Actually ill be 60 (hopefully) in summer.
I digress.
I'm not sure about our overseas cats/dudes whatever but back in the UK in the 70s all we/I had was a kinda bullshit record player that would stack about as many 45s as it could. could not afford LPs back in those days. Ha. Anyhow the question is do ya remember when you got your first tape recorder and you could tape from the radio or whatever. if ya did, And this is the real question.. (and remember this is all pre internet.) like me did ya listen and listen and write down the words so ya thought ya knew. Now I was a bowie man back then so did not really get the stones until 82 when I moved to SOF..
I'm sure some of ya must have gone through the pain of trying to get music coming from the shires... or maybe it was just me ,,,

anyhow... IORR.....

Yes, I remember my first cassette recorder and having duly set my mic up in August 1973 (aged 13) next to the TV speaker I recorded (amongst a few others on Top of the Pops).......................Angie....the rest as they say................

never had a tape recorder when I was young but did spend a lot of time listening to the NYC station WNEW FM live concert broadcasts. listened to lots of KBFH concerts in the privacy of my room at my parents.

Hmm, early 70s was tape cassette-recorder time. I got a portable one from ITT. There was a light blue cassette with recorded music to go for all who bought this one. -And what about the music? Well, today I would call it adult music from the 60s. -James Last and stuff.

.... owned a couple of reel-ta-reel a four-track and a million cassette recorders ....



ROCKMAN

Ha!

Recorded early Beatles TV shows by holding the reel-to-reel mic to the TV speaker and telling everyone in the family to shut up!

Recorded lots of off-air stuff in the 60s (Pick of The Pops on Sunday evening), then in the 70s the Stones' Story (Alexis Korner) etc. Luckily most of the stuff was taken off to data files on disc before the reel-to-reel died (literally a rubber band broke!).

First real exposure to a cassette player was when we went on holiday with a wealthy friend in 1967 and took along a battery powered one. One cassette was played to death. It had Sgt. Pepper on one side, and Green Onions LP plus Whiter Shade of Pale on the other. Great memories of waking up with this view [goo.gl] and listening to the tape.

--
Captain Corella
60 Years a Fan

Throughout c.1970-'74 my cassette recorder was one of my best friends - I was glued to the Top 40 AM radio every night waiting for "that song" to record.
Still have a few of those old cassettes which still play (have now transferred them to cd)! The most valuable to me are tapes I made of family - one has my Great Grandmother singing "I'm as corny as Kansas in August" during a family trip to visit her in Highland, Kansas, 1972, and a tape of my late Dad and I talking about the Los Angeles Lakers winning season of the same year. And there's another that has my late older brother yelling at me to "turn down the radio you little f*cker"...

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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oldschool
never had a tape recorder when I was young but did spend a lot of time listening to the NYC station WNEW FM live concert broadcasts. listened to lots of KBFH concerts in the privacy of my room at my parents.

Speaking of tape recorders and WNEW-FM:

I did have a cassette deck and did listen to WNEW-FM (NY City) about 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time I listened to WPDH-FM (Poughkeepsie, NY).

Both stations came in very strong in Sullivan County, NY, where I lived.

This was in the era of 1975 to 1984. Before that I lived in the western USA going to college for 4-1/2 years.

I have numerous recordings on cassette, mostly from WNEW-FM, including the night John Lennon died. I flipped on the recorder within a minute of when the news was announced, and recorded for over an hour. I still have the tape.

My favorite DJ was Scott Muni on WNEW. He was the station manager and had the afternoon show. I believe he was also the station manager for WABC-AM in the 1960's in NY City also.

WABC-AM was the biggest in New York in the era of 1960 to 1969. Another big DJ from WABC-AM was Cousin Brucie (Bruce Morrow). Listened to this station starting in the pre-Beatles era, and all through the 1960s.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-08 07:15 by Chacho.

Nowadays we complain when we dont get enough mid range in the left side of the vintage headphones on the latest remaster.
Back in the day I thought nothing of moving my crappy cassette deck up to radio speaker, holding the microphone there, and capturing background of my sister yelling at me, the DJ talking over the guitar solo in the middle of the song. And still this was considered top quality enough, to take to my friends at school next day. "Yeah I managed to get the new Roxy Music!"

