mediageek called the cassette revival way before anyone

I’m not generally one for tooting my own horn, but here at the end of 2009 it looks like I was a good two years ahead of the curve when I predicted the cassette revival waayyyy back in February of 20022007. I must admit that my prediction was a bit tongue-in-cheek, not so much because I didn’t think it was possible or reasonable, but because my cynical side can’t help but be a little…er, cynical, about resurgences of technology recently considered passé or obsolete.

Earlier this year I noted the appearance of more cassette-based indie rock labels, mostly dealing in very limited-edition runs of EPs and albums. My own recent travels to record stores like Aquarius in San Francisco and Reckless in Chicago turned up small cassette sections in both store where just a couple of years ago there had been none.

But the real cherry on top was stumbling across recent posts all about cassettes at Stereophile magazine, the home of super high-end audiophiles, where CD players can cost $17,000 and speakers require a second mortgage. Stereophile’s Stephen Mejias was himself spurred to think on the subject of tapes by a recent article by Calum Marsh in PopMatters, “Reconsidering the Revival of Cassette Tape Culture.” Critical as Marsh may be about this ferric oxide return, his very tackling of the subject admits one simple fact: a cassette revival indeed has occurred.

And who was there first? Uh huh, that would be the mediageek.

Aside from the fact of my first arrival, however, I’m rather ambivalent on the whole debate on whether or not the cassette revival is just crass indie-marketing sheathed in manufactured street-cred. For those with still serviceable cassette decks I guess it’s kind of nice to be able to get some new tunes that you didn’t have record yourself. At the same time, the reason I have working cassette decks is because I still have music on cassette not duplicated in another medium, and I still find albums on cassette that are expensive or nearly impossible to find in another medium. I guess these special cassette-only releases qualify, in a way, though by design, not happenstance.

It’s not like cassette-only labels are anything new. Labels like ROIR were cassette-only back in the 1980s, and many cassette-only labels have survived in the interim due to economics and ease of one-off duplication and distribution, if for no other reason. The only reason we can call it a trend now is that bands that otherwise have seen relative indie success distributing their music on CDs are turning to cassette labels for limited editions. If it was still mostly the domain of bedroom noise and industrial bands, we probably wouldn’t be reading about this trend in as mainstream a pub as Stereophile.

Now that indie rock collectors and other hip elites can snarf up limited tunes on cassette I’m wondering if we’ll start seeing more plastic fantastic decks show up in Target, and if the used market will inflate. If you’d taken my advice two years ago then you’d probably be sitting pretty on a nice deck that sold for hundreds in the 80s but that would’ve cost you $15. You’ll be spending more on a super-exclusive new tape by a bunch of bearded guys from Portland.

Now I’ll sit back and see if this hot new trend makes it all the way through 2010 and outlives being a trend, like the vinyl resurgence has. Meanwhile, I’ll remind you that my hipster trend-spotting consultancy is still in business, but my rates are going up fast.

Making the HD Camcorder Leap with Sanyo’s Xacti VPC-CG10

Over the last three years I have not been shy about airing criticism of the newest wave of low-cost flash memory camcorders shooting alleged high-definition video. My critique has largely rested upon video quality being lower than established tape-based HDV camcorders and the difficulty of editing footage shot in the highly compressed AVCHD format.

The last time I posted on the topic was about a year ago when I took on Kodak’s entry into the field with the first HD camcorder priced under $200 the Zi6. I started to warm to the concept based upon the low price which then also makes higher quality videography more widely accessible. I never had a chance to get my hands on a Zi6 until very recently when I was in a store to check out a different model of inexpensive HD camcorder, which I’ll get to in a moment. The Zi6 takes on the Flip camcorder style form factor. That is, it’s shaped like a bar-style cellphone, with a lens on one side and a screen on the other. The controls are largely limited to record, stop and play with the intent to keep operation simple and easy.

Finally this year I began seriously to consider taking the plunge with one of these small HD camcorders. There were two motivations. First, I realized that I barely used my miniDV camcorder any more, bogged down by its relatively large size and the hassle of having to capture tapes in real-time. Second, I tried to make some videos using my digital camera. While the camera’s specs say it shoots video in a resolution equivalent to full standard definition DV (640×480) I found the resulting footage to be really lacking in quality. On top of that, the video files were recorded in a relatively inefficient and obsolete format.

Although the simplicity of the Flip-style camcorders hold some appeal for me, I’m really not sure I can be satisfied with their lack of manual adjustments, zoom and other basic camcorder settings. I recognize how the average user probably doesn’t care and doesn’t miss them, and that the Flip brand camcorders have succeeded because they deliver good video with absolute operational simplicity. But I’m a bit more of a power user than that.

Then I got wind of Sanyo’s newest and least expensive camcorder in their Xacti line, the VPC-CG10. I was enticed by both the price, under $200, and the fact that it has a real optical 5x zoom. Sanyo advertises the model as a “Dual Camera” because it is both a 10 megapixel still camera in addition to shooting 720p HD video. I learned that the Radio Shack near work had the Xacti and a few other low-cost HD cams in stock and stopped in on my way home to check them out.
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Cassettes Are a Weird Way to Distribute Music?

My, oh my, where has the time gone. Sure, cassettes might be nearly obsolete and decidedly retro. But weird?

Wired’s Epicenter blog recently compiled “10 Weird Ways to Distribute Music.” But, really, the list might be more accurately characterized as “10 Unique Ways,” rather than weird. Seems that some popular indie bands like Dirty Projectors are now releasing some albums on cassette again, making the format #8 on Wired’s list. At least blogger Eliot Van Buskirk had the good taste of linking to my somewhat tongue-in-cheek 2007 post titled, “Next Big Retro Thing: The Cassette Revival.”

Of course, distributing new music on cassettes stands out only because the format’s been largely abandoned by the mainstream. I emphasize new music because I’ve certainly seen cheap cassette compilations of country classics and oldies still turn up at truck stops and dollar stores. Cassette-only labels were an underground music fixture in the 80s and 90s due to both the low cost of doing limited edition releases and the relative ubiquity of cassette players.

While mostly overtaken by CD-Rs and downloadable MP3s, cassette labels have survived. Plustapes is a Chicago-based label putting out new independent music on cassette each in limited editions of a hundred or so. Earlier this year the music blog Expressway to My Skull compiled a list of active cassette-only labels and places to find them.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of releasing music on cassette is that it’s possible to record and duplicate albums entirely in the analog domain easily and cheaply without a computer. If you want to get fancy you can find a cassette four-track at a thrift or pawn shop so you have more recording and editing flexibility. Then get a dubbing deck and you’re set. It doesn’t have to be about analog fetishism — it can simply be about being cheap.

Perhaps the enduring charm of the cassette has to do with its fundamental nature as a recording medium that is very accessible, but imposes real practical limits on its duplication. It’s easy for nearly anyone to duplicate several dozen cassettes using inexpensive dubbing decks, but quantities of much more than that require commercial duplicating services. Like ‘zines, cassettes can be a near-mass medium, where you can reach hundreds with a work that the creator still fashioned and touched with her own hands.

Now that we can take for granted the ability to reach a nearly unlimited audience with a perfectly-duplicable MP3 file, there’s something to be said for a sound medium that can’t be had by anyone with a ‘net connection, that didn’t roll off an assembly line. It doesn’t have to be a case of internet vs. cassette; I think there’s room for both to coexist, even in symbiosis.