Two cassettes, one broken tape deck, and four nights of hiss

Finally got a 1994 practice tape from my old band digitized, but the deck ate one side and I spent 4 nights splicing it back together with a razor blade and scotch tape. Turns out the whole thing sounded better through the hiss anyway, like it hid all the sloppy drum fills. Anybody else hold onto recordings that are technically garbage but you can't let go?

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the_robin21d ago

Man, this takes me back. A buddy of mine from college had this old answering machine tape of him and his then girlfriend singing terrible renditions of Beatles songs, recorded on a boombox at like 3 AM after a party. The tape was so warped and stretched that the vocals sounded like ghosts and the guitar was all wobbly, pure tape hiss over everything. He carried that thing through like four different moves and always swore it was the most honest recording of his life. When his girlfriend, now wife, tried to toss it during a cleanup, he went full panic mode and hid it in his sock drawer. He still plays it for me every couple of years, and honestly, it still makes me laugh and cringe at the same time, every single time. So yeah, that garbage recording is basically a time machine for him, I get it completely.