Original subtitles

- [Varying speakers] - Test, test, test.

- It says you push that button there.

[Overlapping chatter]

What should we say?

- Test, test, a, b, c, d, e, f...

- So you guys are all supposed to talk real loud...

- Come on, somebody say something.

- Using a tape recorder can be a big bother.

- Speak into the microphone, please.

- As simple as

or even easier than playing a record.

- Slowly turn the dial

to its full tone range.

[Overlapping chatter]

- We reinvented tape recording.

- Tune to this radio station...

- You will not hear true reproduction

on any high bias cassette, not the first play.

- It's not just a cassette,

it's a little music machine that delivers the best sound.

- But after 1,000 plays,

can the same cassette still shatter a glass?

[Overlapping chatter]

- So tell me, do you love me?

- Oh, god, this is he",

I'm in a living hell, the worst night of my life yesterday.

[Overlapping chatter]

- They get chewed up and worn out,

they were abandoned in the digital age.

- To the naked eye, a compact disc looks like silver.

- Compact disks are now the format

of choice, with the sales figures to prove it.

- I think we might be seeing the end

of the cassette within the next few years.

[Upbeat rock music]

J” be working, people mind

I be well to pretend you're losing me

j” with me

j” with me

j” with me

[audience applauds]

- Tape day, what the hell is that?

[Lively rock music]

[Birds chirp]

[Phone rings]

I tried to call you a while ago.

We haven't seen each other in a while.

It's just, I didn't recognize the number, so I had no idea who was calling.

How young are you now?

I'm 88.

Then you are a year older than I am.

I'll turn 87 in November.

And how's your health? Good?

I'm not complaining.

I can't complain, except I'm getting older.

But I've got other things on my mind this week.

I have an American who is visiting me,

he is doing a film about the cassette.

Oh, that's nice, about the little cassette?

We should never have released that thing for free.

Well, then it wouldn't have been a success.

Yes, correct.

The first walkman, they sold a damn lot of them.

Yeah, but we did too.

Yes, and cd's too.

Frans, thanks for the call, I'll call you back.

It's a deal.

Thanks, have a good one.

All the best Lou.

[Slow electronic music]

- It probably begins at the moment

that we introduced the cassette.

A year after our introduction,

there came a lot of imitations in Japan,

and then we said, "well, gentlemen,

"if you want to imitate our cassette,

"you'd better make a standard,

"because without a standard, it gets a mess over it

"in the whole world, “ and that worked,

that's the reason that it didn't become obsolete too early,

but it's taken 50 years to die.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Woman] Alright, I think we're rolling.

[Overlapping chatter]

- [Woman] You press record first.

- [Woman] Our first song is, I like this song.

- [Man] Live and direct, funky fresh for '93.

[Upbeat punk music]

- [Woman] Right, Bob?

[People cheer]

- The music industry has changed radically

in our lifetime, and with it has changed the value of music,

now it's just this thing that you just download,

so you're listening to something served

to you from some cloud, something out in the ether,

but you can't touch it, so what stays the same is analog.

It always sounds good to the ear,

and it's what's left of humanity meeting music.

The farther away I feel, the closer you get

the farther away I feel.

J” I can't get in

j” and I can't get out

[slow guitar music]

- [Man] The digital realm is not moving parts,

it's its own thing, it's fantastic for what it is,

but I don't really, I am not inspired by it at all.

It's like, film's better than, like, you know,

digital recording, no offense, what are you recording on?

- Where do you think I'd be without the cassette?

That's how sub pop discovered me,

you know, here was the cassette,

you could send it to somebody,

you know, you could put music on it,

you could record your voice on it,

you could record anything you want on it.

- These are just the tapes that were, like,

on top of my boom box, just, it's,

Dante Gabriel rossetti has a sonnet that begins,

"a sonnet is a moment's monument," and that's funny,

'cause like, a sonnet doesn't do that for me,

I love sonnets, but cassettes are what do that for me.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Woman] I think objects become obsolete

when we have figured out what we consider better ways to do something,

it's a hard question, though, because what is better?

- Young trees here, I think it's a birch,

but there's quite a lot, it's a plague.

It's not easy.

- [Grossman] We live in a time

where things are becoming obsolete faster

than perhaps ever before, there's always a newer,

better version, whereas not so many years ago,

the value of something was how well it was going

to hold up against the clock.

[Slow electronic music]

- When your time has gone, eh, it's time to disappear.

Is there better products than cassette,

well, then you stop, I don't believe in eternity,

that's the basic thing.

[Slow electronic music]

The craziest thing, it's not yet over, huh.

No, all, there are still all those crazy people

that are working with cassettes, hmm?

[Slow electronic music]

Now it's nostalgia, more or less,

people prefer a worse quality of sound

out of nostalgia.

[Upbeat electronic music]

- Oh, yeah, there they are,

so when we first did our tapes seven years ago

or eight years ago, people just said,

"why, why are you doing that, I don't have anything

"to play it on, do you not want me to listen to your music?"

I think they probably thought it was some strange art

project that probably wouldn't last very long,

but it turns out it's probably the most dedicated cause

that I've ever focused on in my life.

[Laid back electronic music]

- I got three copies, one to stock, one to rock,

and one to swap, having multiple copies is

what it's all about, you know?

I really love this, look at this,

you can't read the credits on the back of an mp3,

you know, those are things that are kind

of lost today, you know, with this push button,

you know, fast paced world.

J” hit the ground faster than you want to

j” hit the gas, you can only live to die

j” straight away, hits you like a roadblock

j” straight away, fearing you're a loser

j” play it safe, something's got it turned on

j” save face, it's not going around you

- yeah, I'll work for the camera, okay, ah,

this is for you, baby.

- As far as, like, cassettes coming back,

a lot of people don't understand it.

