Bill Nelson’s Getting the Holy Ghost Across … the tape!

Bill Nelson's Getting the Holy Ghost Across Tape front
Bill Nelson’s Getting the Holy Ghost Across Tape front

I already have this album, on vinyl and on CD, but the tape has something special about it, and it isn’t just that it was the format that I bought this album on for the first time. No, it’s something different.

Bill Nelson's Getting the Holy Ghost Across Tape back
Bill Nelson’s Getting the Holy Ghost Across Tape back

With the original tape was a lyric list that came with it, printed on the same sort of paper that bibles are printed with. It was a lovely touch and in keeping with the whole album, so when I saw it come up on eBay I knew it was something I wanted to own again just for old times sake.

Bill Nelson's Getting the Holy Ghost Across Tape lyric sheet
Bill Nelson’s Getting the Holy Ghost Across Tape lyric sheet

For the love of tapes

IMG_9242

There are still a few tapes out there that I’d like to own, and this was one of them. Of course the benefit of buying tapes is that hardly anyone else wants them. The downside is that more people throw them away than sell them.

Still, this is a tape I’ve been after for ages.

Tape, I love tape …

One of my favourite tapes. Teac didn’t seem to make a lot of these and now they’re really difficult to get hold of.

You won’t see one of these I’ll bet

I checked the tapedeck site to see if they had one of these in the list of cassettes and they don’t, so I sent them some photos.

I have 3 of these Teac cassettes and I can remember that when I bought them that they were pretty hard to get hold of back then. Now, well I doubt that there would be many of them around any more.

I’ve only got one of the blue ones and the other two are black and not in as good condition.

Beautiful though isn’t it?

Teac reel to reel cassette

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Listening to myself

I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently going through a process of moving all my old cassettes to digital. It will take a long, long, long, time. I assure you.

But part of the process is listening to music I haven’t heard in years. Mostly things I’ve recorded myself, some great, some terrible, some embarrassing, and all enjoyable in one way or another.

It is a good reminder of why I love music, why I love the creative process. A reminder that software and hardware are just tools for doing something creative and should be looked at as that.

I think it can be really easy to get lost in tools you’re using to the point where you focus so much on what the tool can do and can’t do that you forget what it is you’re trying to achieve. That’s the danger and listening to my old stuff made with simple hardware and usually no software at all made me realise that perhaps I need to think long and hard about where my music is going, or more importantly the fact that it isn’t going anywhere at the moment.


A signed copy of Steve Jansen’s ‘Slope’

I already have this album, I got it when it first came out, but when I heard that Steve Jansen was selling off the last remaining stock and signing them I thought I ought to buy it again. It’s always lovely to have a signed copy of things and this album especially so. I hope…

Listening to the West Norwood Cassette Library

With a band name like that I could do nothing else but listen to them. I remember the days of using cassette libraries and borrowing tapes. All too often the tapes would be somewhat damaged and wobbly, but that was in many ways the nature of cassettes themselves. Of course cassette libraries are all but…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

When tapes go wrong

I’ve been clearing out old tapes, and when I say old I mean old. Some of the tapes are of my own music so I’ve been converting a few tracks to digital and finding songs that I’d completely forgotten about.

Sadly, one tape seems to have decided to give up and of course it had to be one which had lots of long forgotten treasure (for me anyway).

There’s only one thing for it. I’m going to have to open it up and see if I can splice the tape together, and I haven’t done that for years!


Finding my first cassette recorder

When I was about 11 or maybe 12 I really desperately wanted a tape recorder, and for Christmas I got one. It was a fergusson and it looked like this. I found it again at a very weird museum a few weeks ago. It took me right back. I used to use it for recording…

I love tape, so I love this …

I’m a fan of Deerful’s music so it was good news when she announced a cassette release. It’s a really nice EP too and very well put togeher.

Old fashioned Cassette Recorder (biscuit tin)

I had one of these years ago. In fact, I had a number of these. But one that was very like this one. I think it was the Ferguson that was almost identical to this. It was excellent. Ok, not excellent, but really good for its time. I used it to record all sorts of…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.