Songs you taped off the radio...

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.. And the quirks that you still remember about them.

I remembered yesterday how I had taped Al Stewart's "Time Passages" - and there was some static at one point where it sounded like he said "Fly me a ticket on the last train home tonight." .. And to this day, I still repeat that lyric if I'm so unfortunate as to hear that song.

And "Pictures of Lilly" - I didn't stop the tape right away at the end - so it had half of a word stuck on the end .. "and hey mister have you ever seeeeeen --- Pictures of Lily BUH! "

I can remember sitting for hours taping "good stuff" off the radio - with a microphone in front of the speaker. And in the middle of the song, fuckin' mom would come in and start talking. Damn!
..All that's coming to mind right now though are BeeGees Saturday Night Fever songs.. ..Oh how I wish I still had some of those tapes.

― dave225 (Dave225), Thursday, 25 September 2003 11:12 (twenty-two years ago)

me & my brother would tape the charts on a sunday, and with a microphone attached talk over the dj (bruno brookes? peter powell? i can't remember who) pretending we were presenting our own top 40 on 'radio nine-and-a-half'. i think i was about eight and my brother was six.

― joni, Thursday, 25 September 2003 11:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I had a taped version of Loser by Beck off the radio, and for some reason they cut it off after the first verse, so I listened and listened to that tape and memorized the whole first verse, and then when I heard the whole song my mind expanded, and now I'm omnipotent.

― NA (Nick A.), Thursday, 25 September 2003 11:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember taping "Private Idaho" off WPLJ, and being pissed off because the final guitar coda was drowned out by the fade-in to Foreigner's "Long, Long Way From Home". And, I aks you, who plays Foreigner after the B52's?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 25 September 2003 12:11 (twenty-two years ago)

not really off the radio, but anyway... i once had a tape with REM's "lifes rich pageant" on one side and "document" on the other. in our house, my little brother and sister were always quarreling and at some point they found out it was great fun to screw one another's tapes by randomly pushing the "rec" button and whispering pleasantries like "cow" ("trut" in dutch) or "asshole" ("klootzak"). so, when my brother borrowed my REM-tape...

― willem (willem), Thursday, 25 September 2003 12:18 (twenty-two years ago)

as a youngster i listened to oldies radio a lot. somewhere in my mother's house is a tape with "duke of earl" on it, which is not just the only song i've ever taped off the radio but also the only time i've requested a song. at the beginning of the song you can hear the dj saying something. i forget what it is, but it was something to the effect of "this one was requested by will". i was really disappointed he didn't use my voice. oh and i taped a live concert by the cure once. they played "jupiter crash" and (i think) "mint car" before wild mood swings had been released. i remember being BLOWN AWAY by jupiter crash.

― will g. (will g.), Thursday, 25 September 2003 12:29 (twenty-two years ago)

For some reason you couldn't hear "Death Disco" by Public Image on daytime Radio 1, and I thought i'd have to buy one (I got my first job 6 months later and bought Metal Box etc)

But by chance I taped the chart rundown and although it had gone down in the chart, they played it all.

Of course, I'd cut out the DJ chatter, I wonder now what it would have been like (T.Blackburn: And going down 10 fab chart places, its Death Disco "Bumm bumm bumm, Bumm bumm bumm, bumm,seee it in yer eyesssssss ... "

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 25 September 2003 12:39 (twenty-two years ago)

i taped "papa don't preach" off of the radio and choreographed a dance routine to it. once my older brother came into my bedroom and caught me. he laughed so hard that he peed his pants. so who is laughing now, big brother?

― Emilymv (Emilymv), Thursday, 25 September 2003 14:24 (twenty-two years ago)

When I was a kid I taped "Heartache Tonight" by the Eagles and was dismayed that the dj mumbled something like "great one coming" before the final guitar lick. But that was just part of the song, right?

― BrianB, Thursday, 25 September 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Klootzak! Best swearing evah!

I have a fantastic version of "Shaking The Bone In Even Time" by Breed, taped off Peel, where he did his age-old trick of starting the song at 33, apologising profusely 10 slooooooow seconds in and whacking it up to 45. This never stops being cool and funny.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Thursday, 25 September 2003 15:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't know about him, but I'm mildly amused.

