The last tape was alright alright alright

The last brand new cassette tape I ever bought was at The Warehouse in Oamaru, during a drive between Timaru and Dunedin, sometime in 2004.

The car I was bouncing down the coast in still had a tape deck, but I was curiously short of cassettes, and need something for the last burst over the hills, and in the last tray of cassettes that was there in the store, there was the OutKast Speakerboxx/The Love Below, and that got my arse all the way to Dunedin.

I was going to Dunedin to do a work placement at the Otago Daily Times, my first real journo job, at a newspaper I hugely respected. It was a fucking great time in my life and I had a fucking great soundtrack to it.

I found it again this week, while consolidating all the tapes I have left. they were scattered in all sorts of storage, and when I brought them all together, there was a surprising amount left. The Beatles tapes my mate Chris made for me in the early 90s, all the Pink Floyd I needed in the late 80s, and the bitchin' classical tapes that I got free from magazines I bought with the new money I got when I started working.  

I thought most of them were gone, but actually pulled them all together over the past year and there are piles and piles of them. Although my copy of The Cure's Mixed Up got chewed up by a tape player I have an inappropriate fondness for, they are generally durable as fuck. I might even be able to salvage 95% of the Cure tape if I'm careful with the tape repairs.

I played the Outkast again this morning, and it sounds as good as it did 19 years ago (the kids love it). I didn't know at the time it would be the last tape I got, it was just another one for the pile, but it was a great full-stop for the format..