Pre DVD collection, pre VHS collection, it’s the Audiotape collection…

[Asclepius]

I’ve been listening to the excellent Dwarfcast on the 2002 Series 1 DVD over the last week. It’s a lot of fun. Lots of nostalgia from these Old Men about how Things Have Changed, and all I can feel is…

…goddamn you youngsters!

I have about six or seven extra years on you lot, and here’s my pre-DVD story.

What was watched in my house was dictated by my parents. Comedy moreso by my Dad as my Mum had (and, I presume has) no sense of humour.

So it was that he was willing to try Red Dwarf in front of me in late 1993 when I’d have been 13. They had STRONG ideas on what was/wasn’t suitable. They would tut at things they did not approve of, although my Dad would be less tutting-for-show if she wasn’t around.

Anyway, I have that memory of watching Out of Time. We may have watched an episode before that, but either way there it was. An episode. I did the usual thing of laughing at the bits I knew it was ok to laugh at, and then pretending I didn’t find any rude bits funny.

And then…that was it, wasn’t it? When did the repeat series start? We watched most of them, I think. But I know it can’t have been all, as I have no memory of cringing my way through DNA with him/them. I do remember watching Marooned for the first time, taping it to VHS for him to watch when he got home from his late shift, and feeling so MASSIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE that he’d be watching that. But there you go.

ANYWAY, I wanted to enjoy these episodes again and again. Whilst we had a few blank, multi-recorded on VHSs in our house, we rarely kept anything for long. Also, my Dad had a deep hatred of the media of audio cassettes and video cassettes as they would stretch and didn’t last for long. Waste of money. Too expensive.

So I couldn’t get any of the Dwarf VHSs.

But we did have a rental video shop.

“Ooh remembers video shops?!”

Pre-Blockbusters, our small town had at least three.

Anyway, there they were, all on the shelves, and I would rent them on an afternoon when the parents weren’t around, or were busy, and play them loudly whilst recording them onto my own multi-recorded-onto audio tapes. 1.5 episodes on each side of a C90. Trying to find *just* the right place to pause them as the first side ran out of recordable tape. Sometimes I needed to narrate bits – my main memory is doing the Terrorform Taranshula.

And that’s how I recorded Series I, II, III, IV and VI.

As a tangent, our video shop didn’t have RD V. Why? Well, someone else at school had had this discussion with the guy who ran the place. It seems that he simply didn’t *get* roman numerals and was convinced that he had them all in. He did not. He never did get them. So I was able to ask for RD V for a Christmas. And duly recorded them.

I listened to my RD audios *obsessively*. And I homed them.

“Ooh remembers Microsoft Publisher?!”

I do. It had a facility for creating audio cassette covers. So I diligently created covers for my 12 tapes. Using clip-art that would best suit a story on the tape. Sadly, I can’t remember any that I did choose. Thus my tapes ended up being called different things. Actually, flogging my memory, I know now that Tape 1 was called Balance of Power and it had clip-art scales on the front.

So there you go. Those were MY DVDs. I loved RD.

We watched Series VII as a family. My Mum tutted at the ‘fat bastarderia’ line and walked out.

I watched Series VIII at Uni, on a mixture of TVs in other peoples’ rooms, or by hijacking the CCTV monitor in the computer labs and watching live TV on there in black and white.

The effort was not worth it.

I was barely aware of the DVDs as I am considerably older than yow and I really only rejoined the world with Back to Earth which, frankly, I bloody loved.

I didn’t tape it though.

It’s a different world when I can just pop Iplayer on in the car and listen to the audios as I drive.

The tapes are long gone.
Does anyone else have a similar reminisce?

Topic

[Warbodog]

A video shop owner not getting Roman numerals is amazing.

I got a cassette recorder when I was about 10 and went through a phase of narrating audiobooks (kids’ novels would fit on about two C90s, but I bit off more than I could chew when approaching double figures for Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and calling it a day). I’d put it next to the TV speaker and tape the intro music or random dialogue for illustration if they were books of films I had on video, like The Mask and Back to the Future Part II. These were eventually mercifully taped over with Offspring and KoRn mixes when I was a teenager.

