I know this forum is more for audio tape but I'm sure a few posts in this thread will be more audio oriented.

I used to find all sorts of interesting tapes at thrift stores. Radio broadcasts, tapes of boring business meetings, audio diaries of vacations, really bad band practices, half assed bootleg tapes.

I also love to grab any beta tapes I can find (as long as they aren't movies or other commercially available stuff).

I've found a tape of what was probably the epsiode (on the same PBS station) of Doctor Who that got me and all my friends hooked on Tom Baker and his outrageously long scarf (long before Harry Potter)

Last month I found a tape full of Fraggle Rock episodes for my brother (another Henson fan).

Tonight I popped in a tape labeled "Van Halen MTV concert" and it was filled with HBO comedy specials (Whoopi's one woman show, Steven Wright and Howie Mandel) and most of an episode of Alas Smith & Jones from '89 or so on A&E.

I'd love to find a tape of some of the Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch (with all the commercials). Do have some Transformers, GI Joe and Voltron but that was after my time. Gimme the classic Saturday AM cartoons that didn't try to sell toys.

And suger laden cerial.

Hey.....I still like to watch the original Johnny Quest made in the mid to late 60's
those are the best!

Originally posted by devoid
And suger laden cerial.

Not sure if you're dissin' the old cereal commercials. I cringe at some of them but others are genuine classics. How about "The Honeycomb Hideout"? Anybody remember Bullwinkle J. Moose pimping for Cheerios or the Quisp freak?

I've found some old videotapes of mid 80s news broadcasts talking about Thatcher and the IRBMs we sent over to jolly old England. That was some scary shit.

Old news magazines are cool too. Episodes of 20/20 or 60 minutes with long departed celebrities are neat to watch. Even little things like smoking during the interview make me think "Jeez, I'm getting old..."

Originally posted by Polar Bear
Hey.....I still like to watch the original Johnny Quest made in the mid to late 60's
those are the best!

Johny Quest ROCKS! I even have the theme music on my computer. Recorded from a broadcast of The Retro Cocktail Hour (http://www.ukans.edu/cwis/units/kanufm/public_html/retro.html)

"I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!"

Or the pirate ship parrot that would "Fly to the moon, for a Lorna Doone!"

"Does your shoe have a boy inside? What a funny pace for a boy to hide. Does your shoe have a dog there too? A boy and a dog and a foot in a shoe! Well, the boy is Buster Brown and the dog is Tige his friend, and they're really just a picture, but it's fun to play pretend! So look, look, look in your telephone book for the store that sells the shoe, with the picture of the boy and the dog inside so you can put your foot into.......

BUSTER BROWN SHOES!"

I can demonstrate the same sickness regarding:

Castro Convertibles (furniture)
Robert Hall clothes
Doublemint Gum

and a host of other TV commercial jingles from the 50's.

But I can't remember what I had for lunch YESTERDAY!

TA

I used to record some of the football games I attended. I still have the one from the Lions game when they had a firestorm
in the east bay hills and many interruptions and footage until the tape ran out. Pretty amazing stuff. It's fun to toss an
old tape of the 49ers with Montana QBing from the 80's once in a while. :)

Carl

Anybody other than me remember the surreal cartoon"Tomfoolery" from 1970? Loosely based on the hunor of Edward Lear, it was sort of a stream-of-conciousness thing as well as I remember. It came on about 1.00PM & frequently got pre-empted by football. Kind of a weird-off-the-wall show for weird-off-the-wall kids. Like Yrs Trly. -Sandy G.

I bought a large box of Mobile Fidelity cassette tapes from a guy who used to work there. I made a few bucks selling them, especially the ones that were marked as "Test copy, Not for sale"
There are lots of others that I have not sold because they are unmarked and I don't think that anyone would want them. There are endless test tones and series of beeps. I guess that they were doing QC checks on the tapes. I also have a lot of the tapes that were QC rejects for dropouts. Apparently they could automaticly monitor the tapes as they were being made and reject the ones with a bad spot on the tape. Unfortunately, most of those are either Johnny Mathis or car stereo test tapes. The ones that did have something worthwhile, (one Beatles, two Grateful Dead) were only partly recorded.
I did get one unmarked MoFi Geo Tape, I have used it to align the azimuth on a couple of decks, it works! Pretty slick.

let me know.

