Old tapes

[friend of the friendless]

Sirs, Madames,

Rooting around, looking for something else entirely, I found three old casette tapes today.

1. Having lunch with King Clancy and rookie Wendel Clark at the Hot Stove Lounge in 1986, shortly before the HHOFer's death. 120 min.
2. Bret and Owen Hart yakking for 90 minutes in their gym in '92 (I had clipped their parents' listing in the Calgary phone book and dropped it inside the case).
3. A late night booze-a-thon interview with Morley Callaghan (NYer writer, Canadian literary icon, former sparring partner of Hemingway, friend of Fitzgerald and [the other] Joyce) shortly before his death in the late 80s. 90 min, stops and starts.

Does anyone ever stumble across their old tapes? Notebooks, I know. But what do you do to preserve the tapes? Do they have an archival value? I guess I'll make audio files.

o-<

 

[PeteyPirate]

My dad just gave me a whole box of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts on VHS and instructed me to sell them on eBay.

 

[Wenders]

I still have my tape recorder, but my parents got me a digital voice recorder a few years ago for Christmas. It's seen better days (I dropped it in a bowl of chicken soup and amazingly, it still works.) but I've done so many great interviews with that thing. The best part is I was able to transfer them onto my computer, so I can have them years and years from now.

 

[Small Town Guy]

For the longest time I was looking for tapes of an interview I did with my grandpa in 1999 for a story I did on his Silver Star. I talked to him in a hospice, a month before he died, but he was still of perfect mind. We had like a three-hour conversation and there's no way in hell I would have thrown the tapes away. But I could never find them. Finally, last April, my mom found a tape in one of her genealogy bins, but that's all she found. Still, I at least had an hour of grandpa talking about his army days and listening to it definitely brought me back to that hospice room. It's pretty scratchy, though. I'd love to get it converted to something digital.

 

[Football_Bat]

I found an old cassette the other day I was going to put into the rotation and discovered it was a alternative top-20 countdown show from 1994 I'd recorded off the radio.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

I found an old cassette the other day I was going to put into the rotation and discovered it was a alternative top-20 countdown show from 1994 I'd recorded off the radio.

BYH?

Going back to college, I was always told to get rid of taped interviews, notebooks and what-not on the off chance that somebody might sue the paper for whatever reason.

 

[UPChip]

I found an old cassette the other day I was going to put into the rotation and discovered it was a alternative top-20 countdown show from 1994 I'd recorded off the radio.

BYH?

Going back to college, I was always told to get rid of taped interviews, notebooks and what-not on the off chance that somebody might sue the paper for whatever reason.

Interesting. I was taught to save everything for the same reason.

 

[ColbertNation]

I found an old cassette the other day I was going to put into the rotation and discovered it was a alternative top-20 countdown show from 1994 I'd recorded off the radio.

BYH?

Going back to college, I was always told to get rid of taped interviews, notebooks and what-not on the off chance that somebody might sue the paper for whatever reason.

Interesting. I was taught to save everything for the same reason.

Yeah, assuming one is a good reporter, I would think records would come in handy.

 

[Highway 101]

There are a few old cassettes floating around my place from the last days of ManCow in San Fran including the skit where his flunkies strung panty-hose from one end of the Golden Gate Bridge to the other. It was funny as **** at the time.

Somewhere else around here should be micro-tapes from a long Bob Knight interview, complete with unprintable phrases, from my days at the Indiana Daily Student.

I'm not sure which set has less value.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

That's not how your paper's lawyers probably look at it.

 

[friend of the friendless]

Sirs, Madames,

I found an old cassette the other day I was going to put into the rotation and discovered it was a alternative top-20 countdown show from 1994 I'd recorded off the radio.

BYH?

Going back to college, I was always told to get rid of taped interviews, notebooks and what-not on the off chance that somebody might sue the paper for whatever reason.

Interesting. I was taught to save everything for the same reason.

Yeah, assuming one is a good reporter, I would think records would come in handy.

Few come out of the woods to sue you for something that was written 20+ years ago ... in defunct publications where two of the aforementioned stories appeared. Especially dead people ... which is three of the five people on the tape. The sad part is that I can't find the tape of my interview with drunken Jim Niedhart on the night of the '92 election ("What the **** is an electoral college, what happens if ya didn't go to college, etc").

o-<

 

[BYH]

I still have my tape recorder, but my parents got me a digital voice recorder a few years ago for Christmas. It's seen better days (I dropped it in a bowl of chicken soup and amazingly, it still works.)

