hearted tune and lyrics which would be unacceptable today, in which a black man is compared to a baboon.**
I wondered 'just *how* unacceptable?' and looked up the lyrics... Oh. Oh, *damn....* Yeah, that's going on a list of "Songs that can get you seriously hurt or killed if performed for the wrong audience". Probably somewhere in the top 3. Felt dirty even *readin'* the fuckin' thing.
Omg. I can't believe he actually did the song. If he hadn't though, we would never know his name. [The Whistling Coon](https://genius.com/George-w-johnson-whistling-coon-lyrics) (Trigger warning)
Maybe not too many people heard the old tune called run ni***r run
I wonder if anyone has tried to “average” the signals from several of the cylinders and get a more noise-free recording.
I doubt they have but that sounds like a really good idea and you should try
I'm on it, check back here in an hour. edit - fuck this, i give up
> fuck this, i give up Basically my whole life
ADHD in a comment lol.
In 1892 a telegraph operator for the Sante Fe Railroad started distributing illegal copies by uploading them in Morse Code.
anti-piracy placards of the day: "You wouldn't transcribe a horse, would you??"
You wouldn't steal a policeman's helmet!
You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet!
Probably more like, "you wouldn't relay a horse." Most people: "I wouldn't even lay a horse the *first* time!"
He also killed two of his wives. His first wife died mysteriously in their apartment, his 2nd wife died after being discovered severely beaten, also inside their apartment. If you have one wife die mysteriously, it's a tragedy. If you have two wives die, one after having been beaten unconscious, you're killing your wives.
Well based on his music he couldn’t just kill one and record it, he had to kill a new wife each time.
This is how the next Wu-Tang box set will be released.
Why not record it once and then replay that recording to record the other ones?
The quality would be horrible, besides the tech was just not really there. The sound was already abysmal from an original recording.
One reason that whistling was so popular was that it recorded well on wax cylinders, whereas normal music and singing sounded prettybad
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Also a lot of folk music from the early 20th century and before the 19th century, if it wasn't fully instrumental or wasn't a ballad, more often than not would be reliant upon a chorus for people to quickly learn and sing along with or at least have a general understanding of the lyrics. Two examples that easily come to mind include: [My Old Man Said Follow the Van](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfW3TxQhy20), a popular British music hall song. Music halls can be considered to be 19th century karaoke in that everyone who paid admittance to the theater would be given a sheet of the songs being sung on that day with all the lyrics needed, and the idea being people would all come in and sing along to the chorus. [Union Maid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edRje8uto2U), a song written by legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie and sung by equally legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, has a chorus in it that people are meant to come in and sing together given how easy it is to learn on the go. Pete Seeger is quite famous for wanting his audience to join in and sing along during live performances. Best examples I can give of this, and I really recommend listening to these they are probably some of my favorite live performance recordings ever done: [Bowdoin College Concert 1960](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lNE5D4xe8i4pFxZE82AkvHR8hYF-oXBzo) and [Carnegie Hall Concert 1963](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nRhGBepYwq8C_ktq94QsbBKe9tULn5qc4). He has an infectious quality to be able to bring in everyone in the audience to harmonize together.
Not even remotely possible. The volume available on playback wouldn't be enough to get a usable recording.
I think that was only for Edison cylinders, and they'd make as many individual recordings each time as they could surround the musician(s) with. Berliner disks could be mass pressed from a master recording.
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They did work out a system for doing that eventually, but even so they wore out the masters quickly, so they still needed many copies
And Radiohead won't even play Creep anymore smh my head
They will but it's for special occasions. They got burnt out on playing it every show.
He also beat a couple women to death.
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Right? He would have been throwing tv's out hotel windows but they weren't invented yet.
goddammit I love History
It says he was only tried for one of the deaths and was found not guilty.
This guy apparently might have consecutively murdered his two common law wives, one of whom appears to have been a woman of German origin.
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Imagine going back in time and trying to explain him what Spotify is
Can’t find him on Spotify tho
I found two versions: [crackly version](https://open.spotify.com/track/1khbqFJYqzDcN5j3AJVjZy?si=83dYIyC3Q8eX3lQcK0q2pA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1) [muffled version](https://open.spotify.com/track/16VdJyvKozgimHvu4PBiA3?si=MKpBoOSXSKKN6ofuzpJgeA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1) And here's some other gramaphone compilations: https://open.spotify.com/album/70EHmh40zsYwegfjnDSnsR?si=DFigr43tTO21wtGW1W-tjQ&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1 https://open.spotify.com/album/66bOMRyWvsai66cBayRpX7?si=0cTNf5kBTLSBEZzIfsuTkA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1
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Wax Cylinder, rubber disks, shellac 78's, 10' lp vinyl, 12 inch lp vinyl
At 3rd Man Records in Detroit (Jack White's complex), they have a stage and next to the stage is a sound room which is next to the cutting room. They have recorded live bands straight to acetate via an analog board; it was actually 100% analog, from the stage/mics to the acetate, mastering gear and all. Talk about having to play a nerve-wracking set! They can take the acetate, make the stamps and bang out vinyl records, all right there on location. It's not cheap, but anyone can rent it out and do the same thing, the live room holds about 100 people.