Anyone who grew up on the US East Coast will know to whom I refer. These guys who went by the name of Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, were the endless frat house party band of the 60s/70s.

Few LPs were produced but open reel tapes, mostly of live performances used to be circulated around among friends. There were 8-tracks made, of course, but I'm most of them are long gone.

Cheers,

David

i came across a reel that had an Elvis special recorded on it. Sounded like the mic was just sittin next to the tv set. The reel is labeled 'elvis-the way it is'.

Didn't exactly sound the greatest, but it was on NBC, and had several ads included. One of them was for the 1974 or 75 Chevy Vega... the ad was boasting the gas mileage... seems i recall it saying 38 mpg. I think there were some True-Value Hardware ads also. Had some ads for businesses that are local to our area as well.

While my parents and I were living in Germany in 71 (I was only two at the time), they used to record a program off the radio called 'The History of Rock & Roll'. Seems kinda like today's 'Flashback'. At the end of this particular tape, I found some voice recordings that I had not heard before. Come to find out, my dad was rolling tape one night while a bunch of guys were over playing cards and drinking. Funny to hear my parents' voices from 71. I recall hearing my mom laughing because one of the guys was so drunk. Apparently, I was asleep on the floor, and my mom told one of the guys to not wake me up... but he did. Then i heard myself crying in the background when this guy evidently tripped over me as he was walking past. Was kinda weird to hear myself at two years old.

Back around 87, I used to record videos off MTV... that was back when the mainly played videos instead of all the other crap they play today. I found those tapes recently and took a trip down memory lane. I think there are 4 tapes recorded in the 2 hour mode. At the time i had a Teac 2 head STEREO VCR... not hi-fi stereo. Seems I recall paying about 350 bucks for that vcr back then.

The tapes still play good, and I enjoy seeing the videos that I grew up with as a teenager.

The only reel tapes I've found were at my town dump in several crates, about 40 in all. The majority consists of poorly bootleged tapes, one in particular of the woodstock recordings released in 1970, which at the time I didn't know about, so it led me to think they were original :puke:. I havent finished listining to them though; I've only played about 6. I did however find one master tape of the "Todd Hobin Band." I did some research, and found 2 other THB albums exist, but they dont have any of the songs on this tape. Its a scotch seel reel, with paper tape spliced inbetween each track; the tape itself being black matte on one side. Along with the tape are several studio cards and recording slips. The music itself is horid :dammit:. Its all country!! *BAH*

Going throught the latest batch of tapes, I found one with a Van Halen in New Haven (Hagar Years), an MTV "Monsters of Rock Tour" special (VH, Scorps, etc) and part of a Headbangers Ball with Joe Satriani cohosting with Adam Curry (jerk!). Looks like this was Joe's first appearance on MTV and he played a little "Satch Boogie" in the studio. Wow. Those fingers can MOVE!

Need to find a copy of some of MTV's great promos from the 80s. Randee of the Redwoods for Prez! All those crazy contests (especially the first one with "The Cars" IIRC). I found a tape called "I want my MTV" but that had a lot of the later stuff that was more socially aware (and less funny).

I got a reel to reel of the music from the TV show "One Step Beyond", it's pretty cool. Another cool one is some Irish Folk Songs. These are Goodwill finds.

Ed

Last year I found two big beta stashes.

The first was some guy who taped a lot of Monty Python and related projects (possibly from the local PBS station). Now if I could only find somebody who taped the other britcoms they ran like Morcambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies ("and its goodnight from me and its goodnight from him") and a few others I've since forgotten. I taped a few episodes on VHS back in the day but I'd love to find more.

The second was from a serious political junkie who taped lots of C-span and Mark Russell specials. I need to transfer those onto DVD for my little brother.

I got a reel-to-reel tape of Sly And The Family Stone's "Ultimate Concert" in L.A. in the early 70's. This is the original master tape recorded by one of the
local radio stations, on the tape the announcer is talking, the band is tuning up in the background and sounding awful, and you can hear Sly laughing and cussing at everyone quite clearly, this concert was a fiasco as they were all
too stoned to play. this was never aired by the station, BTW. This came from radio station KAFY here in Bakersfield, a station which has now gone over to
an all spanish format.


