A Dindy Super ‘Low Noise’ special from 1978. Sixty minutes of pretty seriously lo-fi recording time. I wonder how many of these got through their inaugural year without at least temporarily preserving the inescapable tones of John Travolta and Olivia Newton John? This one didn’t manage it.
A 60 minute Agfa FeI Ferrocolor HD tape from 1983. I got this from one of the many record fairs which were such a major part of the culture for young people in the early ‘eighties. It was a standard Type 1 normal bias cassette, such as you’d buy blank on the high street. But like so many of the tapes bought at record fairs, this one came pre-recorded with a bootlegged live performance – in this case, from punk rock band The Damned. The quality of these bootlegged recordings would range from acceptable down to abysmal. This one, sadly, was near the abysmal end of the scale. However, I’d been at the gig in question, at the Tower Ballroom, Birmingham, on 8th September ’83 – and I wanted a lasting memory of it. I’d have preferred a decent recording, but I wasn’t gonna let extreme lo-fi put me off.
Tape Tardis 