I nominate a new thread with stories about cassettes you have. Tell us something that was special about this or that tape. I suppose, these more likely would be custom-recorded mixtapes or live shows or interviews, but I guess a pre-recorded cassette also can be special.
Here is my first story. Browsing through old audio cassettes at a thrift store I came across a Sony tape in an unusual single-piece container, very simplistic and very compact, no thicker than the cassette itself. This storage container, Handi-Holder, was developed by Sony back in 1970s. This seems to be a report by Leslie Mackinnon, a journalist with CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Company. Her profile page on CBC website says that MacKinnon began her broadcasting career as a radio freelancer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before becoming a host for CBC Radio and later accepting a position of a reporter at CBC Television. I found the cassette in a thrift store in California! This cassette comes from the early days of Mackinnon's career as a journalist. There are audible pops between interviews, which makes me think that this is the original tape, not an off-the-air recording of a radio program. Apparently, the administration of Halifax decided to hold a sort of international exchange event, and invited people representing different ethnicities and cultures to show off their traditional clothes, food, songs, and folk art performances. Nationals from Estonia, China, Portugal, Greece and other countries have been interviewed. Remember, this is 1977. The Soviet Union, ruled by decrepit Leonid Brezhnev, enters the period of stagnation. Estonia is still a Soviet republic. In China, Deng Xiaoping grabs power after Mao's death. In Portugal, a military Junta is deposed, and a Socialist Party member becomes Prime Minister. In Greece, a military regime collapses and democracy is restored. Nothing of this, of course, is reflected in this lightweight twenty-minute segment. After listening to this program one can conclude that regular people do not care much about politics, but neither do they care about different languages, customs, songs or clothes. The reason most visitors came to this “Multi-Cultural Reception” was to try free food. I made a video, where I play this tape on my Sony boombox.
Leslie Mackinnon contacted me regarding this tape She did not ask for the tape, just thanked for posting of the recording. This is what cassettes are good for - they are memory capsules, artifacts of the time past.
