when i was your age…

you know, everybody is all into the economy lately…

…and with good reason, ’cause we’re pretty (in the loosest of terms) fucked. but this bit isn’t about the economic plite of america. this is about something kinda cooler.

when i was a kid we used to make mix tapes. it was a good way to get your favorite songs all in one place, or make it for somebody you liked, or whatever. and being a sound snob since my early years when i made tapes for me (or somebody i had romantic leanings towards, or one of the inner circle) i used good quality sony tapes, which typically ran about five bucks for a two pack. if i was broke that week, or just didn’t care too much about you, you got “centrons”, which were black tapes with white and orange labels and, to my knowledge, could only be had at wal-mart…and were three for a buck.

thirty-three cents for a sixty minute tape. that seemed cheap as hell back then. but fast-forward (pun intended) thirty years.

i just bought a spindle of 100 sony blank cd’s. not only the good shit (sony) but CD’s…much higher sound quality than the “primo” cassettes i used to buy in 1986. the cost? $14.96 at wal-mart (’cause god forbid wal-mart have a price that ends in “.99” or, even worse, be a round number) which is roughly HALF the cost per unit as those craptacular centron tapes so many of you had me make for you back when…so while the economy is collapsing, gas is heading towards five bucks a gallon, and we all have economic uncertainty at every turn, at LEAST those of us who bootleg music for our friends are paying half of what we were for better shit three decades later…PLUS we now can sit on our asses and google what you used to have to go digging in back room crates for at various record stores.

okay, that last part i actually miss. but fuck me, at least something in this world got cheaper!