The “King Crimson” tape held no surprises. The quality was very bad for most of it, so I just put the replacement albums on my Amazon wishlist and didn’t try using anything off the tape. They’re not available for download, only on CD.

“Moody Blues Part 1” held four Moody Blues albums. I already had three of them — “On the Threshold of A Dream,” “In Search of the Lost Chord, and “To Our Children’s Children’s Children.” Didn’t have “Days of Future Passed,” but the quality was poor (though not as bad as the “King Crimson” tape), so I just bought and downloaded it from Amazon.

And that was that. The tape’s done.

Next up, of course, is “Moody Blues Part 2,” which, according to the enclosed list, has just three albums on it: “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour,” “A Question of Balance,” and “Seventh Sojourn.” Most of Side 2 is allegedly blank, though I’ll want to make sure.

I already had “Seventh Sojourn,” and what the hell, as long as I was downloading “Days of Future Passed,” I got the other two, too, because I’m pretty sure that tape’s quality will be low, too.

Started on the next tape. This one should be quick.

The box says “King Crimson,” and sure enough, if the track listing is to be believed (and it’s accurate for most of Side 1, anyway), this tape has their albums “Islands,” “In the Court of the Crimson King,” “In the Wake of Poseidon,” and “Lizard,” and also at least part of the album “McDonald & Giles,” by Ian McDonald and Michael Giles.

Some of the tracks seem to have been rearranged. I have no idea why. One or two may be missing entirely.

I also don’t know why they’re out of order of release.

The quality is pretty poor, so unless there are surprises in the part I haven’t played yet I’m not going to keep any of this; I’ll just buy the four albums I don’t already have. (Of course I have “In the Court of the Crimson King” on CD. Had it on vinyl, too. Everyone should own a copy.)

Well, this took awhile.

I did get hold of the bassist for Pork Pie Hat and identified some (not all) of those tracks I didn’t have names for, but it’s still a work in progress.

So it was on to the next tape — #3, Coffeehouse – Dean & Buffy (sic). I recorded Side 1 — and then threw most of it out not because of excessive noise or poor quality as such, but because it recorded at so low a volume as to be worthless. I wasn’t sure whether it would be better
on a second pass, but I gave it a try.

It wasn’t much better, and dealing with the material I had was so discouraging I stopped working on it for a couple of months. But I did eventually get back to it.

Dean and Buffie (note correct spelling) Groves were friends of mine, brother and sister; Dean went on to become a full-time jazz drummer for awhile, but switched to computer programming when his first kid was born, as he did not want to be a father who came home at 3:00 a.m. smelling of whiskey and cigarettes. Buffie’s had a semi-pro music career; she’s half of a duo called Fishken & Groves.

I hoped I could somehow salvage this music, because it includes songs written by people I knew — C.R. Bryan, a.k.a. Erik David Koenig, for one. And Dean was a fabulous guitarist, if only a so-so singer.

It didn’t look good. There’s one stretch where so much of the iron oxide has come off that I can see through the tape. But I tried.

The sound quality is dreadful, but I did manage to transfer maybe half of it to MP3. The other half was too far gone, though I want to do one more pass through some of it to see if I can salvage any more.

There are fourteen more tapes after this one; I’m hoping I’ll do better with those.