I usually just tell them, "hey, we've sold 100,000 cassettes

"in the last five years," and they're like, "really?"

And I say, "yeah."

- But who's counting? - Me.

[Laid back rock music]

- I think from an older crowd, you get this,

like, "what, you have tapes?"

You know, they think it's kind of funny.

It seems like this thing that you kind

of thought had gone away, and it's cool to see it reemerge.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Lou] So, yeah, I have a picture

of my 25 years of service

in the company, when I got offered a ceramic plate.

This is the man who is responsible

for the whole mechanism of the cassette recorder,

he's deceased already, this is lucien devogelaere,

he's still alive and kicking, yeah.

- [Interviewer] You're not a nostalgic person, are you?

- I'm not, no, no.

Everything I'm nostalgic about is the,

the people I have been able to work with,

that's a fine kind of nostalgia.

Here is a photo of an enormous cassette,

I think it's about six feet high or something.

- [Interviewer] And where is that cassette right now?

- I made it in pieces and threw it away,

I'm sorry, but it's,

it's the past.

[Slow rock music]

- [Man] This is a recording,

if you will be kind enough to leave a message,

including your name and phone number,

we will return your call as soon as we get back.

- [Woman] We just wanted to wish you a happy new year,

I'll talk to you in 1991.

- [Woman] I heard you weren't feeling good,

daddy says, what's a matter?

If you would have told me,

I would have made you a pot of soup.

[Overlapping chatter]

- [Man this tape was actually made 15 years ago today,

it was a beautiful late summer day, I can tell you

what chair I was sitting in when I made the tape,

I can tell you what the afternoon light was coming

through the window when I was making it,

I can tell you what it was like

to walk around charlottesville, Virginia,

I walked down sunset road extended,

I walked through the woods, I stopped at the taco bell,

you know, for a snack, I can retrace all the steps,

they are part of listening to this music,

these songs and this mix, it's saving that day,

that moment, it's different because I put

that music onto that piece of plastic.

It changes the music, it changes the day

and, you know, that' just one tape,

and as you can see here, there are a bunch of them.

[Upbeat electronic music]

- Damn, what's there, damn, that's an old ad spine.

Yeah, I love this stuff, at one point I had,

like, 15 bucks as like, a fourth grader,

and you're like, "whoa," and I went to peoples drugstore

where they had the cassettes and like,

the guns or whatever, you know, like,

behind the glass box, they had some factory made cassettes,

and the woman was like, "can I help you?"

I was like, and I was scared, I was like,

"uh, I want, I want that one," and I just pointed

at the live grand funk railroad double cassette, you know,

package, and the other day I actually heard something

from that record, I was like, "ah!"

- [Man] My earliest experience

with hearing recorded hip hop wasn't rapper's delight,

it was actually a cassette of.

J” flash is on the beat box, going

j” flash is on the beat box, going, and

like, if you knew that cassette, if you owned it,

if you knew it by heart, then you were,

you weren'tjust, like, "oh, I like this new rap thing,"

like, it was like, oh, you were really down.

[Upbeat synth music]

- You make intermittent trips to New York,

and it was like, you know, like,

some kids, you know, some kids would go

to get drugs and some kids would go to find

and meet girls or get comic books,

and it would be like, I'm going to get a mixtape,

and it was like, I've got the new,

I've got like, 10 new kid Capri, Ron g, whoever mixtape,

and it was like the dopest thing ever.

J” as you listen to my voice and the way I produce

j” make you want to feel just like busting loose

j” as you float across the ocean you may feel my drift

j” but you never, ever heard me rhyme like this

- we were able to record our shows,

record parties, you know, people were able

to go back and say, "yo, remember this party?"

"Huh, what party," press play, "oh!"

Are y'all ready now once again, mixtape king, Ron g.

J” I'm on a roll, y'all

j” I'm in control, y'all

j” it's just that rock is a part of my soul, y'all

j” I'm a roll, I'm in control

- without cassettes, people wouldn't have the memory

of last night, you gotta think about that.

- Probably the first time that I might put music

to a piece of medium was with a cassette,

I think the song was called infected pastrami,

yeah, "run real fast, run to your mommy,

"here it comes after you, infected pastrami,"

or some terrible shit like that,

I mean, I think I was 16 or 15,

and it was done on a cassette player.

- Little nervous, oh, wait, there it goes.

I think I was 16, 16 or 17.

[Upbeat punk music]

That's me singing.

[Upbeat punk music]

J” let me die

let me die?

No, wow.

J”no

what's going on with me? [Laughs]

J”no

it was a pretty good example of my background,

compared to what I do now, that's like, where I,

totally where I came from [laughs].

[Laid back electronic music]

- [Man in about 1979, my sister and I were up in Connecticut,

she said, "hey, do you want to go

"to new haven to see the ramones?"

And there was this friend of my sister's

and this guy who was kind of punky,

and I think he's European,

something about him seemed a little European, he said,

"let's listen to some music," and he put on a tape.

[Upbeat punk music]

It was decorated, that the tape was decorated.

[Upbeat punk music]

I put the tape in and the song by one band would play

and then a song by another band would play,

and then a third song by a third band would play,

this blew my mind.

[Upbeat punk music]

It was as if I was being schooled in a way

that I had never been schooled before

about the possibilities of a medium.

[Upbeat punk music]

- [Grandma Carl] - This is grandma Carl,

how are you today, sweetheart?

I decided that maybe it was time to make you another tape,

and the first part of this tape will be music.

J” I love you, Nanna, I do

j” I hope you love me, 'cause I love you

[overlapping chatter]

[Slow guitar music]

- [Grossman] I think the definition of nostalgia is

from the Greek for "going home,"

but for me, nostalgia is

a sort of wistful way

of thinking about something that happened,

something that mattered in a way

that's sort of both painful and pleasurable.

