Why I bought a cassette player in 2012

I have lots of cassette tapes. Hey, I grew up in the '80s, so half of my collection consists of artists like Duran Duran, Wham!, Swing Out Sister and Tears for Fears.

The other half was procured in the '90s when I became a Phish fan. Back in those days, we would find other phans at shows or through friends who knew other phans who had tapes of shows (and if you were friends with a taper? Jackpot!). Like the Grateful Dead before them, Phish always welcomed tapers at their shows as long as the tapes were copied and given away or traded, never sold.

Even in the early days of the internet, there were no mp3s, so we mostly used it as a tool to connect with other phans and trade tapes. That's how I built up my collection.

Because the cassette is now a dead medium, I have been in the process of converting my hundreds of Phish tapes to CD and mp3. My cassette player is hooked up to a standalone CD burner which records from any analog source (I've been digitizing a lot of my hundreds of vinyl records, too).

In order to make things both fun and organized, I have been converting my Phish tapes on their 20th anniversaries. So all throughout 2010 and 2011, I was recording my 1990 and 1991 tapes. The fun of it is that it needs to be done in real time (with track separation being done by pushing a button at the correct moment), so I also listen intently to them, and twice - first to figure out where the track changes were, then to actually record them onto disc. Then I convert the audio to mp3, so I have it on disc and on my computer. Listening to those old shows on my iPod while running has been quite awesome.

It has been quite the endeavor. But a few days ago, my cassette player, which has probably seen more use in the past two years than the previous two decades, conked out.

And so, I logged on to Amazon.com, a thoroughly modern method of shopping, to purchase a used tape deck - a completely outmoded technology.  How anachronistic!

But I need it - I've got a ton of 1992 tapes that need to be converted this year.