The Style Council – Home & Abroad Audio Cassette

What a fantastic album this was. The Style Council was the natural progression for Paul Weller after the split of The Jam at the end of 1982, shedding the punk rock feel, but retaining much else of what The Jam had encompassed in their final phase. The Jam’s Beat Surrender, for example, is easy to imagine as a Style Council track, just as The Style Council’s Walls Come Tumbling Down (featured on this album), is easy to imagine as a Jam track.

1980s High Bias White Label Audio Cassette

This generic-looking audio cassette, which I acquired in the late 1980s from a local producer of amateur bands, has proved impossible to identify so far.

Radio Shack Tape Recorder Head Cleaner (Fluid)

A break from actual cassettes today. This bottle of Radio Shack (Tandy) Tape Recorder Head Cleaner fluid, from 1993, was actually part of a kit. In addition to this product, the kit contained a bottle of Head Lubricant of equal size, and ten long-reach swabs. In the year this was bought, the price of the kit was £2.69.

The Tandy range included quite a variety of maintenance products and accessories for audio cassette users in ’93. A Cassette Deck Demagnetizer and Cleaner, priced at £9.99, topped the range of maintenance artefacts. There was also a fluid plus cleaning tape kit at £1.99, cleaning fluid alone at 99p (different bottle from this one), a cleaning tape alone at 99p, a pack of swabs at 99p, and a replacement fluid pen at £1.99.

Among the more specialised products, was a Cassette Fast Winder (£3.49), with which you could rewind your tapes by hand whilst your cassette deck was still in use. There was also a Tape Splicing Kit (£3.99) which catered for both audio and video tape. The inevitable variety of storage solutions was also offered of course.