I saved out this picture from The Isthmus late last year.

It was an article about punk groups that are doing their thing “garage style” by recording and producing their own music.

Acoustic punk? Hmm…

Of course the fact that the guy here is recording on a reel-to-reel is what caught my eye. Anyone still using reel-to-reel has my respect. So when I saw this I pulled it out just for that. He is playing acoustic, head clearly rocking to his jam and it looks like he is on the floor in his bedroom.

Then as I looked at it more I noticed that he also has an old tape recorder on the bed. I bought an old school style tape recorder from St. Vinny’s last year as a nostalgia purchase. Jeff and I used to use this kind of tape recorder to make our tapes back and forth throughout the years.

We rode bikes with those big things, carried them around to all sorts of places and recorded ourselves and our friends. Only later did I take over my mom’s smaller “Walkman” style tape player/recorder that was half as big. It was awesome and went on to become the tape recorder that I used for bootlegging shows.

I spent many hours huddled over one of those big tape recorders talking to Jeff and recording the silliest conversations and mundane events of my life. It got used and abused a lot. Eventually they began to give in to wear and tear. Notoriously the handle, which usually slipped out from beneath the stop/play/rew/fwd buttons, would break off.

I had one that the tape cover door had broken off. It still worked fine, but if I carried around I had to make sure I kept it right side up or the tape would fall out. On another I had, the rewind button was broken, so to rewind you had to flip the tape over and use the fast-forward button.

Honestly, I do not recall ever buying one of these from a store, they just alway seemed to be around. They must have been my parents and I took them over. Thanks guys. I know I personally went through a few. I don’t remember how I kept myself supplied with them, but in the days we were using these big tape recorders, buying a new one was a major purchase for us.

We needed our money for buying comics and blank tapes.

Good luck Segall !    Way to work the old school.