This is the hasselt factory.

There's the car of the top manager, that was I,

it's a black citroen [chuckles].

- [Interviewer] Is that the building

where the cassette was invented?

- [Lou] Yeah, 'cause we built this in 1960,

brand new laboratory.

- [Interviewer] So when did they close that hasselt branch?

- [Lou] Maybe 10 years ago.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Man] The cassettes are time travel, right?

If, forever, like, god forbid the day would come

that like, I don't remember the secret stars

or I don't remember the raincoats

or I don't remember the softies,

I'll be able to, like, go through a shoebox of these tapes

and go, like, "yep, this, I remember this,

"I will not forget this."

These moments that would otherwise be, like,

lost in time, like, tears in rain.

[Slow guitar music]

- We are on our way.

[Slow guitar music]

These guys asked for a meeting.

These eindhoven guys.

- [Interviewer] And each of those guys played a role

in the cassette?

- Yeah,

the people who really did the developments

are mostly dead.

[Slow guitar music]

It's really happening, huh?

Pukkelpop, two years ago there was a storm

and the whole thing collapsed, I'm afraid it's the same

with sort of [mumbles].

- [Interviewer] Did they have this when you were younger?

- No.

Absolutely not.

[Slow rock music]

- [Interviewer] How would you describe the music

that comes out on burger?

- It's just, it's just flavorful, juicy,

good time rock and roll and beyond,

it's not just rock and roll, I mean,

it's punk and funk and rock, whatever, man,

crunk, hip hop...

- We've crunked it up a few times.

- [Lee] Yeah, there's things that I don't even know

what you'd call them, it's just music.

- We want to open people's minds

to different kinds of music, and like,

show them that Britney Spears is punk,

and like, change their minds about the Bee Gees,

and, on whatever format floats their boat,

some people love cassettes,

and that's like their thing, you know?

- [Interviewer] Okay, whenever you're ready.

- Well, on my far right is

Mr. Lucien devogelaere,

who did, in the '60s, the planning

of the whole development operation,

the next is Willy leenders,

in recent years he has been occupied a lot

with the history of the,

of the factory,

and at my side is Hugo vananderoye,

he was in charge of the industrial design for the cassette.

- And we exactly started to with this one, you...

- [Lou] Yeah.

- I don't... - [Lou] When?

- One year. [Speaking foreign language] - [Lou] 63.

- 52? - [Lou]63.

- 63.

- [Hugo] The first presentation of the...

- '63.

I have a lot of drawings with me, are you interesting?

[Slow electronic music]

Model number 9146.

Ag 9146.

I know them all.

[Upbeat electronic music]

I'm glad I have that one,

that thing did well.

What?

That thing did well.

And ottens says:

Yesterday I was fidgeting with that damn reel-to-reel.

We have to think of something else.

He said, we must make it more compact,

which you can carry around easily,

and the tape spools have to be in the cassette.

That's how it started.

And the idea came from Lou.

The legend that came from this,

which of course is not very flattering for Lou,

is that the cassette was born

from the clumsiness of a very clever man.

[Group laughs]

We should write that down sometime.

[Upbeat electronic music]

- The black tape is some type of a high bias,

this particular tape is,

it should smell bad, it should smell like carbon black.

We got a shipment one time,

and everybody who walked back here talked

about how bad this area smelled,

and it was just good tape that came in

and it had a powerful odor to it,

and the whole room smelled like good tape.

- Audio cassettes came on in the early '705 for us,

the ampex representative came in one day

with the first audio cassette I'd ever seen,

and he showed me that and he said,

"this is gonna be a really big thing in the future,"

and I looked at it, and with my normal foresight,

I said, "no, it won't, that's a toy,

"nobody's gonna want that,

"it looks like it should go in a doll."

- [Mumbles] In the '605, I think Philips developed it,

before that, tape recordings were reel to reel stuff,

I remember my father giving me a little one,

but it was a mess, man.

[Tape fast forwards]

- [Lou] Problem is tapes were not consumer friendly,

it was not foolproof.

We more or less are all fools.

I also, I'm a fool

when I use equipment.

- [Man] This is a reel of recording tape.

For years, people have been threading it,

spilling it, tangling with it, and sometimes breaking it.

This is the compact cassette, up to 90 minutes

of tape you don't have to tangle with.

It won't break or spill or get on your nerves.

Another nice thing, it's portable.

[Upbeat synth music]

J” we know you always hear about the hip and the hop

j” but we got a little message we want to drop

j” about the babies today

j” it's how to [mumbles]

J” and about to kick back

j” for every day

- [Jared] Hip hop emerges largely out of New York

that is itself a pan-African center of the world,

before radio, before video, a lot

of rap music was disseminated on mix tapes,

and that became the lifeline of hip hop.

- Cassettes didn't play a role in hip hop

in the early days, cassettes were hip hop.

J” well, it's hdi and you'd better believe

j” that with the son of [Mumbles], all it is the e

j” it's guaranteed to be a sound that you'll all enjoy

j” because you know the prince of [mumbles] is the real McCoy

j” so sit back while you listen to the zulu beat

j” and if you feel good enough

- rap music that extended

from the hip hop culture was being spread

through cassette tapes, and that's when we had the boxes,

the radio boxes that we used to carry up

and down all throughout the inner city,

quote unquote, "the ghetto."

- Bambada, Theodore, flash, you know, Charlie chase,

all the great early DJs, like, they're only playing vinyl.

Unless you were there, the only way you were hearing

that show or that set or that party was via cassette.

[Percussive drumming]

- [Man] This isn't a high fidelity audio scene,

and I kind of like that in a way,

there's something very punk rock about it,

and there was something very punk rock

about early hip hop, anyway, it was really correlative.

