The cassette is now kitsch

Recently, American experimental rock band Dirty Projectors released a special version of their latest album Bitte Orca on cassette tape (below). Coincidentally, this happened at the same time I finally broke down and tossed out all of my old cassettes. I hadn’t played any of them for years and didn’t feel like hauling them all the way from California to Arizona when I moved.

Issuing a cassette as a “special limited edition” is obviously a marketing gimmick. I imagine that releasing an album on CD will soon be just as unusual in the near very near future. In a couple of the articles I read about the Bitte Orca cassette, the writers mentioned that they don’t even own a cassette player. I have to admit that I don’t either.

Before I tossed my old cassettes, I scanned a few of the covers and made digital copies of the tapes that can’t be purchased on CD (Tom Tom Club’s Close To The Bone and a few others). Then, AlbumArtExchange owner Scott posted a request for cassette covers in the AAX forum.

It was then that I realized just how difficult good scans of cassettes are to find. Most people just don’t scans their cassettes and use the art for their music collections. I believe that this is because the art is 1) not square; 2) is often of very poor print quality; and, 3) the covers are often destroyed due to the portable nature of the format.

Cassettes were designed to be as inexpensive as possible. They were an affordable alternative to CDs and meant to be carried around with a portable tape player — often in a backpack or purse. Anyone who ever collected cassettes knows that they had a very limited lifespan. They would get eaten by your Walkman or decompose in the heat of your car.

So far, there are only about 18 cassette covers posted to the AAX gallery. I have about 60 more that I will be posting over the next few days (mostly Morrissey and The Smiths). If you have any interesting cassettes, please scan them and post them to the gallery. Scans of rare cassettes will especially be appreciated.

Here is a small sampling of the cassettes and cassette singles (cassingles) that have already been added to the gallery: