Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for December 16, 2021

“Could,” “had to,” whatever.

So…is Burt self-sniping his own report in the chyron, or has Lupin taken over?

Now, what would be on “Burt’s Mix” I wonder.

Beatrix: “What do you mean, rewind? Just move the arrow back to the start.”

Auto-reverse sure was nice to have when it came out in the fancier tape decks.

Back in the 1970s, my older brother would record things and send them to my grandmother.

The pencil was for tapes that were tangled or loose.

And a damnably time-consuming and fiddly job it was, too. But it had to be done when you heard that grinding sound that meant the player was eating the tape. You had to take the cassette out, ease out the inordinate length of tape that had got caught up in the works, and then rewind it back into the cassette. Even then, that section of the tape was often so crumpled that it would get caught up again the next time you tried to play it. It was doomed.

Sounds like Burts’ first love in communications is revealed.

Beatrix is in such awe!

Cassettes were so limited in how much they held.

Bea is impressed or something.

Yes the good old Pencil and Cassette relationship, these new music streaming generation will never know.

C30 C60 C90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KFrSXhXRzQ ….. Annabella Lwin I am still in Love…

I am a bit surprised by Bea. After all, didn’t she witness Jules rewind the 1991 VCR cassette to the appropriate moment in time to see Mouse, Angus, Mag (and Dad), Clover, the Golden Mouse and Jules have that amazing 1991 adventure? If she saw VCR technology, I would think Cassette would not be such a reach! BTW, too bad Jules just a once a year, seasonal character, but I would love to see Angus (and the rest of the RCO crew) more often!

Burt is giving a great tutorial, do not forget to tell Bea that those 120 cassettes break so easy! Better to go with 60 or 90 minute BASF, Maxell, Sony or Memorex. Next up, Beatrix asks about 110, 126 and 35 mm film and what they do !

Cassettes used to come inside transparent plastic cases. These days we uses em cases as a mount to hold the smartyphones to watches videos.

I keep having to remind myself that such information might be a revelation for some.

Bea is so awestruck in the last panel.

He can think of younger days when taping top 40

Was everything a cat could want to do

He had a tape that Bea could borrow, but she had to be told about the sorrow

And how can Burt mend this broken part?

How can he stop the music’s warbly sound?

How can he stop the tape’s unwinding?

What makes that grinding sound?

When can Burt stop this awful pain?

How can Bea not know what it is?

Burt shows Bea an old cassette and helps it play again

- Barry Gibb / Robin Gibb – How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

Well, I was born in the late 70’s, so I grew up in the cassette era, and I have absolutely no nostalgia for them. They had poor quality sound compared to CDs, they had a much shorter average lifespan, and unless you were really lucky, if you wanted to skip to a certain song, it was usually a game of fast forward and rewind just to get where you wanted. I guess the only positive about cassettes at the time was that they were better than 8-tracks.

Now my cats just bat my Galaxy Buds case all over the room. How many times have I couldn’t find it only to realise it’s under the dresser?

When our daughters were little we had to make sure we kept the cassettes up high or we would have to come in and rewind them because they had pulled the tape out. Got pretty good at rewinding with a pencil.

Mixtape Support Group meeting:

“Hi, my name is Robert, and I use to make mixtapes.”

(Group gathered in a circle) “Hello Robert”

“It has been almost forty years since I made a tape.”

(Group) “Go on…”

“I use to give my tapes whimsical names like, ’Robert’s Field Trip To The Frontal-Lobes.’ One of my favorite tapes started with Time by Pink Floyd. Then immediately went into Bohemian Rhapsody, followed by tracks from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and then some Zeppelin. Side B of my tape started with Rush – 2112 and then go right into Sunshine Of Your Love and White Room by Cream. Money by Floyd, and I ended the side with Iron Man by Black Sabbath.”

(Group Leader) “That’s a good tape”.

“Now, I feel guilty for abandoning my mixtapes and that guilt has manifested itself into buying more and more cats.”

(Group) “We forgive you Robert…”

They were the first reasonable mass market way to make your own recordings. And could record over as well. Record industry had a fit at first

The report would not be complete without the pencil comment.

Bea looks awestruck!

I remember recording songs off the radio, jumping up and running to the stereo when something I wanted recorded was playing, getting made at the DJ when they talked over the song. I remember one song that I had all kinds of problems taping. It seems like it might have been “Blue Moon with Heartache” by Rosanne Cash, but it might have been something else. For some reason sometimes when I went to record off the radio that tape went to fast while recording, it had a dual cassette deck and I think when recording from one cassette to another there was an option to do it fast and sometimes it did that when recording from the radio. Also there were the times when I would be distracted while recording and end up taping for a while.

You know, I have to admit I don’t really miss tape cassettes that much. Sure, there’s still a lot of nostalgia surrounding them, but looking back, their downsides are a bit more obvious now, and we have such better and more effective ways of storing and playing music these days.

They didn’t really have that long of a lifespan either, honestly. All of the tape cassettes I had (or still have—I think I might have one or two still in a box somewhere) have long since degraded to the point they’re either useless or close to it now. Whereas, every other means of music storage I have is still chugging along pretty okay.

A old-style Bic pen worked better than a pencil.

The look on her face is just priceless!

In the 70s we girls used pencils for a far different test.

Y’know, it’s fun reading all the nostalgic comments, but I honestly don’t share the feeling. Getting to carry around a thousand songs in my pocket, each as perfect as it was in the studio, is the future I wished for as a kid!

Cassettes were the first thing that gave us control of our music. While I don’t miss them, as such, I’ll always remember the thrill of making tapes to hear what I wanted, when I wanted.

OT: Trip update

Has Goldie forgotten about CDs?

I still have some, somewhere. The tape has probably degraded to the point of being unusable by now.

Before cassettes, the only portable music was radio. As a kid, I had a “rocket radio” which could only power an earphone but needed no batteries. In the 60s, I would lie awake nights listening to far off AM stations, hoping to catch “big city” radio stations playing the occasional radio comedy program from the 40s and 50s.

What do those dotted lines mean beside Burt in the first panel? As usual I love this.

All this cassette talk is going to cause me to put batteries in my knock-off Walkman and play some cassettes…

I don’t recall anyone completely rewinding a cassette with a pencil, unless they had pulled the tape out to do a edit/splice. Life is too short. However, it was common to use a pencil to twist a reel just enough to take up slack, which would accumulate if a cassette tape was carried around outside of a player. You could get stretch and/or break, if the rewind motor revved up fully before jerking the tape into motion, which could also cause jams.

What a history lesson! Now some people will understand that meme about uses for a pencil other than writing.

Cats would bat it around the room and get the tape stuck in several places, so the whole room was “decorated” with your music. You had to S-L-O-W-L-Y get the tape from all those places and VERY CAREFULLY rewind it again.It made you want to make coats, boots and jackets out of their fur.

The best selling point of a cassette is left to the end….. rewinding with a pencil!

Thanks for the info, Burt.

I am old, I still have cassettes, 8 tracks, LP’s (not the NEW vinyl), and CD’s and an I-pod with 17,676 songs on it. Music has always been crucial in my life and my marriage, BUT now just about every song triggers a memory of my loving wife who died in March and as happy as we were, they make me cry all the time because I can place a song with an event. We had 35 years together (married 34) and I feel cheated because we should have had more. Sorry if I make anyone unhappy at what should have been a happy time of the year.

I have never understood why mini-disc never caught on in the USA. They had all the benefits of cassettes, and none of the drawbacks!

I wonder what Baba’s favorite musical media is. I’m guessing vinyl—I’d like to see her record collection. She’s a cool cat.

It’s not too hard to bat CDs. Then there once was a media thing called minidiscs.

Bea is our intrepid reporter/researcher: why isn’t looking up such things on her smartphone or in the books at the bookstore. Granted first hand knowledge from Burt is nice, but as THE fact checker for BCN, she should be looking up the answers for herself.

Don’t know about that last media cats could bat across the floor bit. Technically cassettes were storage devices for media, same for MP3 players. And cats can bat those across the floor.

And get so carried away with the rewinding that you overstretched the tape and it sounded really weird next time you played it … been there. :)

I taught I taw a puttytat a’creeping up on me…Idid, I did! I taw a putty tat as plain as he could be!

Much better than 8-track, amirite?

Preparing to go overseas in 1984, we transferred as much of our LP collection as we could to cassettes. Also recorded some operas from the radio. Much lighter than the vinyl.