- [Rollins] Everyone had one

of those single speaker norelco rectangular cassette decks,

and you could stand it up, aim it at your band,

and record something crazy and play it back,

a portable audio to record and play opened up minds.

- [Man] Victor, if you're there,

don't pick up yet, I've got this new song I'd like

to sing for you.

J” I remember that night in the city gardens

j” where those abandoned buildings stood around us

j” we were talking about changing

[fades into slow organ music]

- [Woman] I haven't played in a long time,

and I guess you can tell, can't you.

J” I call your name

j” can you feel it

in the beginning, people would record sounds with,

the first words of their newborn or birds in the forest,

but it only became a true revolution

when people started making their own music tapes.

Commercially, [Philips] Wanted us to patent.

Lou said no:

Everyone who wants to make it can,

but we demand a certain quality and a standard.

When the listener buys a device in the beginning, they can keep using it.

If he buys a cassette after 10 years, he can still use that same device.

One device, one standard, one music carrier.

- [Man] The thing with unlimited possibilities

for recording and playing back music.

[Child mumbles]

The spoken word, any sound, that's why.

- It was all about being able to sort of do something

that was within your means, for me to do a record,

it would have cost hundreds of dollars or something,

you know, and I just did not have that kind of money.

- [Will] We have the right act, I should say,

the right type of person putting music

onto cassette tape is a perfectly valid choice.

Cassettes are something that are shared,

that tend to come out of collectives who are creating music

because they love it, not because they're kind

of striving for some big success within music.

[Upbeat rock music]

[Audience cheers]

- [Ball] There's a politic and a philosophy behind

an interpersonal exchange in the street,

versus downloading something online,

there's something about community there

and there's also something about the offline,

unsanctioned, outside of state surveillance exchange

that we're losing.

- There's always been the idea of the gatekeeper,

the tollbooth, the provider, you know, the middleman.

You know, the idea of being able

to record your own cassettes, I think, was very powerful.

- [Woman] I'd like to thank Warner brothers, capitol,

mgm and rca for letting this tape be possible.

[Overlapping chatter]

J” you can smile down with a happy ending

j” to my song

j” I'm done knocking at your door

j” you don't live there anymore

j” is it just a memory

j” or am I a little crazy for you

j” in this whole world, I just can't believe it

when I was first in Austin and I had those tapes,

I would, anybody that looked like they were interested

in music at all, even the slightest [laughs].

They were cheap, you know, and I could make copies myself,

and then after it was all over

and I really didn't have anything left,

you know, I had this tape of hi, how are you

and I got it published.

[Slow guitar music]

If I hadn't had the cassette tape,

I'm sure would have been, end up in the mental hospital,

you know, had gone within a year or two or something,

or escaped on the road, or what else,

what other alternatives do they have, Marge?

- There's no other medium that we understood,

but the cassette was the go between

to where you could make music,

'cause you're not gonna go in a studio, you can't afford it.

What, you bring your gear in and they record you?

That was like this mountain.

J” it doesn't say

j” but now you see

j” it's different, here we go

- well, the average citizen can't record an lp,

he could not record an eight track,

but he could record a cassette,

that's the point right there.

We need to move the drawings,

or we spill on them.

- Now, we expected it would be a success,

but not a revolution.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Interviewer] Do you remember the first thing you invented?

As a kid?

- I was, I was always playing with meccano.

- [Interviewer] What is that?

- [Lou] That's the first structure building toys.

- [Interviewer] Do you think you still have those somewhere?

Yeah.

I'll show it.

[Slow guitar music]

[Birds chirp]

[Slow banjo music]

- [Interviewer] When people say

that you invented the cassette, do you take credit?

- I can take credit for the idea

and a number of ideas in it, but

the advancement, the electrical designers and the,

the industrial designer, they have done the work,

I have done nothing special.

- [Man] It's two o'clock in the morning

and I couldn't get any sleep.

- [Woman] Isn't a friend someone

that loves you and somebody you love,

somebody you can just tell anything you want to, to?

[Slow guitar music]

- [Woman] How about Peter, Peter?

- [Child] Pumpkin eater.

- [Woman] Had a?

- [Child] Wife.

- [Woman] And couldn't?

- [Child] Eat her. - [Woman] Keep her [laughs].

- [Child] Keep her.

- [Woman] I would like to let you know

that you have just heard half of this tape,

I hope you enjoy the rest and thank you.

- Is [mumbles] okay?

Is that ok?

[Slow guitar music]

[Paper tears]

- This is an article I wrote about the 50th anniversary

of cassette tapes back in

2013.

"The man who invented the compact cassette tape

"doesn't remember what was recorded on the very first one,

"but he does remember what came next."

Here I was, calling him up to have this sort

of nostalgic conversation about the 50th anniversary

of this thing he'd invented that had changed the world

and I was gonna write this whole article about it,

and he had a little bit of that nostalgia for this time

in his life, but he was totally not nostalgic at all

about the technology that has sort of gone away.

You know, maybe if you invented it,

it would seem like it belonged in that part of your life.

- [Lou] How are you doing?

- [Interviewer] Are you ready for that, is that okay?

What happens then?

Is this a road movie?

[Door slams]

[Slow electronic music]

I must have the right way, but maybe somewhat further.

[Slow electronic music]

[Moves into slow piano music]

It's incredible, the number of types.

[Slow piano music]

[Moves into upbeat piano music]

You put a stack of cassettes here in,

and then it plays and transports them back.

And the changer has never been a big success, I think.

[Slow piano music]

This is the first radio with a built-in cassette recorder.

[Slow piano music]

- [Interviewer] So that was the first boombox?

- Yeah, yeah, that was the first one.

[Slow guitar music]

Normally I'm more interested

in the future than in the past.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Ball] Yeah, I don't know to what extent any

of this is gonna survive this move to the digital era.

