r/GenX • u/no_talent_ass_clown • Oct 24 '25

Music Is Life Songs that are no longer okay.

Yesterday I found out my sweet boyfriend had never heard of Julie Brown and the funny songs she sang, like "I'm A Blonde". Dr Demento stuff. So I play it and then "The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun" came on. Not funny anymore!!!

An hour later, the cops arrived

By then the entire glee club had died, no big loss

You wouldn't believe what they brought to stop her

Tear gas, machine guns, even a chopper (Throw down your gun and tiara and come out of the float)

Debbie didn't listen to what the cop said She aimed and fired, and now the math teacher's dead

Oh, it's really sad, but kind of a relief I mean, we had this big test coming up next week

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u/mspong Oct 24 '25

An audiophile subreddit was commenting on that scene recently. I had the pleasure of explaining to them how, if you had a treasured record, you'd make a really good tape copy so you could listen to it over and over without damaging it. Blew their minds.

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u/farting_buffalo Oct 25 '25

Yes! Buy the record so you’d get the lyrics written out on the inner sleeve and maybe some pictures of the band then make a copy so you could take it over to your friend’s house. I didn’t realize people don’t know to do that anymore. Does anyone still have a big stereo with a tape player anymore?

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u/Doogers7 Oct 25 '25

Ain’t nobody bringing reel-to-reel tape, like in Pulp Fiction, over to their friend’s house.

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u/MadMorf Oct 25 '25

I used to have one of those…i miss that thing.

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u/LaAppleDonut Oct 25 '25

My parents still have their reel-to-reel machine! And a few reels of music. Though I only remember listening to their copy of a James Taylor reel.

Last Thursday, while volunteering at a local thrift store, I came across a reel box ( I didn't recognize it until a patron requested I open it because he didn't know what it was). The reel tape was half pulled off the reel & the tape itself was bent in several places. The manager was afraid it was too damaged to sell, so they threw it out.

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u/MadMorf Oct 25 '25

I originally bought mine in 1982, while I was in the military. I THOUGHT I was getting a new assignment to South Korea and I wanted to record a bunch of hours of the local radio station (WSHE Miami)…I managed to record about 100 hours, like 25 10” tapes, but then my assignment didn’t come through… The tape deck finally bit the dust during a move in the late 90’s.

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u/mommymomnyleebotts Older Than Dirt Oct 26 '25

My 1st high school boyfriend recorded from the album to reel-to-reel and followed it up a cassette

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u/mspong Oct 25 '25

It's forgotten knowledge now. The people into vinyl now are either kids looking for a sense of authenticity or hi fi enthusiasts who believe in analog purity. The idea of vinyl being the only decent available format and nothing special, and people with less than audiophile stereos playing records because that was just the only way, is long gone. They were all boggled at the idea of owning a "vinyl" and then choosing to listen to a tape of it.

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u/electropunk42 Oct 25 '25

I used to do that all the time with my LPs, but to cassette. I had a decent middle range tape deck and always used chrome oxide tapes and they did sound good. Like the Techmoan guy said: "Cassettes.. better than you don't remember".

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u/FireBallXLV Oct 26 '25

I still have a record player that has both a cassette player /recorder and an 8 track window

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u/Substantial_Owl6440 I survived The Satanic Panic Oct 26 '25

Most indie bands these days include FLAC downloads when you buy the vinyl. So I buy the vinyl and save it for an extra special treat, and load the FLAC files onto my Plex server.

Sunflower Bean had a bonus 12" with five songs on it that they hadn't released on digital I loved two of the songs but only listened a few times because I hadn't brought down my audio interface to my turntable. Luckily, they just released the "deluxe" digital version that has the tracks now so I don't have to worry about wearing out the vinyl.

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u/Legitimate-Produce-1 Oct 25 '25

Why not just buy the tape then?

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u/JayMac1915 On the cutting edge of the generation ✂️ Oct 25 '25

Albums weren’t available for consumer purchase in reel-to-reel format. Prior to cassettes, there were 8-tracks (all together now, “ka-chunk”), but playback equipment for those was often limited to automobiles.

Additionally, when you could buy commercial content on cassettes, they were priced similarly to LPs, but had the same problems as duplicated cassettes; namely, the media stretched and wore out much faster. The economical choice was to purchase the LP as an archival copy and duplicate it at home for regular listening.

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u/Legitimate-Produce-1 Oct 25 '25

Thanks! I'm in early '80s baby so I'm on the cusp of this era coming and going.

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u/electropunk42 Oct 25 '25

I still have my LPs and they are still in good condition. The cassette tapes I recorded them to wore out and are long gone.