You know who you are… the people who have those one of a kind cassettes or mix tapes or weird rare singles. The folks that have the tapes that were never released on vinyl that you picked up at shows where the bands were selling their latest at the merch table. I was one of you. That plus my collection of bootleg tapes traded and amassed over many years was why I bought stuff to digitize them in the first place.

Otis is one too.

Over the weekend I converted some tapes for Otis. Sort of a battle of the technology. He had converted his cassette of “Clip The Daisies – Fuck The Pigs” (and gave me a copy in our exchange, more on that later) but asked if I could try it to see if I got better results.

I liked this one from our exchange and so I was excited to try.

This tape was self released and is not available on CD. So this is it. To confirm that I did an Amazon, E-Bay and Google search. Nothing but info out there.

http://www.thedailypage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=21301

This link is someone trying to find information and a host of people answer with some investigative tips, including Art Paul! Man what a strange small world. At last FM there was this tidbit:

“Clip the Daisies was a band from Madison, WI in the early 1990s, splitting up about 1994. They played jagged, funky, fast rock that often reminded me of a harder-edged Minutemen with every stronger classic rock, and sometimes jazz, influences.

 I doubt any CTD was ever released on CD, but they released at least two homemade cassettes, “Fuck the Pigs” and “Live with Mary Lou Retton”.

So, I was dealing with a rare classic.

Check out the thank you’s in the tape cover listing, Tar Babies and Poopshovel?! No way! Dalton check out who is listed in the section above the thank you’s: Marco Pogo !!

I set up my rig and fast forwarded and rewound the tape to tighten up the spools and then got started with a test recording. The sound was good and even though it was squishing out a bit on the high end stuff, I was pleased.

I think it came out good, and now (though I’m sure he will keep the classic tape) at least he doesn’t have to worry about it breaking if he even HAS a tape deck anymore. For God sake don’t play it in the car! There is nothing a car tape deck doesn’t like to eat more is a priceless rare cassette from the 90’s.

Also digitized this weekend was another local band.

I listened to this one as it was going digital. Nice.

Also recorded in Madison.

And finally I digitized his dubs of Jazz Butcher.

This one I had to record all as one, then save. Then I copied half (Side A) to another file and (Side B) to yet another. All in all not a lot of work to save some good stuff.

I consider it a labor of love.

Let me know how they came out Otis.