i just met the ghost of my dead friend on a tape

[RefD]

well, not quite...but close enough.

found some tapes from various rehearsals in 1991, including songwriting and pre-production for an album that got 2/3 recorded and then failed to happen.

it was weird hearing us back then, both talking and playing, cos we were all very different people than we are now.

i hardly recognised myself, even.

happily, we seemed to be much better players than i remembered.

but it kind of struck me hard when i heard him talking and playing, pounding the drums like a heavy Ginger Baker or a sober John Bonham or a Neil Peart who'd somehow learned restraint.

cos we'd met and become friends in Jr. HS in 1982 and here's this guy who's been dead since 1994 and, even tho these tapes are all kinds of crappy and old and printed thru, suddenly he's alive again.

for a few minutes at a time, anyway.

and it's figuratively stopped me cold in my tracks and made me wonder what he'd be doing today if cancer hadn't stolen the rest of his life.

do you know anyone from your musical life like this, who was pulled away in their prime through no fault of their own?

tell us about them.

[Electro-Voice 664]

My friend, who was also a drummer, was stabbed to death 2 years ago. I have some old 4 track tapes where he talks and tells jokes in between songs. I also have a bunch of ?? tapes from when we recorded a bunch. I need to get those transferred to digital (I sold my reel to reel). My buddy and I played together for about ten years. I usually miss him the most when I see a great deal on a piece of gear I know he was looking for. Or when I hear new music that I know he?d like. I?m glad I have the recordings to listen to. Some day his kid will be able to hear his dad, and that?s cool.

[b3groover]

I found an old cassette tape with my brother and I on it, doing the radio shows we used to do as kids. Neither of us had even hit puberty at this point so listening to the tape was hilarious.

The sobering moment was hearing my mom's voice in the background. She died in 1997 at the age of 40.

[darjama]

A drummer I used to play with died after getting a steroid shot to treat stubborn bronchitis. Apparently he was diabetic and didn't know it, which caused the reaction. Real nice guy. The recordings of his that I have don't have his voice though, so they don't feel as haunting as the ones you mentioned.

[syrupcore]

what a wonderful post.

my dad was a singer. at some point in high school I went to visit him and we made some songs together on his piano using a boom box to record. That was like 88. he died in 93.

[cgarges]

I think it would be really great to have a recording of your parent's voices. Or your grandparents. Or anyone who's important to you. Even if it's a really crappy recording. I think at some point, someone will be glad it was done.

I am currently chief engineer at a studio where the owner/operator passed away a couple of years ago. For a while, I was doing a fair amount of work on some things he had started. Whenever I cranked up the multi-track and heard him on the talkback, it made me smile. There was one artist who made sure that David's voice made it on to his record.

A few years ago, one of my favorite clients came to me and wanted to record a bunch of stories. Just spoken word stuff. Some of it was stories about songs he performs, some of it was stories about things that had happened to him (he is a very colorful individual who's been very active and has 63 years worth stories to tell), and some of them were stories about his and his wife's ancestors. That way, his children and their children and so on would have an audible record or some of the family history. It's been really great. My only regret about it so far has been not actually getting my folks and my grandmother to do the same thing.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Justin Foley]

At the risk of opening up a storm on something sorta OT: Keep your analog recordings of this stuff. Had you been recording onto ADAT at the time, there's a good chance those recordings would be corrupted or otherwise unplayable and gone forever. This will sadly be the fate of many, many digital files that don't share the permanence of simple, crappy cassette tapes.

= Justin

[RodC]

At the risk of opening up a storm on something sorta OT: Keep your analog recordings of this stuff. Had you been recording onto ADAT at the time, there's a good chance those recordings would be corrupted or otherwise unplayable and gone forever. This will sadly be the fate of many, many digital files that don't share the permanence of simple, crappy cassette tapes.

= Justin

ADAT is one story...

Sounds good in theory, but many experts are even starting to reverse their thoughts on this.