Don't leave us hanging. How the hell did that happen? I've heard of dropping electronics a lot of places--urinals are no. 1 with a bullet--but a bowl of chicken soup? That's awesome.

 

[Football_Bat]

I found an old cassette the other day I was going to put into the rotation and discovered it was a alternative top-20 countdown show from 1994 I'd recorded off the radio.

BYH?

Going back to college, I was always told to get rid of taped interviews, notebooks and what-not on the off chance that somebody might sue the paper for whatever reason.

Probably a tad young for the Beejer. All I know is Liz Phair and Oasis sounded great on that tape.

 

[Wenders]

I still have my tape recorder, but my parents got me a digital voice recorder a few years ago for Christmas. It's seen better days (I dropped it in a bowl of chicken soup and amazingly, it still works.)

Don't leave us hanging. How the hell did that happen? I've heard of dropping electronics a lot of places--urinals are no. 1 with a bullet--but a bowl of chicken soup? That's awesome.

I was nursing a cold on a day where I was writing four different stories while at home in my pajamas. (This is why you have a Mac - I could get on the paper's server from home and file my stories without having to worry about e-mail garbling it.) I had a bowl of soup on my pillow on my bed and was settling in to transcribe the press conference I had just gone to (and sat in the back row off to the side where I wouldn't infect anyone) and I pulled out my recorder, tossed it on my bed while I fished my laptop out of my bag and heard a splash.

Yanked the batteries out, put it upside down for an hour in the sink, pulled out my roommate's blowdryer and did some work, put new batteries in and voila! Working recorder with all of my information intact. The volume's a little sketchy (it's missing a lot of the midtones so either I need quiet to hear it or I get my eardrums blown out) but it still works two years later.

 

[Blitz]

I keep a few good ones, including Pete Rose getting testy in Mobile (circa 2001) when asked, by me, if he ever gambled on baseball.

 

[SF_Express]

I keep a few good ones, including Pete Rose getting testy in Mobile (circa 2001) when asked, by me, if he ever gambled on baseball.

So what did he say?

 

[checkswinger]

Somewhere, I still have a tape of my first "real" interview – Raymond Berry. I was just a geeky college kid who had no clue what I was doing, but he was patient with me. Nice guy.

 

[Steak Snabler]

I keep a few good ones, including Pete Rose getting testy in Mobile (circa 2001) when asked, by me, if he ever gambled on baseball.

Don't forget the Lost Lennon Tapes ...

Leaving ... boring ... etc.

 

[Killick]

I found a tape of Bob Huggins confessing all the dirty recruiting practices. Strangely, there's a 15-minute gap in the tape.

But seriously, I've always been told to dispose of notes/tapes after 6 months. I've not always heeded. I still have audio copies of interviews I did in 1995 at Jacobs Field (Belle, Baerga et al) because I'm such a Tribe fan. I stumbled across early 90's Huggins at UC, an interview with Kenyon Martin as a freshman, Roethlisberger at Miami (OH), and some more recent stuff: Johnny Bench for a freelance piece I did last year, Denis Leary and Peter Tolan on a conference phoner for "Rescue Me."

 

[Blitz]

I keep a few good ones, including Pete Rose getting testy in Mobile (circa 2001) when asked, by me, if he ever gambled on baseball.

So what did he say?

I need to get the tape back out and listen again.
I don't want to misquote Pete or have what he said be misinterpreted.
My lasting memory is that he referenced the Dowd report, which he says cleared his name.
He said he was always "an ambassador for baseball" and that he never talked down about baseball, only talking up about it.
He said his clubhouse door was always open, so players who walked by would have surely heard him on the phone making bets.
He said he never bet on baseball.
All of this after several softballs had been served up by the mass of reporters.
Folks asked things like, "You must be awful proud to be serving as grand marshal of the GMAC Mobile, Alabama Bowl Game."
Or, "What do you know about Mobile."
He did, at that point, at least reference and pay homage to local hero Hamerin' Henry Aaron, and Magnolia, Ala.'s Tommie Agee. I always love it when the stars of here and now can reference past greats, so I give Pete, on that day, some credit for that.

I need to find the tape and listen again.