If not obsolete, the value will be

in archiving history and memorabilia,

although it may become important again

in terms of reviving and sustaining underground,

unsanctioned communication.

[Upbeat punk music]

J” where the banks has maybe started

j” and the cops are at the door

j” about the rackets in the yard

j” ask for what [mumbles] he know

j” he know, he know, he know

- [man] If you want a tape, it's because you want a physical copy,

it's not something that happens at a touch of a button,

it's something that happens at a touch of two buttons,

which is record and play at the same time.

- [Woman] We hadn't put a record out in three years,

so our label decided to release our album

on a tape this year.

Cd seems to be a little more phased out

and the tape is something that,

you know, they're starting to do more of,

and they said the tape has been selling more

than anything right now.

[Slow electronic music]

- It's not like record store day,

where I had actually camp out,

I've camped out 12 hours for records,

but cassette [mumbles] day, it's not big enough,

it's like the third year or so.

[Radio blares]

Hold on, let me turn this off.

[Slow guitar music]

The ones I got today, I went by the cover only,

they were just really cool,

they were just really cool covers.

I grew up with cassettes, I grew up poor in the Bronx

with an older sister, just got the hand-me-downs

and we were always a couple years behind on technology.

Like, I also have an obsession for zines, records, patches.

It was that or drugs, it was one of the two things.

[Slow guitar music]

My dad doesn't get it at all, my mom,

she's like, she gets it, she's like,

"if you like it, do it," but he's not into that,

he's like, "that's stupid."

- [Interviewer] Have you put out any tapes?

- Oh, yeah.

- [Interviewer] - What's it called?

- Uh, chopped cheese, it's a sandwich in the Bronx.

- [Man] Does this increase

in sales mean we're witnessing a cassette resurrection?

- [Man] Record stores

around the company are pressing rewind

for the first-ever cassette store gain.

- Hiya, welcome to the cassette store day,

if that's why you're here at rough trade,

if not then, hi, it's cassette store day.

- [Man] Who out there is buying cassettes?

It just seems like something that's trying

to piggyback on the success of record store day.

- [Interviewer] So who came up with the idea

of cassette store day?

- Yes, I take credit for the idea.

- And responsibility.

- And it was a shit idea, anyway.

[Group laughs]

- [Long] We got a ridiculous response when we kind

of announced it online, and the question

that kept coming up was, "so are cassettes gonna

"overtake cds and vinyl," it's like...

- No.

- That's not, that's not the point of the day.

We're not trying to save the format

to the point where it becomes this huge thing

and the future goes completely backwards, like,

it was just to celebrate the format

that we love and that we still release on.

- Yeah, and I think lots of people, including my mother,

probably thinks, "wow, cassettes, really?"

- [Woman] Here's some good news

for those of you waxing nostalgic right now,

cassettes have not gone away.

- [Woman] What is it about audio cassettes

that makes them still so popular still?

There's something more than just this idea

that people want to be retro.

- When you make cassettes, you can catalog

with a moment's subculture, like,

I can't walk into a building with,

like, a trench coat and have vinyl,

but I can have tapes in my pocket,

tapes in my backpack, and there's been so many times

where I've just loaded up tapes in a bag

and headed out to a show, those are my favorite nights.

[Slow electronic music]

- It's like I'm on acid, this is so good.

- Do you like tapes, no, no one likes tapes?

Oh, geez, I'm sorry.

[Upbeat rock music]

- Every artifact might die with whatever is digital,

you're not gonna go look in a shoebox

and find all, like, digital files to look at.

[Slow ambient music]

[Moves into rhythmic electronic music]

- [Woman] The cassettes I never can keep in stock,

besides, like, goth and metal, are hip hop and oldies,

as soon as I put 'em out, they're gone.

There's just like, all these bizarre cassettes that I find,

they're like my secret gems that I don't know how

to display yet [laughs] "concerto for astronauts,"

who doesn't want this?

Got some sports rap, up and comers,

a porn soundtrack cassette, sometimes I've heard,

like, really, really awesome cassette conversations

between customers downstairs, like,

one guy goes to this other guy, he's like,

"how many cassettes do you have?"

He's like, "oh, at home, I don't know, like,

"probably, like, 100, 200," he's like,

"huh, I've got thousands," [laughs]

He was like the cassette lord and he was in my presence,

it was cool [laughs].

- The profit that we make from these,

financially, it's about the profit

that we make from the emotional value of these things carry.

Hello, just dropping these cassettes off.

I want to create a physical, tangible object

that I can share with somebody

and that maybe they can enjoy some

of the experience that I do with other people's records.

[Upbeat punk music]

- I started a punk band, and I made a cassette,

we made them ourselves, we got the covers printed

across the street at the copy place,

like, it was a pretty cheap way to do it all.

I don't think we have any more left,

we also have the same thing, just,

like, on a cd, it doesn't sell.

[Upbeat punk music]

- [Woman] You'd think the rise

of streaming audio would mean

that hard copy music formats would just be, you know, over.

- [Woman] Tapes are making an unlikely comeback.

- [Man] Tape sales are up 79% from last year's report.

- [Man] Why is it that cassettes won't stay dead?

- [Woman] We found a company in Springfield,

Missouri, that in 2014, made more

than 10 million cassette tapes.

[Laid back electronic music]

- [Steve] In 2000, we saw a downturn, and a lot

of our competitors started pulling

in their horns, going out of business,

the companies who built our equipment are all gone,

and we have to make our own parts

and be self-sufficient now, and I think

that's the secret to our survival.

[Lively electronic music]

- All I wanted was a job, you know,

and I was, told my son on the phone

that I found a job, and he said, "mom," he says,

"that's not gonna last," he says,

"you need to find something else."

