The next tape box says “Oldies.” Nothing else. There’s a typed list inside, though, which turns out to be accurate (at least for Side 1; I haven’t played Side 2 yet).

There are thirty-two 1950s pop/rock numbers by assorted performers, then the first four cuts from The Beatles’ 2nd Album, and finally “Heartbreak Hotel” on Side 1. Those 32 are all the same as the first thiry-two I recorded off an unlabeled cassette many months ago, and the quality was better on the cassette, so I don’t need them.

I don’t have The Beatles’ Second Album, though, and at $11.99 it’s not all that cheap, so I’m debating what to do. The quality on this tape… well, it’s not one of the worst, but it’s not very good, either. It’s a bit muddy, with too much bass and truncated treble. Hmm.

“Heartbreak Hotel” — it’s a single, it’s cheap; I’ll want to play it again to assess the quality more exactly, but I’ll probably buy the download instead.

Side 2, assuming the list is accurate, has the rest of The Beatles’ Second Album, then “I Will Follow Him” by Little Peggy March, which I got from the single early last year and probably don’t need again (though the single was kind of scratchy), then the remaining four tracks off that oldies cassette — and then fifteen 1950s tracks I don’t seem to have anywhere else, and Meet the Beatles rounds it all out.

No idea where I got any of this stuff except for “I Will Follow Him.”

By the way, I degaussed the heads before playing this tape. It didn’t make much difference.

Well, that explains what was up with the “TV Concert” tape! I clearly reversed it at some point. Side 2 must have been the original Side 1. It’s a recording of the first episode of “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert,” followed by the beginning of “Attack of the Crab Monsters.” It was clearly made with microphones pointed at the TV, not a line connection, because you can hear me and someone else (maybe Jack Wells) giggling hysterically at the start of “Attack of the Crab Monsters.”

It’s got the Doobie Brothers, Cross Country, and the Rolling Stones, but the Stones aren’t live — online sources say it was just some of their videos, not concert footage at all.

Those sources also say Earth, Wind and Fire were on there, but at first I didn’t notice them during playback. That must have been when I went upstairs for lunch.

But when I went to edit this down, there they were. Earth, Wind and Fire did three numbers while I was getting lunch. They’re there.

So I got five tracks from the Doobies, three from Earth, Wind and Fire, and two (sort of) from Cross Country. That last — there’s one actual song, but first there’s a five-minute thing that’s partly a medley of three of their songs (and I think it uses two different recordings of “In the Midnight Hour,” one live and one off their album), partly introducing the entire band, and partly a sort of backstage glimpse.

I didn’t bother with any of the Stones’ stuff — it’s all off albums I already have, not live versions.

I cut out ads and applause and other crap, and the Stones videos, and wound up with 47 minutes out of the 90-minute show.

I also tossed about twenty minutes of “Attack of the Crab Monsters.”

So that leaves eight more tapes in the stack, and I think I actually already did one of them but put it back to try for a cleaner copy. I’m hoping to get them all done by the end of the year, but that’s probably much too optimistic.

Well, this was a surprise. I had assumed that the tape labeled “TV Concert” was recorded off the TV. It wasn’t.

It’s only about eleven minutes of material; the rest of Side 1 is blank. (I haven’t played Side 2 yet.) That eleven minutes is a girl with a guitar, playin’ and singin’. And judging by the chatter between songs, I was the one recording it — I recognize my voice even though I can’t quite make out what I was saying. (I was behind the mikes, not in front of them.)

The thing is, I don’t know who the singer was. I can’t place her voice. I can tell you lots of people it wasn’t, but not who it was.

She plays guitar beautifully. The singing is less impressive — she had a nice voice, but had trouble hitting the high notes.

She also tended to break off in the middle of songs, sometimes because she forgot the lyrics, so I have not quite two minutes of “Blackbird” that ends in a bit of a muddle, and less than a minute of “Chelsea Morning” before she lost it. There are pieces of three other songs that I don’t recognize, as well.

I have no memory at all of making this recording. I thought at first the singer might be Martha Esersky, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Then I considered Buffie Groves, but it’s definitely not her, either.

I just don’t know who it is. Don’t know what to do with this. I’ve converted it to MP3, but the metadata is pretty skimpy.

