Rewinding History with Cassette Tapes
About fifteen years have passed since I last played a cassette tape. Remember those old things, the rectangular tapes with their spools and magnetic film spinning from one side to the other? Having to rewind these pesky things was always a pain – my pinky finger circling round and round until one half of the film was empty. Those memories come rushing back when I reminisce about the cassette tapes from my childhood. The 90s, long drives from Geelong to Melbourne, listening to The Beatles on the same tape in our green family Ford with its stiff window winders that took two hands to get them to go back up.
So why am I talking about cassette tapes? About a month ago, my doctoral research led me to Cults and New Religious Movements. I was fortunate to have sourced a selection of a dozen or so tapes that held the teachings of a notorious cult leader of Australia’s past. What was on these tapes? I wondered. What things could be revealed to push my research in the right direction or another direction completely?
However, when the tapes came into my care, no longer did I question the contents they held, but how exactly I was going to play them. And digitise them. And get them transcribed.
Each tape had approximately 50 minutes of listening on either side. This was going to be no easy process. I couldn't turn to Spotify or YouTube, couldn't skip forward with a click of a mouse or read the transcription in real-time.
I went to the two people I figured still owned a cassette player: mum and dad. As I thought, they had about four different players; two in the classic Walkman-style, one from the 80s, and the other a boombox with big speakers on either side in a trendy matte black. However, none of them worked. Full of dust, hairs, and balls of fluff. I was not in the mood to repair them (and I didn’t have the first clue how). Instead, I searched online at the usual stores – Big W, Kmart, Target – surely any of the big three would have a cheap cassette player? Boy, was I wrong. Even JB HI-FI and Cash Converters were charging an arm and a leg. I didn't want to spend over $30 so I went with Amazon where I found this little guy – a player and an MP3 converter! This was a great find and something I didn't even know existed. I was excited that I could listen and digitise the tapes straight onto my computer. Win.
The cassette player was cheap. It looked and felt it. But after a dummy test on an old German language tape, which worked with no troubles, it was time for the big league. The whole digitisation process was certainly lengthy and I didn't feel comfortable leaving the tapes running on their own (I was worried the machine was going to chew up the tape in its spools – something I remember seeing many times as a kid). This didn’t happen once though! Overall, this cassette player did a great job.
One thing I noticed too was that the subject’s voice in a few of the tapes began to slow down and words elongated. I was certain this wasn’t meant to be a fancy sound effect overlaid. After a quick Google search, I learnt that older tapes can sometimes dry out and lose their inner lubricant to help play smoothly. When this happens, the playback isn't the best quality… This is something to consider. Although I’m in the process of transcribing the contents of the tapes so that I have a reference to read later, it may mean that the intricacies and tone of the subject’s voice, their charisma and sarcasm that comes through when they speak, may get lost in the textual reading.
We shall see.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying this part of my research, searching old archives for answers. Just the other week I spent a few hours at The University of Melbourne's Reading Room, looking carefully through old meeting minutes and texts from the 50s. While this process can be tedious, it certainly has its exciting moments – keeping my studies fresh and giving me something to look forward to each day besides sitting at my desk for hours on end. There's always that feeling of what if, what if I discover this or that, and while most of the time, there will be very little progress, you do feel a sense of accomplishment having gone through the process. After all, you're one step closer to solving your research question.