February 12, 2014:
I said some of the tapes might be blank. Some are. Or effectively blank, anyway. One is the “Hi, you’ve reached the Evanses” message from our long-dead and vanished tape answering machine, and another is a C-90 with nothing on it except someone saying, “I guess it’s recording, the red light is on.”
But I also did up “Forever Your Girl,” by Paula Abdul, which Julie gave me back in 1990 because she knew I liked “Straight Up” and “Opposites Attract” on MTV. Except I mostly liked the videos, not the music. Not that those are bad songs, I do like them, but I probably wouldn’t have bought the album myself. And the rest of it isn’t as good as those two.
Still, it doesn’t suck, so it’s been added to the collection.
That leaves sixty-nine to go.
February 15, 2014:
Another blank turned up — almost; it’s a 90-minute cassette with Red Rider’s “Lunatic Fringe” missing the opening riff and followed by 86 minutes of blank tape. I already had two copies of “Lunatic Fringe.” I tossed it uncopied.
Then there’s “Poems, Prayers, and Promises,” by John Denver, which I already had — but I have no idea where I got it; I don’t see it on CD. Maybe I had the LP? I don’t remember, and it’s not logged as “from LP.”
But I didn’t start logging that immediately. Checking the runtimes, my version’s slightly faster than the official one, so yeah, it must have been from LP.
Anyway, I don’t need to copy the cassette. At least, I don’t think I do. Maybe I should play it back and check the quality. Hang on, I’ll be back later…
Huh. Yes, it’s from the LP. There’s some surface noise. This is a dilemma. I’m not crazy about the album, so is it worth the effort to replace it? And that assumes the tape’s better.
Well.
I’ve copied, but not yet edited, two other tapes, both recorded off the radio, specifically WKQQ, a Lexington, KY “album rock” station I listened to in the period 1978-1983. One’s some old-time radio shows they played to provide an alternative to radio coverage of the 1980 Democratic convention; the other is just a bunch of music. I started editing the music one, but it’s frustrating, because the DJ talks over some bits and cross-fades between tracks so that I can’t get clean separate copies. Oh, and I already have a lot of the songs, e.g., Pat Benatar’s “Evil Genius.”
I’m two cuts into the John Denver album now; the quality’s pretty good. I don’t think I’ll bother replacing it.
February 15, 2014:
Okay, I managed to get nine songs off the WKQQ tape — there were half a dozen more that I already had. There are some rough transitions and chopped endings, unfortunately, but they’re worth having. I can date this to the first half of 1982.
So I’ve got songs by the Stones, the Who, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffett, Jackson Browne, the Moody Blues… and Silver Condor.
Who the heck was Silver Condor? I do not remember ever hearing of them before. Wikipedia says they released two albums in a brief but moderately successful career; news to me.
Anyway, I’m filing these as a “various artists” album under the title WKQQ, with the station’s logo as the cover art.
February 16, 2014:
Actually, there were at least three tapes from WKQQ. I’ve just finished up with the King Biscuit Flower Hour presentation of a 1981 Jefferson Starship concert in Saratoga, New York.
There’s at least one bootleg of this same show in circulation, which meant I could find data on the web and get the title of a song I didn’t recognize (which was apparently never on an album and they only performed it from 1981 through 1983).
(The 1984 Starship concert from KBFH is apparently much easier to find than the 1981 one — there are multiple bootlegs of it. Confusingly, it’s about two-thirds the same songs, not in the same order.)
But anyway. I got nine of the ten songs — I had to turn the tape over during one of them, so it’s missing. I edited out the ads and DJ chatter and a little applause.
I lifted the cover art from the bootleg, and labeled it “King Biscuit Flower Hour.” It’s not a bad show. The Starship was a bit loose that night, and the tape is slightly muddy in spots, and there’s a scratch on the record at one point, but it’s mostly very decent. (King Biscuit distributed their shows to radio stations on LPs, not tape.)
A decent find.