And I said, "no," I said, "I really think I'll like this,"

and here it's 11 years later.

[Slow guitar music]

We did books on tape, we did a lot of gospel tracks,

it's more individuals now for duplicated tapes,

I listen to the beginning of it and the end

on both sides and check for tone in its music,

you know, but it's not the music I grew up with,

it's not what I'd call country music.

It might be today's country music,

but I'm not into that, so [laughs].

[Upbeat punk music]

- [Interviewer] Who's buying them, who's buying tapes?

- [Lee] I don't know, people on the Internet.

- People are the Internet are buying tapes?

No, mostly it's kids, I would say,

our age range is probably from, like, 13, to, no 13?

- [Lee] I mean, I don't know, how do we know how old people are online?

- I don't know, just from seeing our fans

and things and people who come to shows,

maybe, like, 14 to 30, or something, 15 to 30 or so,

and older and younger, I don't know.

- [Lee] Kids of all ages, I don't know, [mumbles].

[Upbeat punk music]

[Moves into slow guitar music]

- [Man] From a commercial point of view,

it's really very, very niche, vinyl,

for example, which everyone talks about,

you'd think, you know, we were tripping over

for vinyl, the way people discuss it sometimes,

I think still only accounts for less than 2%

of the overall recorded music sales in this country.

Cassette is way below that.

- In terms of what cassettes, what their place is today,

I don't know, but I make music for the people,

and that's a boutique item.

- It's the same reason why people go back to vinyl,

it's like, 'cause it, you know, 'cause it sounds better,

you know, whatever, it's all 'cause we're unoriginal,

that's why the cassette's coming back in,

'cause everything has been done now.

- I think you get it or you respect it,

or you don't, you know, I've gotten laughed at and shit,

you know, like, friends of mine, they're like,

"dude, no, man, that shit ain't gonna come back,

"why would you even listen to that shit now?"

- [Man] If somebody explicitly said,

"you're an idiot for releasing music on cassette tape,"

then I would say...

Nothing, and I think I would take my headphones

and I would put them back on, press play,

and fuck off in the other direction.

- Sometimes I wonder if people are just trying

to be difficult, you know, do cassette releases.

Having said that, I still have a cassette player in my car,

I have a cdicassette player, and god forbid,

I mean, if I have to buy a new one,

I'm gonna be, it's gonna be a sad day,

'cause they're getting very hard to find,

and I don't really see any reason

to put out music on a format that you can't play.

[Stereo plays softly]

[Reversed music plays softly]

[Lou mumbles]

- This song in the wrong direction.

It was one of the very first cassettes.

[Reversed music plays softly]

[Lou chuckles]

After 500 pieces production, we changed

the...

Track position.

[Reversed music plays softly]

[Lou mumbles]

[Reversed music plays softly]

[Lou laughs]

Well, it's museum piece.

- [Interviewer] Is that the earliest cassette you think you have?

- Yeah,

that's from one of the very first.

Discovery, yeah?

[Slow orchestral music]

This is the original drawing of the cassette.

[Slow reversed opera music]

We started in the wrong direction,

then you play an old recording on a new player,

then you get nonsense.

[Reversed opera music]

Antique cassette! One track runs backwards.

The other track has probably later been recorded on another deck.

- [Rollins] Let's see if I can find that cassette for you,

'cause I know I have it around here somewhere.

I lost the box and the j-card of this particular cassette,

but, so I had to make a new one,

and it says, it's titled, "extremely old tape.“

this is my first ever cassette,

and I would make album tapes with this

by putting the tape recorder up to my mother's speaker,

"I guess this will sound okay,"

and you hear cars going by, dogs barking,

you know, I try and play it on the school bus the next day,

everyone, "god, this sucks."

So this is from, like, 1970 something, so this is tape one.

[Slow guitar music]

[Child mumbles]

[Slow guitar music]

- [Garcia] I still have a yellow, waterproof walkman.

About two years ago I was on a train,

I was on at the r-train with my headphones,

listening, and nobody paid me no mind,

so I open up my cassette player, I flip the cassette

and it falls on the ground on an r-train,

it was like, it was like I defecated

in the middle of the car, everybody was like.

- Are these like in the movies?

- [Interviewer] Do you know what that is used for?

- Walkie-talkie? - [Buzzer buzzes]

- I have no idea what it is.

- Wait, wait, wait, it's a cassette player, right?

- Ah, this is a rip off, because you want to listen,

but you can't, because you don't have any headphones.

- Hand over the headphones.

- In the 19805, it was like,

"whoa, something that can play music

"and I can carry it around, if I have a large pocket."

- It works.

[Slow electronic music]

In '65 we went to Japan

to demonstrate the cassette player.

And [norio] ohga says, demonstrate your model.

And, and he turned up the volume, hmm,

loud, as loud as possible,

so then you could hear the hiss, huh? [Hisses]

[Slow hip hop music]

- First hip hop radio show is whbi,

people would record that and then, if your man wanted it,

you were gonna get a double cassette recorder

and go from one cassette to another cassette,

and then now he has that, and he's like,

"yo," his man wants it, so now he's gonna take

that second generation cassette

and make a copy that sounds even worse,

so by the time I got it, now I got like,

a fifth generation copy, and it's hissed out,

you know, [hisses], it's like a snake is stuck

in my cassette [hisses].

- Ah, I've got the Craig gs, I got the cutmaster cs,

oh, I got a Craig g, sneaking up on your ass part one,

and I got a caselay, an action packed mixtape,

I mean, I got, I got joints, I got joints,

I got joints.

Analog is just straight nasty, it's just,

that's what it is, and that part I liked of it,

I can hear that all day, that digital,

that digital sound, that clearness, I can do without.

Yeah, I gotta do this, I got a 1988 mixtape,

I gotta play this for you, oh.

