my local library and then spend hours drawing and painting the covers onto thin cardboard which would eventually be inserted with great pride into the cassette box. My version of Queen's 'The Game' was particularly fine, as I remember it. Now that was dedication... much more fun than pressing a button and downloading something.

That an LP generally fitted onto 1 side of a C90 so you could pair unlikely bedfellows on the same tape. Say, The Jam on one side and Rachel Sweet on the other (this is one pairing I actually remember having). I doubt that many of today's more bloated CDs would fit. You'd be forced to use a C120 and everybody knows that you couldn't play them more than twice without them tangling up.

Someone reminded me the other day about those Island cassettes with an album of the day on one side and a blank tape on the other.

I had the "Rastaman Vibration" one. RV is a wonderful album - but my ocnfession is that I filled up the other side with a load of anyhoo old nonsense probably including Stranglers' "Peaches" -because I thought it was naughty

Never mind cassette - for TOTP I used to hold up a microphone to our telly's single and v.tinny speaker - er, fed, into an ancient Grundig reel-to-reel. To which I would add my own DJ type comments.

BTW - love your post. Suddenly I was 9 again.

I really sinned back in the 'BASF chromdioxid' days, and in this digital age, I reckon I sin frequently if not daily.

all hope has long since been abandoned

very funny post. I too was transported waaay back to a rather more innocent and certainly more fun time.

Led into a life of crime by my Dad buying an old reel-to-reel, which I positioned in front of the radio on a Sunday night, ready for the charts.

Can't remember if it was after I graduated to cassettes, but whenever I hear Peter Noone singing "Oh, You Pretty Things" (no, it doesn't happen very often), I always expect it to segue perfectly into Blue Mink's "The Bannerman" (come on, I was only 10).

When my Dad died, I inherited a large bag of cassettes of Humph's Monday night "Best of Jazz".

What chance did I have?

Pete_M - you have stolen my identity and my past life (surely the same). You swine. l can't remember where l put the old tapes. Refresh my (our) memory then send them back to me/you/us. Damn, its only Thursday evening and the weekend has already started.

That I never heard the beginning or ends of songs. Yep, I was so poor that I could never buy albums (stop crying at the back!), and that I taped *everything* off the radio. I had so many compilations of favourite songs, but they never had the beginnings or ends because I assiduously chopped out the witless DJ. I was pretty good at this, as you can imagine.

When I got the money to actually buy some of these records - and alleviated a lot of the guilt - some of the intros were a revelation. Blondie's Atomic starts with Three Blind Mice! Who knew?

But I helped kee Billy Bragg sane on the road.

I used to produce cassette compilations for friends, consisting of favourite music with silly tunes and dialogue. They became known as Beanytapes. Natch. When introduced to Billy Bragg by his, ahem, "Beanytape carrying roadie" he exclaimed "Aha, you are he of cassette fame!" Or something along those lines.

...on his sophisticated separates system (make sure to keep those needles out of the red). The results would then be played on our trusty mono cassette player which would be positioned between my sister's bedroom and mine. It would favour one bedroom for a week, the other the next.

Still got some of them knocking about somewhere, a favorite being Peel's 40th birthday show. That also broke and had to be repaired. Knew l/we should have splashed out and gone for TDK.

For me, this song will always finish like this:

(key change) "I feel the rain falling Madness there with The Su-"

Similarly hard-wired into my memory is:

"Unction! I never thought it could happen..."