I also kinda miss how the tape would derail after years of constant playing or after playing them on a bum player, which is all most of us ever owned. At that point, playing the cassette was almost like gambling. When the tape flew off the spools, did you give up? Hell no! You couldn’t. You didn’t have another $7.99. You had to figure out a way to get the tape out of the gears on the player, flatten it out, and get it back into the cassette. You really had to work for your music. It developed ingenuity. Problem solving skills.

And what I miss the most about cassettes — the smell. That’s right, call me weird (and I’m sure your PITA wife will…for YEARS) but I miss the way cassettes smelled. They didn’t all smell the same though. There’s a special place in my heart for that sweet plastic and camphor smell of the best cassettes. Roadrunner put out the best smelling cassettes if I remember correctly. Atlantic was pretty good too. TDK was good for blank cassettes. Smell wasn’t as strong but it was good for what you were paying.

Biohazard’s Urban Discipline — pretty mediocre album but the cassette smelled like fried heaven. Faith No More’s The Real Thing smelled delicious. I listened to Life of Agony’s River Runs Red every day in 1993. The aroma was intoxicating. Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was pretty weak but it smelled like Number of the Beast Sounded. Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime — MMMM….

So I guess what I’m saying is…I’d like to know how it smelled.