I have 7 pcs in my house that will play a simple .WAV file, over 200 in the building I work in (12,500 + in my company) and I know of 1 functioning cassette player...

[RefD]

i guess what's key is multiple redundant backups stored in multiple locations.

that's certainly what i'll be doing with this stuff.

i also have some very old reels of my grandfather (a broadcast engineer for WMCA and WNBC until he died in 1975) who was also a performer in the very early days of radio.

i really need to get that stuff transferred...i have an offer of help but i have so far failed to get my crap together and get it organized and sent.

i gotta get on that!

more stories, anyone?

[TV Lenny]

Great topic indeed. I come from a family of people who, for whatever reason, often times had a tape recorder going. I've compiled a lot of tapes already and still have more to go. I have several generations of family members (some I don't remember or never met) compiled on a few CD's. I plan to give them out for Christmas.

It was really theraputic for my Grandmother to hear her dads voice again. I have a tape that has my Grandfather, Great Grandfather, Grandmother, me when I was under a year old, and a couple uncles all joking around from almost thirty years ago. She really misses her dad and husband and it was great to watch her reaction to listening to them again.

I have made numerous tapes of family too to be able to pass on to my eventual family.

I was pretty impressed that a cheap cassette from nearly 30 years ago not only still played but didn't sound all that bad. Wonder if my CD-R's will last that long!

Tom

[cgarges]

Sounds good in theory, but many experts are even starting to reverse their thoughts on this.

I have 7 pcs in my house that will play a simple .WAV file, over 200 in the building I work in (12,500 + in my company) and I know of 1 functioning cassette player...

Yeah, but I don't think the theories are reversing as far as storage longevity. There's one working cassette deck. Okay, that deck can play back cassettes recorded as far back as 1964, if the cassettes were stored in agreeable conditions. Even if they weren't, there's still a chance that part of the program material may be recovered on that same machine.

Take a CD or a hard drive and put it on a shelf for 43 years. Assuming that you can find something that will play it back (and you DO still have that cassette player around, so we will assume for these purposes that you can), do you think that machine will be able to recover those files?

And so far, we're talking about cassette, for which mass manufacturing began in 1964. There are plenty of much older 1/4" analog tapes that can be played back in every largely populated area of the planet.

I could be wrong about this, but I think if you're creative, you can get audio of some kind to play back off of any analog tape format with a playback head wide enough for the tape.

I'm not getting hard-core into the analog vs. digital debate, but you can hardly argue in favor of current digital as a long-term storage medium compared to analog tape.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Cojonesonasteek]

I think it would be really great to have a recording of your parent's voices. Or your grandparents. Or anyone who's important to you. Even if it's a really crappy recording. I think at some point, someone will be glad it was done.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

My late mother had the sense to stick a cassette recorder in front of my great-grandmother at age 99 to capture some of her stories and recollections. The old lady died a month before her 100th birthday, and my siblings and I are very grateful that Mom had the foresight to chronicle her grandmother's memories on tape.

[Electro-Voice 664]

The fake pottery recording
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/webl ... ents/3992/

[A-Barr]

The fake pottery recording
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/webl ... ents/3992/

Ah there was a mythbusters on that. It was deemed busted.

[Seamonster]

I was in a band in Seattle, in which it took forever to find the right bass player. We finally found him, rehearsed for a few months, had our set together, and were just about to make a big splash -- we really felt it. He went on vacation to Brazil on a plane ticket he?d bought before we met him. Next thing we knew, he was killed in a mudslide while camping, during heavy rains that killed dozens of people there. At first it seemed suspicious -- or maybe just too incredible -- but I found news of the slides on the web. His family requested that we divide his gear among us and make donations to our favorite non-profits. A week after the memorial service, I received a postcard from him. On the front, an aerial shot of a gorgeous topical beach. On the back he had written: ?This beach is endless, I could just walk along it forever.?

Hoagie