The (English) Beat Live at Bradford 1982 Audio Cassette

This is a real nostalgic treat. It’s a bootleg tape of The (English) Beat, playing a blistering live set in Bradford on 9th October 1982. Recording quality is poor, but the performance easily makes up for that, and it would have been a crime to let the less-than-professional recording prevent that fantastic performance from being preserved. I bought the tape – dubbed onto a Sony CHF-90 (how typical of the time) – from one of the record fairs held in Birmingham and the West Midlands either in late 1982 or early 1983. The inlay is in most ways typical of those on early ‘80s bootlegs – typed and photocopied onto matt-finish paper in an eyecatching solid colour. However, in this case the paper is thick and stiff enough to be described as card, which was quite a luxury at the time.

1985 Rich Bitch Studios Audio Cassette Case

This is going to be pretty localised in its interest, but it may perhaps conjure memories of similar practices used by various commercial recording studios in the 1980s.

1985 Sony HF-S 90 Audio Cassette

The Sony HF-S cassette was a normal bias Type 1, which was of a superior grade, and described by the manufacturer as Super High Fidelity. There was a big difference in sound quality between these tapes and the very basic ‘Low Noise’ range-proppers – although most high bias chrome tapes would still quite noticeably subordinate them in terms of frequency response.