Article: Please don't hiss this ode to cassette tapes

Remember cassette tapes? They seem to be going the way of the telegram. What a rotten thing to see happen to a technological innovation from my own youth.

I used to love cassettes. Not the prerecorded kind, whose only improvement over bulky eight-track tapes was size. I'm talking about blank cassettes.

Before iPods, MP3s, MySpace, playlists and what-have-you, cassettes were the way we shared music with friends. Or forced music on them.

With tapes, we could program music for road trips, win over crushes (or scare them off), and play DJ for ourselves.

But no more. I've got about 100 homemade cassettes piled in a shopping bag. They're headed for the trash.

But first, let me rewind.

I did most ...

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