Star Wars

[dreamshark]

 Done with the deep-cleaning of the attic, but continuing to sort things and move furniture around.

The last few days I've been sorting the boxes of old cassette tapes. It turns out that silly little cube stereo I've been using for music in the attic plays these old tapes brilliantly. Even that Star Wars audio drama that we taped off the radio almost 40 years ago on cheap tapes from Radio Shack. I plunked one in the cassette drive just to see if it played at all and immediately got hooked. I've been listening to all the episodes while sorting the rest of the tapes. It is amazingly good. I've never been a big fan of the Star Wars movies. Great music and special effects, cardboard characters. *meh*  But when you have SIX  HOURS to spend on just "A New Hope," you get a lot more background and character development. At last, we learn who Biggs is, and why we should care when he gets shot down within 15 seconds of his character's introduction in the movie. There's finally an explanation for why Princess Leia is carrying around the architect's drawings for the Death Star, and it becomes halfway plausible that she might actually be "a leader of the Rebel Alliance." 

Although this little stereo has great sound, one might wish for a few more features. For instance, the ability to rewind/fast forward the tape. If the tape was stored with Side B in the ready position, I have to put on Side B and leave the room for 45 minutes while it plays through. Which I just did for Tape 3 of the set, so I guess now I'll go sort some more.

So, if anybody has an cassette player that has a rewind function I'd be happy to take it off your hands, even if it doesn't actually play the tapes very well. Maybe an old boombox? Most of those had cassettes. 

Comments

[quadong]

We have The Empire Strikes Back radio drama on *official cassettes* which sadly do not play well anymore, at least some of them. Yeah, they're pretty good. I don't think I've ever listened all the way through. I should probably buy them on CD or download (if that's possible) and listen to them in the car.

A cassette player that doesn't have a rewind button? What?! Never heard of such a thing. I struggle to think what engineer (or manager) could have thought that was a good compromise.

[dreamshark]

I know, isn't that weird? I keep thinking I must be missing something, but there is only one button marked "tape" and the only thing it seems to do is start and pause the tape player. This thing was clearly marketed as a fancy 5-tray CD player, with the cassette drive and tuner thrown in as cheap extras. There are no preset or seek/scan buttons for the tuner either, which is similarly inconvenient. I tend to listen to Jazz 88 until the commute-time traffic reports start, whereupon I switch to the classical station. This involves very tediously clicking the up or down button repeatedly to get from 88.5 to 99.5 or vice versa.

This device also has the added feature of being impossible to turn off. You turn it off and a little banner scrolls across the screen saying "Goodbye" It powers down. Waits a beat. And then powers back up with a cheery "Hello!" Fortunately, when Lori and I originally put in the attic outlets she installed a switched outlet just for fun. I could never think of anything to do with it. But it's perfect for plugging in a cheerful little CD player that never wants to sleep.

Sometimes you can revive old tape cassettes that skip and stick by simply rewinding them all the way in one direction and then back again. If you happen to have a rewind function. Apparently radio dramas were made for all three of the original Star Wars movies, and all of them are purportedly available for download somewhere online.