[Upbeat hip hop music]

Wow, I got to rewind that, hold on.

[Upbeat hip hop music]

- Listening to sort of cassette tape music,

it seems more relative in a way to the human condition,

because our bodies are not digital,

we're not robots, and your body feels different every day

and it goes through changes and it,

you know, it gets worn down, the more your body goes over

that tape head of life. [Laughs]

- [Man] Messy, it's sloppy, it's dirty,

it's marked the way a human body is marked,

by the space in time it passes through,

it wears those scars and those scuffs,

and that becomes part of why you love the tape.

- [Nelson] When it gets weird and kind of stretched

and you still want to hear it, as opposed to a skipping cd,

you don't keep listening to a skipping cd,

you throw it away.

[Slow ambient music]

- [Interviewer] - You look thrilled.

- [Lou] And I just have the edge,

we decided that we would go on

with the idea of an optical disc.

- [Interviewer] So you had no sentimental feelings

about the cassette?

- No.

It should never, never hesitate

to use the possibilities, that's,

that's in our souls, hmm?

[Slow electronic music]

- [Man] Um, yeah, cd is just the best thing

that's happened to hi-fi for years.

For the first time, people can sit at home

and hear a sound very close

to the way we intended them to hear it.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Mackaye] In 1994,

I think every kid in america got a cd player,

and I know that because we released red medicine,

the fugazi record.

I think we decided to press 25,000, a year later,

I had 14,000 red medicine cassettes sitting

in a warehouse in Chicago, 14,000 cassettes not selling,

the cds were selling like hotcakes and cassettes were over.

- [Rollins] Digitization, if that's a word,

very much cleaned up and sanitized the world of music.

The warts and all aspect of music,

here comes the cd, and all of a sudden,

people will say, "well, cds sound better,

cause there's no clicks or pops or hiss."

- [Rothman] When I spoke to Lou ottens, I got the impression

that, you know, he's an engineer who spent his life trying

to make the next thing, and again, make it better

and easier and cheaper and smaller, and that he did that.

[Slow electronic music]

- They went to cds, and then they got their flash drives,

and, you know, it just keeps moving on,

and I read the article in time about the cassettes,

and the guy said that he was ready to move on,

the one that invented them, and he invented the cd,

so he was moving on from that.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Interviewer] What do you think they like

about the cassette?

- It's,

yeah,

it's kind of familiar to them,

they, you can see what you have.

On the USB stick you can't say, "well, that's you," no.

A cassette, you have something in your hand, hmm?

It's emotional.

[Slow guitar music]

- I don't know if you can see this,

but a buddy of mine, Joe Cole,

was murdered years ago,

these are his tapes, and this is his handwriting, and he's,

you know, he's gone, but this is what he left behind.

There's nothing digital about this,

this was made in real time, and you,

you don't throw this out, you take good care of it,

'cause someone took time out of their life

that they can't get back to make that tape for you.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Jonathan] Probably the most boring thing you'll come

across are commercial recordings

that were issued on cassette,

I would much rather uncover somebody putting

on star wars in the backyard and recording it

than maybe listen to an albeit wonderful lp

of the eagles or something.

- [Aaron] No fast, slow fast,

[static] Classical, slow, fast, slow,

must have some deep psychological meaning,

I can't think what it is.

- Aaron copland, everyone.

- This is my first attempt, it says,

"various artists" on it, and I was really,

I was really trying, just called "days gone by in DC,"

see, that's like, sorry, sentimental.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Jurado] You know, if you said, "do you remember the first time

"you heard the violent femmes?"

Yeah, it was on a mixtape that a friend gave me.

You know, do you remember the first time

you heard the butthole surfers?

Yeah, it was on a mixtape a friend gave me.

I can't tell you how many countless bands,

black flag, minor threat, fat boys, Houdini,

all on a mixtape, that was all on a mixtape.

- [Man] You'd get creative with your cover,

you'd like, you know, cut and paste

and like, you could have your glue stick

and you'd have your construction paper,

you'd have all your photos or your whatever,

your heart would be racing if you're like,

giving it to like, a girl that you know,

like, you like, "hey, check this out,"

you know, like, like, hoping to like,

win her over with my, you know, my pristine taste in music.

- The mix cd for the girl you're trying to romance,

the mix cd is like dry humping a naugahyde couch.

The mix tape where you have sat there thinking all night,

okay, if I can get this intro just right on the pause,

I didn't get it, I didn't get it,

in fact, I ate the last two seconds

of the last song, which means I gotta rewind the tape

and grab that song again, it's four in the morning,

I have to be up at nine, and I'm still making this mixtape

'cause I really want this girl to like me.

How do I know this, what, you think I read this somewhere?

No, I lived those mixtapes, man,

and so the cassette is one of those things

that's very near and dear to me

on so many levels, you can't imagine.

[Slow guitar music]

- The first audio letters I ever did,

I would record them for, you know, this girl I liked,

and I would leave them, I'd hide them in places,

you know, like in her yard or whatever,

and she'd have to go out and get them.

- You had to be careful not to put songs

that use the word "love," 'cause you want it to be,

you know, it's cool and it's like, "I like you,"

but you don't want to be crazy,

that's like, a very careful balance you have to strike.

- It starts with thinking of someone sitting next

to the cassette player and maybe getting emotional,

or getting in a certain mood and in that mood,

choosing the music that really was, made me think of him.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Child] I love you, my brother loves you,

the whole family loves you, okay?

- [Man] I know you can hear this,

I just want to tell you that you look beautiful tonight,

and I love you, and I'll be right back, bye.

- [Jonathan] There's a power of sound

that any recording captures, but a cassette,

because it just has this personalized component,

if someone gives you a cassette that they've made for you,

then you have to take it seriously,

you can't just throw it away.

