Last week, I did my first interview in well over two years. I believe the last time I did an interview was for Punk Planet, for a piece that ended up making the cut for the final issue of the magazine. I must say, after two years of not doing an interview, I still really enjoy talking to band members from bands that I like, and the conversation flowed really well. Once I have my article my published, I will hopefully repost it here.
In the meantime, I realized something over the weekend about a rather bygone era that I still choose to do my interviews with: a cassette recorder. Not a micro-cassette, but one that holds a four-track size cassette. Yes, as in the size of cassette that, along with millions of kids from the 1980s, listened to on a Walkman back in the 1980s. Well, after a trip to Best Buy on Friday, I see that either the store no longer carries blank cassette tapes or they just moved them somewhere else. I have a feeling that they no longer carry them.
So this means I will finally have to face the reality of getting a mini digital recorder.
As my friend Kyle put it to me a few years ago, "Once you go digital you never go back." I'd like to say I'd agree and this could be an easy transition. But there's a side of me that is resistant to the change, given the difference in storage capacity and sound quality between analog and digital. Since I'm not sure about how you change out the digital cards and how the noise reduction sounds, I'm cautious, but willing to make a change if it's for the better. Yet in this case, I've run out of options.
To give some crucial backstory here: I have parents who still use cell phones from at least twelve years ago. In technology terms, that's a century, but my parents stick by their phones, even though the batteries quickly keep dying out and they drop calls all the time. Consider this a stubborn attitude, but if the thing still works, why should you drop it just for the latest edition that probably has a ton of bugs in there, and not all that it's cracked up to be?
So with the tape recorder, I have four blank cassettes left, and I plan to use them for an upcoming feature article. After that, either I hop onto the Internet and find more blank tapes, or get in the proverbial bed with a digital recorder.
In the meantime, I realized something over the weekend about a rather bygone era that I still choose to do my interviews with: a cassette recorder. Not a micro-cassette, but one that holds a four-track size cassette. Yes, as in the size of cassette that, along with millions of kids from the 1980s, listened to on a Walkman back in the 1980s. Well, after a trip to Best Buy on Friday, I see that either the store no longer carries blank cassette tapes or they just moved them somewhere else. I have a feeling that they no longer carry them.
So this means I will finally have to face the reality of getting a mini digital recorder.
As my friend Kyle put it to me a few years ago, "Once you go digital you never go back." I'd like to say I'd agree and this could be an easy transition. But there's a side of me that is resistant to the change, given the difference in storage capacity and sound quality between analog and digital. Since I'm not sure about how you change out the digital cards and how the noise reduction sounds, I'm cautious, but willing to make a change if it's for the better. Yet in this case, I've run out of options.
To give some crucial backstory here: I have parents who still use cell phones from at least twelve years ago. In technology terms, that's a century, but my parents stick by their phones, even though the batteries quickly keep dying out and they drop calls all the time. Consider this a stubborn attitude, but if the thing still works, why should you drop it just for the latest edition that probably has a ton of bugs in there, and not all that it's cracked up to be?
So with the tape recorder, I have four blank cassettes left, and I plan to use them for an upcoming feature article. After that, either I hop onto the Internet and find more blank tapes, or get in the proverbial bed with a digital recorder.
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