The only time Red Dwarf received the treatment was when I borrowed Primordial Soup from the library and read the Marooned script, including the descriptions like “Starbug in a blizzard.” Unlike Lister, I did not lose my virginity at twelve.

[Asclepius]

A kid of 10 actually coping with the sound of their own voice? That’s impressive! I’m not much of a fan of my own voice, even now, but at 10…urgh! Good on you for doing that though. When did you tend to listen to them?

The person from school who told me the Roman Numeral story insisted it was because the Video Shop Guy was foreign. But I didn’t remember him being *particularly* foreign. I mean, he had a slight tan to his face, but had an English name and seemed to speak good English. Even my *Dad* liked him. And he didn’t like them forinners much at all.

None of our small town’s video rental shops even survived into the age of Google Streetview. No photos of them at all, tbh. Same with the handful of second hand record shops I used to spend by teens in, too.

Streetview is great for 2008+ documentation. And local Boomer Facebook groups are amazing for the 1940s-1970s memories. But for those of us in the middle, you just have to keep the images of what’s in your mind.

[Asclepius]

Unlike Lister, I did not lose my virginity at twelve.

It’s not a ‘losing my virginity’ story. But I took them on a school trip abroad once. It was a trip that my handful of friends were meant to be going on, but one by one they pulled out. I stubbornly decided still to go. I wasn’t a popular kid. The teachers ended up having to stick me in a room with a lad one year up, as no-one wanted so share with me. He was, of course, teased that I was going to bum him in the night.

I’d barely spoken to him before, but as I unpacked my Dwarf tapes, he struck up a conversation, and with that one thing in common, we got on. He was a lovely guy, putting up with his lot of being stuck with the unpopular kid. I wasn’t even smart enough or quick enough to be a proper geek.

Reader, I didn’t bum him. I’m generally not that way inclined. But, ironically, he was the one who – some years later – ended up getting married to a chap.

[Warbodog]

When did you tend to listen to them?

I didn’t listen to them, I just enjoyed the process of making them. Buying a fresh budget pack of blank tapes from Argos was a treat, which I suppose evolved into buying tubs of blank CDs off eBay to rip albums. Now I just consume everything on computers without physical receptacles.

[Warbodog]

It’s a shame I don’t still have them, as a 10-year-old boy reading Bruce Coville’s Aliens Ate My Homework series too fast to avoid wasting tape and guessing how to pronounce all the alien names poorly above cheap background hiss could have been a successful podcast.

[Flap Jack]

I was fortunate enough to be allowed VHS tapes, but if I recall correctly I mainly used them to record episodes of Kenan & Kel.

lol, remember when Kel dropped the screw in the tuna.

[Ian Symes]

From the 1994 repeat run onwards, I had every single episode on VHS, and yet I still made audio tapes, because what was I supposed to do when I wasn’t in front of the TV?

[Asclepius]

When did you tend to listen to them?
I didn’t listen to them, I just enjoyed the process of making them. Buying a fresh budget pack of blank tapes from Argos was a treat, which I suppose evolved into buying tubs of blank CDs off eBay to rip albums. Now I just consume everything on computers without physical receptacles.

I love that. Thanks for the clarification. To read them just for the joy of reading them, and never listening back.

Fresh packs of tapes were an amazing treat though, you’re right. We did indulge in those. My Dad was fine with blank tapes being recorded onto, but just not buying new releases on tapes.

He borrowed this obscurity Beatles comp that was 8 LPs deep – The Beatles Box – Wikipedia – from someone at his work and copied them onto four tapes. All these decades on and I still think of the Beatles’ Era 1 and 2 being bookended between I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party and Kansas City, Era 2 and 3 between Got To get You Into my life and Penny Lane (more sensible!) and Era 3 and 4 between While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Bungalow Bill…

[Asclepius]

When did you tend to listen to them?
I didn’t listen to them, I just enjoyed the process of making them. Buying a fresh budget pack of blank tapes from Argos was a treat, which I suppose evolved into buying tubs of blank CDs off eBay to rip albums. Now I just consume everything on computers without physical receptacles.

Also, same – the last two CDs I bought were those ones where it’s “buy our CD for £5 and you get a free ticket because we want to get higher in the charts”…

[Asclepius]

I was fortunate enough to be allowed VHS tapes, but if I recall correctly I mainly used them to record episodes of Kenan & Kel.
lol, remember when Kel dropped the screw in the tuna.