Then you graduated from hand-held microphones and those small mono cassette decks to your first stereo component cassette deck. The cheapest front-loading (cool factor) cassette deck was the Pioneer CT-F2121 and I got mine in 1976 and I think the price was $200. Then when TDK Super Avilyn tapes came out at about the same time you were in heaven.

[www.youtube.com]

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MileHigh
Then you graduated from hand-held microphones and those small mono cassette decks to your first stereo component cassette deck. The cheapest front-loading (cool factor) cassette deck was the Pioneer CT-F2121 and I got mine in 1976 and I think the price was $200. Then when TDK Super Avilyn tapes came out at about the same time you were in heaven.

[www.youtube.com]

and THEN - you got "THE UNIT!" With two tape decks and hi speed dubbing. And a 'Line In' at the back.

TDK were great tapes. BTW, I`ve always thought it was cool when DJs turned down the volume and talked on top of songs.

I was a fan listening Radio Luxembourg and Pirate Radio Ships before the next electronics: my first was a portable Philips cassette radio player with a mic! I taped a lot of radio- interviews and concerts over the years and there must be hundreds of tapes around and still use cassettes cause it sounds great with good spaekers and the analogue sound!

I bought one of these second-hand in the mid-60s and did lots of off-air recording from TV and radio. Sadly machine and tapes were destroyed in a house fire - the sound quality was pretty good, unlike some of the cheap cassette machines that came later.

My office desk today

~original

Slightly off topic, but it would be great if those close to 80 would put those of us close to 40 in their wills so that we can be the keeper of their Rolling Stones collection and ensure survival into the future.

I'm 60. I was ten years old in 1967.

Though I didn't think to ask for it my mother gave me a $20 ROSS cassette recorder for Christmas that year along with a recorded copy of Sgt. Pepper. At first I didn't even understand the latter was a Beatles album but I digress.

I became obsessed with recording songs off the radio and TV. Somewhere I still have copies of In Concert and even The Beatles doing Let It Be on the ED SULLIVAN SHOW. You can hear the scrape of the oven door opening in the background of Let It Be. I made my sister promise to be quiet but she opened it anyway.

I would record concerts (Alice, Seger, Pink Floyd, J Geils) in '71 when I first started going. The recordings were awful because I didn't understand keeping the input level low to avoid distortion. My first stereo component cassette deck cost $60 and came from Radio Shack around 1974. I used it to record tapes for my car and for friends and to record a fledgling blues duet I had with a pal. That deck begat a better one and making "road tapes" became a lifelong obsession in which I still engage. When my sons were first born (20+ years ago) I'd wake up in the middle of the night, overwhelmed, and would be unable to sleep. I'd go downstairs and assemble a full 90 or 100 minute tape from my Grateful Dead official live and bootleg collection.

Eventually the cassette gave way to a series of MiniDisc machines which I loved because you could record, equalize and edit in analog mode but burn digital CDs of your creations. Anymore I just use iTunes in tandem with Garageband and a couple download programs.

I still have virtually every cassette I recorded. For the next house I'm going to track down a period correct Tascam or Teac to use with a seventies era Pioneer receiver I have. No point in letting all of those creations go to waste

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Chacho

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oldschool
never had a tape recorder when I was young but did spend a lot of time listening to the NYC station WNEW FM live concert broadcasts. listened to lots of KBFH concerts in the privacy of my room at my parents.

Speaking of tape recorders and WNEW-FM:

I did have a cassette deck and did listen to WNEW-FM (NY City) about 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time I listened to WPDH-FM (Poughkeepsie, NY).

Both stations came in very strong in Sullivan County, NY, where I lived.

This was in the era of 1975 to 1984. Before that I lived in the western USA going to college for 4-1/2 years.

I have numerous recordings on cassette, mostly from WNEW-FM, including the night John Lennon died. I flipped on the recorder within a minute of when the news was announced, and recorded for over an hour. I still have the tape.

My favorite DJ was Scott Muni on WNEW. He was the station manager and had the afternoon show. I believe he was also the station manager for WABC-AM in the 1960's in NY City also.