― Xii (Xii), Thursday, 25 September 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

"Bigmouth Strikes Again" by the Smiths taped off the Steve Wright show, over the dying seconds of the song Steve wailed in a "Morrissey" voice, "I'm Morrissey of the Smiths- I'm so de-pressed".

Tosser.

― Officer Pupp, Thursday, 25 September 2003 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to make mixed tapes off the radio and one of the things I loved doing was recording the weird stuff I'd come across as I searched up and down the dial.

I'd get a second of this and a second of that - weird little sound vignettes, like a two second passage of some Neal Diamond song followed by several seconds of static hiss followed by a brief bit of a Red Sox game followed by a piece of a commercial.

I love the few tapes I have fifteen or so years later. I guess I'm strange, but I really dig those weird soundscapes.

― Davlo (Davlo), Thursday, 25 September 2003 22:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I've still got mucho tapes filled with songs I forgot. Played one yesterday, with the Sugarcubes' "Hit" cutting into DM's "Halo" running into PSB's "West End Girls". Remembered jiggling to "Hit", simply because I liked the song going skritch-skritch-skritch for the first two bars before the verses kicked in.

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Thursday, 25 September 2003 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

paul mccartney - "spies like us"!

― cinniblount (James Blount), Friday, 26 September 2003 01:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I made about 15 tapes of songs from the radio from 1990-94. The first volume was called Side A/Side B, the second Side C/Side D, and so forth through Side AA/Side BB. The last tape I made was entitled AR1/AR2 (AR="alternative rock" haha); it was the first and only tape I made after discovering alt-rock radio, and I clearly wanted to dissociate it from the rest of the series.

Sample songs on Side A/Side B (as best as I can remember): Vanilla Ice, "Ice Ice Baby"; Snap!, "I've Got the Power"; Tony! Toni! Tone!, "Feels Good"; Black Box, "Everybody Everybody"; Maxi Priest, "Close to You"; Young MC, "Bust a Move"; Nelson, "After the Rain."

Sample songs on AR1/AR2 (this one I still have): Sonic Youth, "Bull in the Heather"; Offspring, "Come Out and Play"; Morrissey, "The More You Ignore Me the Closer I Get"; Urge Overkill, "Positive Bleeding"; Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe, "Photograph"; James, "Born of Frustration"; Soundgarden, "Black Hole Sun."

What's funny to me in thinking about them is just how unselective I was, especially those early tapes from age twelve or so. I mean, I listened to Casey Kasem and taped fucking Gloria Estefan and Bonnie Raitt songs. Somewhere in my parents' basement, there's a tape with "Voices That Care" on it.

It's also sorta neat to see how I progressed from generic Top 40 to more hip-hop and R&B-oriented stuff once I got into high school. At that point, I also made fewer tapes, period. By the time I stopped, I was looking less and less to the radio as my primary source of musical discovery -- but I now wish I'd still kept at it for a couple more years.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 26 September 2003 04:38 (twenty-two years ago)

'Cars' by Gary Numan when I was 14 - and my dad turned on the coffee grinder halfway through, and it put a buzz over most of the second half of the track - didn't stop me listening to the tape over and over - now I find the buzz and the track mentally inseparable.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Friday, 26 September 2003 05:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh my god I love this thread, I thought only I had weird memories of songs thanks to bad tapings!

I'll never hear "Visions of China" by Japan without a loud door slam in the silent pause just before those big drums kick in. I was taping it off the video clip via the TV speaker and the wind slammed the back door shut just at that point. Stuck it in my head ever since.

Theres loads of other examples where I'll mentally hear fragments of radio station jingle I cut off after taping a song, and so on.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 26 September 2003 06:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I've got an mp3 of the Cut Killer remix of NTM's Nique La Police which is a recording of a radio broadcast. To this day I always hear "This is a DJ Underground exclusive..." when I think of that track, and at the end I always expect the swordfight soundbite beginning of a Wu-Tang Clan track.

― Andrew (enneff), Friday, 26 September 2003 06:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I heard Take the Skinheads Bowling this morning - and I felt an emptiness because it didn't segue into "Severed Lips" by Dinosaur (jr.)

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 26 September 2003 10:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Just thought of another - Back to Nature by Magazine. My English teacher taped me a kind of 'best of Magazine', with this as the last track. Just as the drums kick in, the tape runs out! Now, whenever I hear that track, and it carries on where it should run out, I think 'huh?' - like it _should_ end and doesn't!

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Friday, 26 September 2003 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

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