Dumont-First with the finest in television.:yes:

I bought some LPs from a guy that was having a yard sale. he mentioned having some Cassettes So I started digging through the box when he told me I had to take them all. I asked how much? $10.00 I ended up with among other things about 20 Mixed tapes made on a VERY good machine very clean on Hi Bias TDK tape. From talking to the guy these were used for a very short time as music for a Cocktail bar he tried to make a go of.

I have listened to a few in the car and since they are so well labeled and in such good shape I figure to keep them. Rather then reuse the tape

A few years back I bought a Webster wire recorder at a garage sale. My family had one when I was a kid and the nostalgia value got to me. Anyway, on one of the wire spools was a bluegrass band recorded at a bar. Probably late 40s early 50s.
For those who havent seen or heard of these http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/wire.html
http://www.webster-chicago.com/

I have a 5" reel of tape around here with a recording of Nixon's resignation speech on it.

I know this forum is more for audio tape but I'm sure a few posts in this thread will be more audio oriented.

I used to find all sorts of interesting tapes at thrift stores. Radio broadcasts, tapes of boring business meetings, audio diaries of vacations, really bad band practices, half assed bootleg tapes.

I also love to grab any beta tapes I can find (as long as they aren't movies or other commercially available stuff).

I've found a tape of what was probably the epsiode (on the same PBS station) of Doctor Who that got me and all my friends hooked on Tom Baker and his outrageously long scarf (long before Harry Potter)

Last month I found a tape full of Fraggle Rock episodes for my brother (another Henson fan).

Tonight I popped in a tape labeled "Van Halen MTV concert" and it was filled with HBO comedy specials (Whoopi's one woman show, Steven Wright and Howie Mandel) and most of an episode of Alas Smith & Jones from '89 or so on A&E.

I'd love to find a tape of some of the Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch (with all the commercials). Do have some Transformers, GI Joe and Voltron but that was after my time. Gimme the classic Saturday AM cartoons that didn't try to sell toys.


I found some really neat AUDIO tapes in thrift stores:

a Jefferson Airplane Live concert bootleg on an 8-track cartridge. Turns out it was kind of valuable, and several people paid me to dub it for them.

a home-made Elvis Presley 8-track tape, but on the front of it, the owner glued a one-of-a-kind Polaroid picture of Elvis in concert, that he took from the 3rd row. What a piece of history.

I also found (2) reel to reels taped at 3.75 IPS, one is a 1-hour radio interview with Ian Paice of Deep Purple, done right after Ritchie Blackmore quit the band. The other was a 3 hour interview with Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, featuring music from all the band's LP's, and also some rare Yardbirds stuff that I've never heard anywhere else- and at the end, a live BBC concert that likewise I've never heard. Both of these shows were from USA FM late-night radio shows during the mid-1970's.

Last but not least, a few cool old records- a radio Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin comedy with lots of curses on it- and (2) records recorded by G.I.'s just before shipping out to war during WWII, right after basic training. The GI records went to a collector who is digitizing them, and putting them online for all to hear.

recently, we got the original Godzilla 1956 movie, the new Hulk movie, and a few other VHS tapes for $2 each

When I purchased an absolute 'Frankenstein Special' (a 1950es B&O combination reel-to-reel and record player with the player literally on top of the r-to-r), a mouldy little 7-inch reel came with it.

After cleaning and spooling, it yielded some living-room band practice of what sounded like a small jazz-type local group with a female vocalist. She is sincere but not very pro and the piano is out of tune; nonetheless a charming little recording that made you imagine them at an Elk's Club on a Saturday night.

I wonder who they were. It could be fun for their relatives to hear.

Best,
Cosmic.

I found a whole bunch of Saturday Night Lives from 1978-86 on tapes- awesome!

Oh, and what made them awesome is the original commercials and no cuts! (not one hour reruns on Comedy Central with endless promos for "Viva Variety").