We were absolutely allowed to have blank tapes – but just not much survived for long on them before they’d be recorded over.

Ah, Kenan and Kel. I remember them being on Live and Kicking I think…?

[Asclepius]

From the 1994 repeat run onwards, I had every single episode on VHS, and yet I still made audio tapes, because what was I supposed to do when I wasn’t in front of the TV?

I’d relish a Dwarfcast on the audio tape making. Was that exclusive to you, or common among the other Dwarf fans of the time?

We got the Internet at home as early as 1996. Wish I’d got more involved in the world of Dwarf fans back then. I’d have probably felt a lot less alone!

[Ian Symes]

He borrowed this obscurity Beatles comp that was 8 LPs deep – The Beatles Box – Wikipedia 

CHILDHOOD MEMORY UNLOCKED

[Warbodog]

the last two CDs I bought were those ones where it’s “buy our CD for £5 and you get a free ticket because we want to get higher in the charts”…

The last CDs I bought would have been Go Faster Stripe comedy-related ones in the late 2000s that I later sold as unplayable when cheap laptops stopped having CD drives.

The last cassette tape I bought was Iron Maiden’s Live After Death (1985) in 2003 when my Discman broke and I dug out an old cassette walkman. It failed to inspire a hipster movement among my disdainful school chums.

[Unrumble]

 They had STRONG ideas on what was/wasn’t suitable.

I do remember watching Marooned for the first time, taping it to VHS for him to watch when he got home from his late shift, and feeling so MASSIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE that he’d be watching that. But there you go.

Relate to this, though it wasn’t that my parents disapproved of things in general, just that they were very hot on what a child should/shouldn’t be watching. BBFC classifications were adhered to. Watching things like The Terminator round a friend’s house at the age of 12 felt like an incredibly transgressive act.

I remember borrowing a few Red Dwarf videos off a mate (probably their dad’s) when I was around 10-11 and first getting into Dwarf, and my parents wouldn’t let me watch the 15-rated Series III Byte I, until they had vetted it themselves. 

I was almost giddy with excitement when the remastered version came out not long after, and I was able to buy it for myself in John Menzies, and my mum couldn’t protest as it had been downgraded to a 12, which I had recently turned.

 At the time, with only memories of a handful of watches to draw upon, I probably was suckered into thinking the remastered must be an improvement overall, though I definitely did not prefer the Polymorph basketball epilogue ending, thinking that original was creepier and more effective.

[International Debris]

Still buying CDs, vinyl and tapes. 

I wonder if I should dig out my old tapes recorded when I was a kid of my own radio show. I’m sure someone on YouTube would love them.

[Ben Kirkham]

From the 1994 repeat run onwards, I had every single episode on VHS, and yet I still made audio tapes, because what was I supposed to do when I wasn’t in front of the TV?

Absolutely! I did this with Doctor Who. I videotaped the classic series from UK Gold and then audio recorded some of them on cassette tape.

The Edge of Destruction sounded so spooky on cassette. I stayed with 2 parters because they were less work.

[clem]

From the 1994 repeat run onwards, I had every single episode on VHS, and yet I still made audio tapes, because what was I supposed to do when I wasn’t in front of the TV?

I never made audio tapes but I would sometimes just “play” an episode in my head during school assembly. 

[clem]

Sometimes I needed to narrate bits – my main memory is doing the Terrorform Taranshula.

I was really hoping you were gonna say you still had the recordings – I’d have genuinely loved to have heard them! There were some commercially released Fawlty Towers audio cassettes with the soundtrack from the TV episodes and added narration by Andrew Sachs as Manuel, just describing the more visual bits, “Mr Fawlty hit me on the head with the frying pan!” etc. A handful of the Carry On films even got this treatment. I might still have Up the Jungle somewhere, narrated by Patrick Allen. Unfortunately it was abridged and the bit where the snake goes up Joan Sims’ fanny is omitted. Or at least slithers over it, I guess we’ll never know. 

[clem]

I’d put it next to the TV speaker and tape the intro music or random dialogue for illustration if they were books of films I had on video, like The Mask and Back to the Future Part II.