- [Woman] I just, I was listening

to what you weren't saying,

you're the oldest young person I've ever known.

[Slow guitar music]

- [Woman] Just try and flip it off,

and she practically says the whole line by herself.

[Baby laughs]

- [Man] Did you say ich?

- [Child] Lch.

- [Man] Liebe?

- [Child] Liebe.

- [Man] Dich.

- [Man] Well, we still have one another, it means a lot,

everything means a lot, every little single thing.'

[slow guitar music]

[Audience cheers]

- You know, it's the potential,

it is what is to be done, what,

you know, here's the blank cassette,

here's the recording machine, it's in your hands,

I like that, there isn't just one way to do it,

one kind of music.

[Slow guitar music]

People tell a little bit about themselves

by showing you what they listen to.

- The people who use it nowadays,

they are special people, mm-hmm,

they have a hobby, they love that,

they love that cassette, it's not really

rational, hmm?

It's a rather irrational activity,

I like that.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Interviewer] What happens if and when this upswing stops?

- Well, we've been asking ourselves that

for the last 10 years.

Being told, "you can't do this, it can't be done anymore,

"this product is obsolete, nobody wants it,"

and then coming here,

coming to work every day is an amazingly rewarding thing.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Jilek] If this ended, then I'll find something else,

but I like this, I wouldn't want to quit

and go hunt another job, right now I'm just,

you know, ride it out and see what happens.

[Upbeat rock music]

- People still have tape players,

you know, they can go dust off their boombox,

or, you know, [laughs] Get in their car

and drive around and listen to it,

and it just, it feels good.

[Audience applauds]

We have records and tapes for sale out there

if anybody's interested in that sort of thing.

- [Evans we got through that period where tapes might have died,

we're in an era now where your independent record shops,

you feel very comfortable to walk in and say,

"where's your, where's the tape stand,

"where do I get the tapes from?"

I feel like that's here to stay.

- I mean, I don't know what the future is for cassettes, but

I'm not throwing mine away.

[Slow electronic music]

- A stamping mill, [mumbles],

sports car, you can do everything,

a dump truck [laughs], pure nostalgia.

Mechanically we made not only these examples,

but the idea was, of course,

that you use the available material

and you make your own design.

It gets a habit,

my whole life I have realized my hobbies.

If you have a hobby, do it, and the best source

of happiness is doing what you like.

[Lively guitar music]

[Audience cheers]

- Start your own band!

[Slow guitar music]

- [Watt] And maybe that's why punk came around,

because of things, you know, like the cassette experience,

you could take things into your own hands,

you could write your own story, paint our own picture,

write your own poem, sing your own song,

and you didn't have to be, you know,

swimming in this, it could be econo.

- [Ball] Before then, it was only the cassette.

[Slow organ music]

And if you did not get the mixtape,

which began on cassette, then you were not hearing anything,

you were not exposed to rap music,

so no, it would be nowhere, it would be nowhere.

[Audience cheers]

- [Jurado] Where do I think I'd be without the cassette?

Not here,

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the cassette,

isn't that wild to think about?

- 100 years from now, and this is just my wet dream idea,

maybe, like, some guy wants to,

you know, hear the dead sea scrolls of some thing

and it's like, and he'd go to this shelf

and go like, "Eureka, we have found it,"

and all of a sudden the door of the past opens,

someone's gotta be that pain in the ass guy who goes,

like, "I'll get a copy of that," and shelves and goes like,

and so I'm that pain in the ass guy,

this is no different than trainspotting,

but it's got a beat to it.

[Upbeat electronic music]

- There's like, hundreds of tapes like,

just like, on my floor, that, you know,

like, I will die before I have a chance

to listen to them all again, but it prevents these moments

from dying and keeps them alive for the future,

if the future wants them.

[Reversed opera music]

[Reversed opera music]

[Moves into slow electronic music]

- Digital is just kind of like,

it's a hi, how do you do, it's almost disingenuous,

like, "here, take my cd-r," you take my cd-r.

- I can't work or write or anything,

or focus when I'm listening to music digitally,

because I'm like, oh, I should skip this song,

oh, this song reminds me of another song I want to hear,

I should make a new playlist just

for the playlist that I'm listening

to while I'm making the next playlist,

you know, it's like, cigarettes.

[Slow electronic music]

- That's a selfie.

- [Interviewer] Who taught you about selfies?

- Nobody, I just read it,

it exists.

[Slow electronic music]

- I should do it, like, every week,

just randomly just drop a cassette on a train car.

Actually, do me a favor, watch this documentary

and then go on a train and drop a cassette

by accident and see how people react [laughs].

- Listening to a Justin Timberlake record was only

on cassette, only,

man, you got an entire generation

of young girls and young boys, more girls,

going out and buying and looking for walkmans

or cassette players,

that would be insane.

Justin, if you're listening,

you could make history [laughs].

- [Interviewer] - It's got a speaker.

- [Lou] A speaker?

- Uh-huh, it records audio.

[Lou laughs]

- That's crazy. - Yeah.

- Absolutely crazy.

[Slow electronic music]

- [Woman] Well, that's the end of this film.

Signing off,

this has been Eric's films production company incorporated.

- [Child] 13 goblins jump up and down,

13 witches yelling for some food,

13 giants yelling for some food

and 13 witches yelling for some food,

13 goblins messing with your head,

13 goblins messing up the bed,

13 goblins yelling.

[Lively opera music]

- [Woman] When grammy was a little girl,

my mommy used to sing me this little song

so I could remember my abcs.

[Slow gospel music]

J'a, b, c, d, e, f, g

j”h, I, j, k, I, m, n, o, p

j'q, r, sandt, u, v

j”w, and x, y, z

[upbeat gospel music]

Now, could you do that with grammy?

Try it again. You sing with me this time, okay?