WABC-AM was the biggest in New York in the era of 1960 to 1969. Another big DJ from WABC-AM was Cousin Brucie (Bruce Morrow). Listened to this station starting in the pre-Beatles era, and all through the 1960s.

On topic my father actually bought a pretty nice cassette recorder with Dolby back in the mid 70's which I used to use to dub my vinyl to TDK or Maxell cassettes for the car. I can't remember the brand but it was a high end recorder for the times that I wished I had kept when he passed away. I can't remember for sure but I think I must have tried recording some of the WNEW-FM live broadcasts off the radio back in the day as they had them all the time. They were especially supportive of Bruce Springsteen and I remember listening to some of the 1978 shows on the radio like the famous 1978 Capitol Theater, Passaic, New Jersey concert. I had this on cassette but not sure if I taped it or got it from a friend.

A little off topic, WNEW was the free form AOR station to listen to for anyone who was within 50-60 miles of NYC back in the late 60's early 70's. Muni was legendary but they had some amazing DJ's back in the day like Alison Steele " "The Nightbird". This was also back when new albums were released in Europe before they were here in the U.S. so WNEW's Scott Muni had a 1 hour British rock show every Friday afternoon, called "Things From England" where he played the new British album releases before they made it to the U.S. or sometimes albums which would never be released here. I was a big Tull fan so my friends girlfriend brought Jethro Tull's "Passion Play" back from England for me several months before it was on sale here in the U.S.. I also first heard Deep Purple " Made in Japan" on Muni's Friday show and got a copy, before Warner Bros decided to finally release it here in the States, and also got Slade's "Slade Alive" at the same time from a store in White Plains, NY that sold import vinyl as neither had not been released in the U.S. at the time. Those were simpler times when it came to music.

Short intro from Steele to give you an idea what she sounded like. Very dated 60's but back then she was a goddess of the radio for us young music lovers.

[www.youtube.com]


Nice short documentary and a write up on WNEW- FM102.7

[www.soundandvision.com]

[www.youtube.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-08 16:21 by oldschool.

The decks you show Green Lady look remarkably like the one we had at home in late 50's/early 60's. Phillips I think). It was a gift from my gran, and my parents used it to record the Saturday morning radio programme 'Children's Choice' which morphed into 'Children's Favourites' while we were at Saturday morning dancing, at the very cinema I later saw my first Stones concert in 1965. We had great fun with it, but it met its demise as it kept eating the tapes......

PS sorry to barge in like this, OK I'll admit if, I'm nearer to 70 than 60......

1964 kid here...
I could record on 8-Tracks with this beauty and I thought I was the COOLEST!



Wish I still had it.






Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2018-01-08 22:18 by Kurt.

Get ready to laugh .In the 70's I had a Panasonic cassette player and recorder which I managed to jerryrig with a earphone adaptor to be able to plug my Gibson Les Paul thru it into the stereo to amplify my guitar (sounded like shite) before I got my first proper amplifier which first was a Fender Blackface Twin which I had for a year and a half and I only had it on loan from a Bouzoki playing Greek who had to go away for little bit and a early script logo MXR Phase 90 (which I still have and use to this day ) Then I got a Silverface Fender Twin reverb (which I still have but now I use a Marshall 2555X into a 2551 AV cab .Pretty wild thinking about this

I can relate to that and I'm not even 43. Well, I'm closer to 60 than to 18, anyway.

I had one of these which were groundbreaking portable stereo cassette recorders and recorded many, many mainly London gigs over the years - from the Stones to The Who and lots of other bands.

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TheGreek
Get ready to laugh .In the 70's I had a Panasonic cassette player and recorder which I managed to jerryrig with a earphone adaptor to be able to plug my Gibson Les Paul thru it into the stereo to amplify my guitar (sounded like shite) before I got my first proper amplifier which first was a Fender Blackface Twin which I had for a year and a half and I only had it on loan from a Bouzoki playing Greek who had to go away for little bit and a early script logo MXR Phase 90 (which I still have and use to this day ) Then I got a Silverface Fender Twin reverb (which I still have but now I use a Marshall 2555X into a 2551 AV cab .Pretty wild thinking about this

That kind of sound is so vintage that people spend all kinds of money and time in the studio trying to get that same sound again.
Another guy was trying to get the snare to sound like it does on every rehearsal tape you have ever recorded with a boombox. That wet box sound.

