Tone Madison: Can you describe what you found inside the collection?
Amos Pitsch: The previous owner used their collection as a diary; writing details about the everyday and the mundane on the insides of the J-cards and on newspaper clippings folded neatly and placed inside. Each cassette included what we assume is the date the tape was bought and sometimes the included newspaper clippings even related to the cassette itself, i.e. a John Prine cassette with an article about a recent local performance of his; a small personal dated note scrawled underneath the headline about how their asshole neighbors with the brat kid finally moved out.
Tone Madison: Where did you buy the collection from?
Amos Pitsch: We pulled the tapes from a larger collection that hit the floor at a local thrift store before we realized that all the tapes had these diary entries in them. We bought the bulk of the rock and pop cassettes and left most of the country tapes there—a genre that doesn't garner much interest on cassette, for whatever reason.
We're kicking ourselves a little now that these tapes most likely met their demise in a trash compactor. So many great little windows into this stranger's life that are shut forever!
Tone Madison: What did the items tell you about the previous owners?
Amos Pitsch: Well this person's story involves low income jobs, betting on "the fights" (televised boxing matches) and stock car racing, shitty neighbors, chronically owing people money, constantly fixing shitty cars, references to everything from the L.A. riots to gun violence to prostitution, and common vices like alcohol and junk food.
It's sort of Bukowskian in nature, without the misogyny. Judging by their collection, they seemed to like hard, redneck country like Jerry Jeff Walker and Hank Williams, some dabbling in commercial ‘90s country music, a lot of classic rock, and, strangely enough, a few musicals and Andrew Dice Clay cassettes.
Overall, there's a slight current of loneliness and desperation that runs throughout the diary entries.
Tone Madison: Did the items found have anything to do with the specific pieces of music they were found inside?
Amos Pitsch: At times they would reference the specific cassettes they accompanied, but mostly they seemed like a record of unrelated events and feelings that occured around the time the cassette was bought.
Now and then a sales receipt was also included. Usually from Best Buy. When I was a kid I used to buy my cassettes from Media Play and Shopko, so the department store receipts really sent me back to a specific time and place—when physical music media was a strong enough industry to merit a whole large section of a commercial retailer, and the average customer was really just the average American consumer and not just the music connoisseur.
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December 04, 2020 at 01:00PM
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When the J-card is a diary — Tone Madison - tonemadison.com
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