By way of a blog entry this Wednesday, I’d like to present a handful of the Voice-O-Graph, Recordio and Presto discs that I’ve acquired over the past year.
Recently, these recordings have been coming back into retro-vogue, with popular blogs like WFMU’s Beware of the Blog exploring these ‘found sounds’. Sound archivers in Britain have also started collecting out-teched recording items and relics, and I have to admit that this all makes me a bit nervous about the fate of my own collection. Once someone else wants the same things that you want, prices and scarcity both increase. Thus far, I’ve been lucky enough to go uncontested on most eBay auctions of this sort, but those days are shortening. I can feel it. In my blogs. Which are located right behind my kidneys.
Either way, please enjoy this assortment of my favorite amateur recordings, all in handy mp4 format.
March 11th, 2007 at 10:40 PM
Not to ring my own bell, but I thought I should point out that back in 1999 or 2000 I set up Voices From The Thriftshop (http://www.thriftshopvoices.com – link above) using tapes and stuff I found in my hobby digging. I admit, I’ve fallen behind — I have a bunch of old albums and cassettes with good stuff to be encoded. There’s only so many hours in the day, you know…
March 11th, 2007 at 11:02 PM
I’ve been doing the same with vinyl & videocassettes since I’ve been technologically equipped enough – not so much cassettes, though. There’s a great online community for this stuff, lots of people sharing & posting things! I also got a copy of SoundSoap today, which is great for cleaning up these old sounds. It makes them a little hollow and whistly, but it brings out the actual voices. Me, I prefer the crackle & pop, really.
The tapes you have are awesome! I’ve never found such things, or never really thought to.