On this Family day long weekend, I’ve been helping my parents clean house. One of the things that we chucked is a box of cassette tapes. This was a sad moment for me because it is through these tapes that I learned about enjoying (any type of) music!
Although I played the piano for a several years prior, it was more of a chore than enjoyment. Then I visited my uncle in Calgary (in I think the summer of 1992) and he showed me his music collection. During the trip, we went to the store and bought about 20 high bias tapes and dubbed a great deal of classical and light music to bring back.
At the beginning, I listened to classical music only. From my uncle’s pointers, I listened to the great works of Mozart & Beethoven. On the weekends, I would go with my dad to Sam the Record Man at the local mall and shop through the cassette tapes. Looking back, tapes were ludicrously expensive – I think it was around $20 for a tape.
At the same time, I knew that people my age didn’t listen to classical music so I started listening to popular Chinese & North American music. Chinese music was easier to get (3 for $10 tapes!) but I couldn’t really understand it. Popular music was more expensive and I never really invested a lot before moving to CDs.
From the picture, it may not seem like a lot of tapes compared to the amount of CDs I have today, but there was no music sharing back then and we never knew about used cassette tape stores. It was expensive and difficult to accumulate the collection, but now its outdated and of little value. It’s with a sad heart that I have to say goodbye to these.
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