The next tape was No. P, labeled “Pink Floyd/2001/Harp,” with a sticker on the box saying “NEEDS EDITING.”

Not really all that helpful. And the enclosed track listing, hand-written on lined paper, wasn’t great, either — it has counter numbers for thirteen items for over three hours of tape. It only has five titles matched to those thirteen numbers, and one of them is wrong.

The quality here is… not terrible, but still leaves much to be desired.

I immediately recognized three of the titled tracks (“Careful with that Axe, Eugene,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict”) as being from Pink Floyd’s “Ummagumma.” A fourth titled track says it’s “Kingfisher,” but upon looking up the track list for “Ummagumma” I see the actual title is “Grantchester Meadows.” And five of the blank counter numbers line up with the other five tracks on that two-record set.

“Ummagumma” starts at 384. From 000 to 384 is listed as a single track, which is silly. It took me awhile to identify what’s actually there, but by playing the 30-second samples on Amazon I was eventually able to nail it down as “Atom Heart Mother.”

Now, if those albums weren’t readily available, the quality here is just barely good enough that I’d take them off the tape; I might do some head-cleaning and degaussing and see if I could get a cleaner copy first. But as it happens, they are available for download at reasonable prices, so I’m going to do that instead and save myself a lot of work.

That covers all of Side 1, and the first chunk of Side 2 — this tape, while allegedly the same 1800 feet as the others, ran short. Oh, and the “needs editing” probably refers to a fragment of “Sisyphus” at the end of Side 1; the complete piece starts Side 2.

After the end of “Ummagumma” is the soundtrack album for “2001: A Space Odyssey” — and it’s the same one I had on vinyl and already transferred months ago. The LP was a bit scratchy in places, but it’s still a little better than the tape. (Side 2 of the tape has noticeably better sound than Side 1.) No need to make another copy.

(The last track listing is for “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” by the way — there are no counter numbers or titles for anything after that.)

And after “2001,” there’s a chunk of harp music I quickly identified as C.P.E. Bach’s Sonata in G Major, and then Johann Dussek’s Sonata in C Minor. It cuts off partway through, though, when the tape ran out. But it doesn’t matter; those are off the Nonesuch album “Four Centuries of Music for the Harp,” which was one of the LPs in my collection, and I got a near-perfect copy from the LP last year.

So I already have “2001” and the harp music, and I’m going to go download the two Floyd albums right after I post this. No need to save anything from the tape.

Next in the stack is labeled “TV Concert.” I have no idea what’s on it.

Next in the stack was a tape with a label with lots of writing on it, almost none of it legible. I think it said “Album Assortment” in there somewhere.

Anyway, it had “Infinity,” by Journey, on it. And “Dog and Butterfly,” by Heart, and “Point of Know Return” by Kansas, and “But Seriously, Folks” by Joe Walsh.

The quality on the first two was really bad, and I already had “Dog and Butterfly,” so I just went ahead and ordered “Infinity” on CD (it was really cheap).

The second side wasn’t as clear-cut — I didn’t have either album, and the sound quality was significantly better.

But it still wasn’t actually good, and I didn’t really want to put in the time and effort to edit them, so I downloaded “Point of Know Return” and ordered a CD of “But Seriously, Folks.”

And that’s another tape out of the way.

Yeah, that second Moody Blues tape was not good. But it was just what it said on the insert, plus a duplicate of part of one track, so since I have all three albums, it’s done.

So that tape is gone, and I’m done with the Moody Blues.

Not sure what’s next. Guess I’ll see tomorrow. Or Tuesday. Or sometime.

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.

Well, this was interesting, and made my life a bit easier. The tape labeled “P.P.H. 2” is mostly blank. There are two songs at the beginning, totaling thirteen minutes of music — a jam, and yet another rendition of “Parchman Farm” — and then nothing.

I still had to do two takes. The first time through the music was barely audible, as the 40-year layer of crud interfered. The second time, after vigorously cleaning the heads and rollers, it sounded just fine. Knowing the rest was blank, though, on the second play-through I stopped after fifteen minutes and turned it around to rewind. (Have I mentioned that “rewind” and “fast forward” no longer work on my recorder?)

