Route to Fame: The Band Demo Tape

In the UK, we might today be tempted to think of the delusional pop star dream as something that was manufactured in some truly evil phonecall between Nigel Lythgoe and Simon Fuller – cunningly wiretapped by Simon Cowell.

But it’s a dream that goes back a lot further than the early 2000s. Right through the heyday of audio tape cassettes, it was possible to find hopeless hopefuls throwing good money at the dartboard of fame, and missing not just the bullseye, or indeed the board, but the entire wall. And actually, if anyone, or anything, sparked that delusion, it was probably punk…

Tina Turner – “Tina Live in Europe” Audio Cassette

Sony UCX 60 High Bias Audio Cassette (1985)

1984 was a year of transition for Sony’s range of blank audio cassettes. The retailers’ shelves saw stock of the early(ish) 1980s design of Sony UCX, with its brushed metallic effect and attractive purple and silver livery. But before the year was out, these heavily updated replacements were ousting them, for a tenure lasting through the mid 1980s and into what we can effectively call the late ‘eighties.