About 20 years ago I wrote an article about the demise of the cassette tape. It was, I dimly recall, a fond farewell to the format, even though, at bottom, I didn’t care. I figured humanity would cope. Even then I only really listened to cassettes in our old car, back when the millennials were still going crazy for The Wheels on the Bus and Other Songs.
Two decades later, for reasons not entirely apparent to me, the cassette is once again desirable. New and established bands have taken to releasing music on tape. From a base of basically zero, sales are way up: 129,000 pre-recorded tapes were sold in the US last year. To millennials, it seems, the cassette represents something between music and artefact.
This was definitely predictable, because somebody predicted it. National Audio of Missouri has been stockpiling 1/8th inch audio tape as competitors shut down production. Now it has got pretty much all that’s left, and it is down to a year’s supply. Next year, National Audio intends to start manufacturing cassette tape to cope with demand.
As a journalist, I clung to the format longer than most. I have a Walkman in my desk drawer, and I can tell you exactly where and when I bought it: in 2004, in Paris, on my way to interview Omar Sharif, right after I realised I’d left my old Walkman back in London. Somewhere in the attic I have a large box of interview tapes, which I suppose I could erase and sell in the event of a shortage (the Meatloaf tape is already blank on one side, thanks to a technical malfunction that made it a very difficult interview to write up).
There’s nothing to make you feel old like nostalgia for something that, as far as you’re concerned, has barely been absent long enough to warrant it. And I’ll tell you what: back then, I never thought the cassette tape would outlive Omar Sharif.
Sea creatures’ features
I am very much enjoying Blue Planet II, but in the middle of watching episode two, I was suddenly struck by an unlikely rule of thumb when filming in the ocean: the deeper you go, and the more money you spend getting down there, the less realistic the creatures you encounter become.
Up near the surface everything is doing a pretty passable impersonation of a fish, but about halfway down, you start to run into things that look as if they were designed by someone on their first week of a CGI training course: fish with transparent heads, octopuses with teddy bear ears, a sea cucumber that resembles a child’s umbrella surmounted by a cupcake.
On the sea floor, you’ve got sharks that look like bad rubber puppets being pushed into frame, with someone off-camera using a joystick to operate the eyes. Is this because the creatures that far down have never been filmed, and therefore can’t act? They need to loosen up, before they lose the gig to a bunch of novelty fridge magnets.
Bear on the tracks
On hearing that the new £20m Bear Grylls theme park could face restrictions because of its proximity to the new HS2 rail line, I’m afraid my first reaction was not: “Really? What sort of restrictions?” My first reaction was: “Wait – the new £20m what?”
I’m not in the theme park game, so I’m not sure how someone could think it a great idea to take the survivalist exploits of a famous wilderness adventurer and replicate them indoors. I suppose you could argue the problem with many of the most exotic, remote and dangerous places on Earth is they are ill-served by high-speed rail.
The only survival tip I’ve never retained from any of Grylls’s programmes is this, on the subject of emergency rehydration: water that is far too dirty to drink can nevertheless be safely poured up your bum, to much the same end. If the kids learn nothing else, it will have been worth the £25 entry.
