the sound of music

CASSETTE TAPE One of my earliest cassette-related memories from sometime in the mid-’90s involves staying up all night to tape a song that I hoped would be played on the radio. It never came on, and I finally fell asleep a little after midnight with my finger hovering over the record button. This experience is typical for cassettes: intended to be small and user-friendly, they never really lived up to their promise. Other cassette-related bungles I’ve witnessed include my mother accidentally taping over a recording of me saying some of my first words; my friend, while digging through her brother’s cassette collection, somehow unravelling a demo tape his band had made, then fruitlessly trying to re-wind it using a disposable