But hey, it’s done and sounds surprisingly good. I’m pleased.

Then it was on to #5, “Coffeehouse – Pork Pie Hat (Two),” dated Aug. 27, 1973.

Played through Side 1. Stopped it twice to de-gunk the heads, but most of it was still faint, muffled, and generally crappy-sounding. It should improve the next time through.

So I have this play-list that was enclosed with the first Pork Pie Hat tape. It lists four sides. Two of them were on that tape, and I assumed the other two would be on either this tape, or “P.P.H. 2.”

They aren’t.

Side 1 here had not quite an hour and twenty minutes recorded, which is about right, but it doesn’t match the songs on the list. It should have “Jive, Jive, Jive” and “Maggie’s Farm,” along with a mishmosh of stuff I don’t have actual titles for, and that’s not what’s there. Instead there are half a dozen abortive attempts at “Badge,” a decent rendition of “Soul Kitchen,” etc.

Notice I didn’t say it has an hour and twenty minutes of music; it doesn’t. There’s a lot of tuning up, diddling around, talking, false starts, etc. I doubt there’s more than forty-five minutes of actual music.

Very disappointing, so far.

(And where the heck is the tape on the list?)

Then I played through it again. Mostly better. There are a couple of tracks that could stand another try, though. I had to de-gunk the heads partway through, and there are two tracks where neither recording is really acceptable.

Played Side 2 for the first time, too. About an hour and a quarter, of which about an hour is music. Most of it came out well.

What’s interesting (to me, anyway) is that the playlist for Side 2 (if there were one) starts with the same five songs that ended Side 2 of the first PPH tape. It has three songs beyond that, though.

I don’t think these are different copies of the same performance, but I’ll want to check them against each other to be absolutely sure. And given how disorganized the band was, I’m a bit boggled if they actually had a set list — but on the other hand, they apparently didn’t bother to change it up between shows, even though it was the same venue, so that’s their sort of sloppy.

This had their best version of “Summertime,” and a kick-ass fifteen-minute jam of “Spoonful.”

But wow, I’m sick of “Parchman Farm.” And they used “Badge” for their soundcheck, so there are three partial takes (not counting abortive ones I didn’t bother to convert to MP3) as well as the final performance. Fact is, the band only seems to have known about a dozen songs, and I wound up with about five hours of them either playing those songs over and over, or jamming, or just messing around. (Actually, I didn’t keep most of the “just messing around” stuff, so that would be more than five hours, counting that.)

Anyway, I now had everything that was on the tape, but played through Side 2 a second time, and Side 1 a third, to get better transcriptions.

(I needed to play Side 2 a third time just to rewind the tape — “rewind” and “fast forward” aren’t really working anymore — but I didn’t bother recording it.

The third play-through didn’t help much. It was generally worse than its predecessors — the treble is noticeably degraded, and there’s added noise, maybe from crud on the heads or the tape.

So the whole thing was pretty much complete at that point, except that (a) I needed to choose my preferred takes on a couple of songs, and (b) there are eight songs I haven’t really identified yet; I have them listed as “Don’t Know 1,” “Don’t Know 2,” “Don’t Know 3,” “Don’t Know 4,” “The Great Escape (in theory),” “Don’t Know 6,” “Highway 15 (?),” and “Don’t Know 9.”

I used to have Don’t Know 5, 7, and 8, but then realized they duplicated others on the list of unknowns. “The Great Escape” and “Highway 15” were titles on the song list in the box, but don’t appear to be correct. “Highway 15” may have been an original.

Most of the unknowns are instrumentals, “Highway 15” being the major exception.

I’ll track those down eventually. In fact, I just discovered that Julie is still more or less in touch with the Hat’s bass player, who ought to be able to identify everything for me.

I’ve chosen my preferred takes on everything, so that’s officially done — ID’ing things doesn’t count.

Anyway, there are fifty tracks, but I only count twenty-five different songs, since there are several repeats and one (listed simply as “Boogie”) had been split between two sides of the tape. There are also two jams, which I listed as “Jam” and “Jam Too.” It’s about five hours of music in all, as I said above.

Quality varies, but none of it totally sucks. (Mostly because I didn’t keep a few bits that did suck.)

Onward!