Did anyone actually call these things "cassingles"? I came across my collection of them between stacks of books and magazines while going through the closet and couldn't resist dragging them out. Most were immediately familiar, but I was surprised to see one I didn't remember at all by an R&B group called Riff. As artifacts of a bygone era in music, they make me feel old; my first few singles purchases came at the very tail end of the vinyl era, and I've since lived through cassingles, CD singles and the complete death and Phoenix-like rebirth of the singles market. And these cassingles remind me of what's lost with the digital single — tangible qualities such as sleeve design that help to make these little time capsules (in the case of this batch of singles, circa 1988 to 1991) and objets d'art. I also realized this is a goldmine of blog posts waiting to be written: I plan to post on each of these individually in the coming weeks and months as I put on the headphones, revisit the songs of my youth and get to know those B-sides again.
2 comments:
It is a goldmine of nostalgia and more. I got rid of all my cassettes and cassette singles a long time ago. Yes, they do bring back a lot of memories.
Definitely lots of nostalgia -- for the fun songs, the timeframe they evoke and for better times in music. First post in the series is coming soon.
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