February 17, 2014:

Did one side (but not the other) of another WKQQ tape, and now have an MP3 of an episode of the 1939 radio show, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Specifically, it’s an adaptation of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” and it stays pretty close to the original story.

I just wish Bruce didn’t play Watson as such a stupid old man. Other than that, it’s pretty good.

February 18, 2014:

And today I did the other side, which was the second and third episodes of “The Adventures of Superman,” from 1940.

I’m kind of boggled by how much they messed with the myth — but of course, in February of 1940 the myth was less than two years old and still taking shape. In this version, though, Superman grew from infancy to manhood during the journey from Krypton. And he’s apparently not Kal-el; he keeps insisting he has no name.

He has no adoptive parents, of course, since he didn’t grow up on Earth; his secret identity is invented for him by the first two people he rescues, a professor and kid in a runaway streetcar.

The first episode was apparently set on Krypton; in the second he arrives on Earth and tries to get a job as a reporter, but needs a big story to get hired. In the third he foils an attempt to wreck a train.

It all seems primitive now, but I can see how kids in 1940 would eat this up.

Also today, I discovered a 90-minute cassette had nothing on it but seven and a half minutes of a badly-recorded Chinese lesson, so that went straight in the discard box. And a cassette labeled “Pat Benatar: Precious Time” on one side and “Queen: A Night At the Opera” on the other was exactly what it said, and nothing more; since I already had both of those on CD, that was another immediate discard.

February 18, 2014:

Oops. I forgot to post about another tape from yesterday.

It was labeled “Dance Assortment” on one side, and had no other markings whatsoever — no indication of manufacturer, playing time, anything. No idea where I got it; my best bet is that I found it discarded somewhere at some point in the 1990s.

It is indeed an assortment of dance music, much of which I’m struggling to identify. Much of it was edited into uninterrupted blocks, with one song fading into the next so smoothly it was very difficult to decide where to break them.

Some of the songs are cover versions, which makes them really hard to credit; I mean, “Every 1’s A Winner” was originally by Hot Chocolate, but this is absolutely not any of their versions, nor does it match any of the other covers I’ve located so far.

There are three songs (out of seventeen) I can’t identify at all as yet — I never heard them before, and searching on what I thought I could make out of the lyrics didn’t yield any useful results.

I’m pretty sure I can pin down more, but so far the only song I have positively identified as to title and performer is Phil Collins’ “Only You Know and I Know” — not to be confused with the much better-known song with that title by Dave Mason. Several more are pinned down as far as title, but I haven’t yet confirmed whether they’re the originals or covers, as they’re by bands I don’t know much about (e.g., Klymaxx).

So — I have everything converted to MP3, but I’ll take my time about identifying them all, do it piecemeal over the next couple of weeks.

February 18, 2014:

After trying to make sense of “Dance Assortment,” I wondered if maybe my tape deck had gradually sped up, now that it’s back in regular use — had the lubricants ungelled, perhaps? Because some of the stuff on “Dance Assortment” clearly came out faster than it should have.

So I decided I should do a commercial cassette next, just to see.

I picked “Desperado,” by the Eagles. A decent album; I remember I used to play it fairly often when we had a car with a cassette player. When getting credits off the web (and checking run times) I discovered that the cassette had the tracks in a different order than the LP or CD, as sometimes happened — I assume to make the sides closer to the same length. Anyway, I put the tracks in the LP/CD order when I transferred them, and I like this order better than the tape’s.

And the tape deck has not changed. It’s still 6% slow — I had to shift everything to get the playing times to match. After a 6% acceleration they’re all within a couple of seconds, and several songs are dead on the nose.

So the “Dance Assortment” stuff is inexplicably fast. Maybe whoever made the tape sped stuff up on purpose?

And while pulling out “Desperado” I found the tape that’s a major reason I wouldn’t give up having a cassette player in the house. I’ll probably do that one soon.

February 19, 2014:

“Meeting in the Ladies Room” is indeed the original Klymaxx version, and “Move This” is the Technotronic version (featuring Ya Kid K).

Still not sure I didn’t speed them up too much; I’ll test that tomorrow, as well as checking a few more for provenance. Too late tonight.

February 19, 2014:

Tested for speed. I didn’t double-accelerate anything; “Preacher Man” really is that fast.

I’ve got nine out of seventeen definitely identified, but the rest are being difficult. I can’t locate these versions of “La Bamba” and “Locomotion” and “Land of 1000 Dances” anywhere.

Of the three that didn’t even have titles, I’ve got one, so far. (Al Green, “I’m Still in Love with You.”)