DarrenBarefoot.com

What’s a tape? ;)

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There used to be a great bar in Vancouver, The Rose and Thorn (aka The RAT). It’s heyday was from about 1988 to 1994. Packed every Friday night, lots of cool folks, not the glam kids that spent more time on Granville Mall at the Roxy, etc. Because they had a bad jukebox I proposed making mixed tapes in exchange for beer. The relationship began in the late 80s and continued until I stopped frequenting the place about 5 years later.

In those years I made about 80 “RAT Tapes.” And they were pretty damn good if I say so myself. At least the bar patrons thought so.

Knowing that a dub from a brand new chromium dioxide tape was probably going to introduce too much hiss, I decided to start backing the tapes up (before I handed them over to the bar) on a hi-fi VHS player. Four 90-minute tapes would usually fit on a single 120 (6-hr SLP) tape.

For a few years I carted around a box of VHS tapes, all carefully labeled. I had an 8086 Intel PC with 5 1/4″ floppy drives and a small hard drive with WordPerfect, which I used to log all the songs/artists.

Then one day I decided to hook up the VCR to my computer, and began dubbing all the RAT Tapes to WAV then high bit rate MP3s. We’re talking 15 Gbytes of data!

I have a few mixed tapes kicking around, but only in case I decide to start another dubbing binge. I’m kinda over cassettes now.

Thanks for reminding me about mixed tapes, and indulging you with this tale.

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