Throwing it all away

With apologies to Genesis for the title of this post, today I did something I've never done before. Throw music away.

Back before there were car CD players and way before the creation of iPods, I made myself over 150 ninety-minute cassette tapes. A lot of 'em were just duplications of the CD's and albums I had purchased so that I could easily listen to them in the car. I think the last time I copied something to cassette was about 1990 - so those things have been sitting mostly idle in my various basements since then.

When I replaced a very old, wobbly stereo cabinet downstairs today, I had to move those things (again). And even though I still have a cassette deck (and turntable, but no vinyl) ... I figured the time had come to purge those cassettes. I did pretty well too - but still couldn't bear to part with several that I don't have in a digital format. Many years ago I gave away all my LPs because I stopped listening to them. Most of 'em had been replaced with CD's... but not all. So the question is, do I dare pop one of those cassettes in to see if they'll even play after about 15 years of sitting untouched in their little cases? Or just give up and ditch the rest of 'em too? If only the music industry gave credit for stuff you've already bought and gave you a 50% discount on replacing it with digital downloads...

Anyhow, it was pretty difficult to part with these things -- which really seems silly considering the only time they moved above ground level since the early 90's was when they were loaded and unloaded from moving trucks.