I still have my entire VHS and Beta tape collection. I started in around 1983-84. We used to rent the machines then, but finally got our own in 85. Lots of tapes since then. Then I in the past several years got people to send me copies of the space shuttle launches live right from 1981-up. Also got some Apollo launches as well live. Too bad they're on VHS and not a better format. But Im glad to have them. I've got to get them put onto DVD one of these days just to back them up. Some tv shows I taped back then are now out on DVD in stores, so there's no big deal with having those tapes anymore. But I still love watching the old comercials "Juicy fruit is gonna move ya...". I think the comercials are more fun to watch then the show itself. Im not proud to mention I have a copy of that really bad Star Wars Christmas special. Its so bad I never finished watching it. It had one comercial for the Kenner Star Wars toys from then- 1977 I believe.

I know most of you guys on here like rock or other types of music but was wondering if anyone has found any classic TV or audio any format of country music shows say late
60s -- 80s. Dub some or?
Mushy

Picked up a National (Panasonic) tape recorder--solid state--2ch/4ch--7"reel to reel--3 recording speeds--7 1/2-- 3 3/4-- 1 7/8 . The unit plays--produces sound but will not pull a full reel of tape--needs a belt. But along with the machine came twenty 7 1/2" full reels of recorded tape with mostly original music and lyrics from the previous owner of the machine. The former owner wrote and played a lot of Blues--taught piano lessons and had a small Blues band. He also sent his audition tapes to Germany and received them back. He did live performances on a northern Ohio radio station which the station recorded and gave him the tapes. All of this for $15. :yes: :smoke: :no:

I was sent 3 tapes a while back made in 1949 - 1950 of a local country band. I have transcribed them to CD. The quality isn't the greatest. But as it was a local Saturday night show, from a little radio station north of Kalamazoo. Its neat to listen to the commercials. The show kind of reminds me of the spoof, Lester Roadhog Moran and his Cadillac Cowboys recording the Statler Brothers did. The playing is a bit better. :D

I've found some old tapes where a guy was singing and playing a guitar, and man, was he GOOD. You could tell he recorded it at home, I'm actually hesitating erasing it, it's acoustic.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=45879&stc=1&d=1175883184


Here's the picture of the Elvis blank 8-track tape, with a unique picture of Elvis taken with a Polariod, then cut and glued to the tape cartridge. You can see it's from about the 2nd or 3rd row, with someone's head in the picture on the left side- and one of Elvis' band members next to him.

i came across a superbly recorded live stereo broadcast from the late 80's of a band called Innocent Bystander-- very much the 80's drum sound, but not bad pop/rock stuff that i listen to for grins from time to time. anyone ever heard of 'em?

I know most of you guys on here like rock or other types of music but was wondering if anyone has found any classic TV or audio any format of country music shows say late
60s -- 80s. Dub some or?
Mushy

Mushy: I have a tape my uncle recorded in the early 70's you might enjoy... it's an autobiography of Jim Reeves. It's a pretty good recording. I shared it with some old-time C&W fans and they loved it.

Send me a PM the first week of June (i'm leaving next week for sea and will return then) and I'll be happy to copy it for you if you like.

One of the joys of collecting reel to reel for me are the odd things you find on some of the used tapes you run into.

Recently I've been transferring a box of reels owned by my uncle, who served in Vietnam from 1965 through 1967. There was a nice aircheck of WQXI in Atlanta, a morning show from 1966. Also another aircheck of a morning show from 1965 on a Seattle station.

I've put up some MP3 excerpts of some of the material at my blog:

http://coolcatdaddy.blogspot.com/search/label/reel%20to%20reel

Scroll down to the two "Vietnam" posts, a couple of posts down the page.

A few years back, a friend gave me a restored wire recorder from 1947; I transferred several of the wires to CD. The recorder was originally owned by a family in Michigan and there were some airchecks, family stuff and other odd material. My favorite was a comedy show put together for the anniversay of a local radio station - it sounded like something played at a private gathering rather than on the air. You can hear some clips here:

http://www.coolcatdaddy.com/rand/wires.html

Several years ago, I was working on a video documentary and needed a whole bunch of blank tapes and purchased some at a local closeout place - these were unboxed and unlabeled and perfect for what I was doing. I happened to put one in and hit "play" rather than record - it had a porn movie recorded on it. Turns out several of them had porn and odd industrial material on them - I think they came from some type of duplication house that went belly up.