Obsolete stuff always gives me a rush of memory. If you use something all the time, it’s hard for it to fix itself with just one meaning. Cassette tapes were once my only format for music, now they’re trapped in the history of 1979 to somewhere in the early ‘90s. On the rare occasion when I listen to one, it often brings me back to when I last listened or first recorded it.
Today’s example, an Elvis Costello bootleg that I recorded off my brother in 7th grade. It’s labeled "PUNK" in my just slightly worse motor-skilled than now scrawl. Handwriting has always been a sore point for me. I often had to spend lunches and after school hours working on my bad handwriting in 2nd and 3rd grade, tracing proper penmanship over and over until they finally gave up. Or until proposition13 killed the handwriting budget, whichever. Now I write in non-cursive, 90% caps. Occasionally a lower case letter sneaks in. I don’t think it’s quite random when this happens but I haven’t figured out the pattern. I think it has something to do with where the letter is in the word I’m writing. Mostly e’s, h’s, and t’s. I know you care.
Anyways, I put on the Elvis bootleg this morning. It’s labeled "PUNK" because I originally recorded some TV news special report about punk rock open-air-style from the TV. Though it contained some of my favorite bands, even I couldn’t stand listening to the poor recording quality. If there was a god, he/she would know I tried very hard before I gave up. Punk-oriented youth just didn’t have as many options back then. Still, I kinda wish I had just kept it instead of taping over it because he only thing I remember about it, besides the background murmur of my parents arguing in the next room, was someone describing her band as "the sound of trash trucks mating".
Not that the Elvis Costello boot has much better sound quality. First off, it’s his early demo tapes which probably didn’t have the best sound quality to begin with. Second, I recorded it on a boom box, not a stereo system, so the labored gear squeak that it made with every rotation is also recorded for posterity. Third, I must have listened to it hundreds of times trying to develop an angsty yet worldly and smart-assed personality and it wore both of us out.
It is however, a tape that I know every second of though I didn’t realize that until I put it back on. Exactly where side A ends halfway through "Watching the Detectives". The beginning of side B where I recorded a few seconds of a "Mad Magazine" flexi disc. The moment the record gets stuck in "Miracle Man". Ten seconds of vacuum cleaner white noise when someone, undoubtedly my mom, accidentally hit the record button while cleaning.
It’s because almost everything about it except, arguably the actual music, is so shitty that it can bring me back to that 7th grade year so easily. My parent’s old living room with peeling up back and white vinyl wallpaper that in retrospect seems more like contact paper, the beautifully ‘70s orange metal cabinets in the kitchen, the insane calico cat that used to sit on one counter all day just hoping someone would walk close enough that she could sink her claws in …
Obsolete technology gives us the gift of these mini time capsules. Like any other time capsules they let loose the flood of memories, intentional and unintentional. Most of the little glimpses of the past I got aren’t even worth putting down on paper or cyberspace. Most are of the why-am-I-wasting-brain-space-on-this variety, but some are very comforting to have back in the front of my mind. For example, I finally I have a reason to dislike most cats and treat all of them with survivor wariness.
I’m a pat rack by nature so looking through my messy room, I know I have more of these little time bombs than I can ever use. I both look forward to and dread that fact.
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