If you owned that one around 1970, it was pretty advanced stuff, Silver Dagger. Many brands had it`s beauties. I remember one early 70s portable mono cassette player by Phillips, with a window to a needle showing the level of volume. Then by the early 80s there was a stationary TEAC A-103 stereo cassette deck, which I still use.

By the 70s, traditional tape recorders became a real gem. You had to be well off to own one like that. It had big wheels and vertical positioning. It looked like an item in a recording studio.

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Silver Dagger
I had one of these which were groundbreaking portable stereo cassette recorders and recorded many, many mainly London gigs over the years - from the Stones to The Who and lots of other bands.

Have any of your recordings made it out into the public domain?

Scotty

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Kurt
1964 kid here...
I could record on 8-Tracks with this beauty and I thought I was the COOLEST!



Wish I still had it.

I still have about fifteen 8-tracks I keep on a shelf next to my cd's at my studio- great conversation pieces. Some are official releases (The Doors L.A. Woman, Jeff Beck Wired, More Hot Rocks, etc.) while some were blanks and filled with stuff I recorded off the radio. I have a killer boot of Live ZZ Top from the King Biscuit Flower Hour c. 1979, but I haven't been able to listen to it for almost 40 years! Also, as someone else mentioned above, I have a couple I made the night John Lennon died - just pushed record and let it go - I recall it was sad dj's talking and lots of Beatles and Lennon solo music. Would love to hear those along with some of the other 8 track mix tapes as I have no idea whats on them - the labels simply say "rock music".

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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ycagwywpmd
The decks you show Green Lady look remarkably like the one we had at home in late 50's/early 60's. Phillips I think). It was a gift from my gran, and my parents used it to record the Saturday morning radio programme 'Children's Choice' which morphed into 'Children's Favourites' while we were at Saturday morning dancing, at the very cinema I later saw my first Stones concert in 1965. We had great fun with it, but it met its demise as it kept eating the tapes......

PS sorry to barge in like this, OK I'll admit if, I'm nearer to 70 than 60......

Me too... Yes, it was a Phillips.

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[email protected]

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Silver Dagger
I had one of these which were groundbreaking portable stereo cassette recorders and recorded many, many mainly London gigs over the years - from the Stones to The Who and lots of other bands.

Have any of your recordings made it out into the public domain?

Scotty

My recording of the Stones at Wembley Sept 8 1973 has. Quite a well known recording. A few other bits and pieces - Dylan - Earls Court, Charlton 74 with The Who; Pete Townshend at the Roundhouse; Genesis at Wembley 74; Floyd at Wembley 74.

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Green Lady

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ycagwywpmd
The decks you show Green Lady look remarkably like the one we had at home in late 50's/early 60's. Phillips I think). It was a gift from my gran, and my parents used it to record the Saturday morning radio programme 'Children's Choice' which morphed into 'Children's Favourites' while we were at Saturday morning dancing, at the very cinema I later saw my first Stones concert in 1965. We had great fun with it, but it met its demise as it kept eating the tapes......

PS sorry to barge in like this, OK I'll admit if, I'm nearer to 70 than 60......

Me too... Yes, it was a Phillips.

[www.sterlingtimes.co.uk]

Well this is what it was used for...(but you really will need to be nearer 70 than 60 to remember this) ..but how did that Beatles song get in there! (Thank goodness the Fab Four came along!)
I suppose music for really young kids doesn't change a lot, though my 4yr old grandson does a pretty good rendition of the chorus of YCAGWYW, and it wasn't me that taught him!

But my first musical memories go way back beyond, to standing next to dad at the piano, when I was maybe 2 or 3, and listening and watching his hands work their magic. At concerts now I love the video close ups of say CL on his keyboard, watching those fingers do their stuff just takes me way back. Funny how the watching was just as much part of the musical experience as listening.

There were such bad and sad times with dad, the schizophrenia, dementia, Alzheimer's. But even in the care home at the end he still played the piano there, even though he didn't know who anyone was.
The thing with memories, when you lose someone, now I'm not haunted by the bad times, but standing by that piano......you gave me the music dad, that's what I remember now. And what a gift to treasure