If we’re talking amateur audiobooks of novelisations of films, I recommend this YouTube channel. Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster is on there.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC2TNJGmfnjsdWMBsG6O-ReA

[Warbodog]

I don’t mind unnatural free robot readers for getting through any ebook.

[tombow]

I used to have one of those radio/stereos with a little black and white TV screen added in, and you could record audio tapes of programmes. I used to audio tape any shows and docs about music, punk and metal, like when Channel 4 did those “top ten metal/hard rock” shows in the late 90s, and some comedy (I think I did a Bill Bailey stand up).

didn’t there used to be a load of urban myths about Kenan and Kel? Either one of them died, or one killed the other, or they robbed a bank together and both got life in prison, or they were shot robbing a bank.

[International Debris]

There were some commercially released Fawlty Towers audio cassettes with the soundtrack from the TV episodes and added narration by Andrew Sachs as Manuel

I can’t remember where it was now, but I used to go to a pub which played these on loop in the bathrooms. 

[Ridley]

Manuel narrating your visit to the toilet is what inspired Faulty Towers The Dining Experience.

[Ben Saunders]

In the very early 2000s my brother would burn CDs with tracks he downloaded from Limewire and play them in my mum’s car. One of these CDs for some reason included the “April Fool” bit from Me2 and the “wrong number” bit from Pete: Part I as tracks. I think after playing them exactly once he learned not to put stuff like that on a music CD.

Also in the very early 2000s one of us changed the music that plays when you log into Windows (98 at the time I think) to the Hammond Organ tune from Dimension Jump.

[Unrumble]

Also in the very early 2000s one of us changed the music that plays when you log into Windows (98 at the time I think) to the Hammond Organ tune from Dimension Jump.

I did this too, with the III-onwards theme music and random bits of dialogue. 

[International Debris]

Oh God, changing all the sounds and cursors and things! The fun I used to have with my computer before permanently connected broadband. 

[Technopeasant]

 Absolutely! I did this with Doctor Who. I videotaped the classic series from UK Gold and then audio recorded some of them on cassette tape.

You were hardly the first.

[Ian Symes]

Yeah, I definitely downloaded various versions of Red Dwarf desktop themes for Windows 98. One of them replaced the “shutting down” screen with this:

And the “it is now safe to turn off your computer screen with:

Which fair scared the living shit out of my mum the next time she used the computer.

[Technopeasant]

I mean, you hope that’s all it did…

[Moonlight]

I’m too young to have done anything like this, but my mom used to record audio tapes of show reruns back in the 70s. Obviously, that was about the only possible way to get a recording of a show in a world before the era of VCRs.

[Technopeasant]

I am just old enough to remember cassettes and floppy discs. We had a yellow Fisher Price cassette deck and recorder with a big handle. Of more interest to us however was local radio transmitters so we could put out our “own” radio shows.

[Moonlight]

I remember floppy disks, but my most recent memory of actually using them was these digital cameras we used in art class in middle school that took extremely low resolution photos to 3.5 inch floppies.

[International Debris]

I’m not sure I ever found much of a practical use for floppy disks, I sometimes stored files on them but purely just to use them rather than out of necessity. 

Cassettes have been the format of choice for DIY labels for years now so I’ve reluctantly released quite a bit of music on the format. 

[Warbodog]

Floppies are the most nostalgic game medium for me (so I like the joke in TPL), especially combined with the Amiga disk drive’s loud clucking and ominous, blaster-beamesque tones. We had to get a hard drive when graphic and sound aspirations overtook the medium and disk swapping got ridiculous (even the non-FMV Monkey Island 2 and Simon the Sorcerer had 9 to 11 disks, Monkey1 just had 3).

[Moonlight]

You cannot contain Chris Barrie’s voice on just a couple floppies.

[Technopeasant]

The purpose of a floppy is roughly the same as a thumb drive surely?

[RunawayTrain]

I recall using floppy disks for running programmes with our first computer(s), but I mostly used them for storing / transporting homework – my aunt gave us her word processor (like an electronic typewriter kind of thing, I think you could print out but you could also save onto floppy disk, and you could edit the file before printing.  The screen was green and displayed about three lines of text at once.  She’d used it mainly for her degree) so that’s what I used until we had a computer.

(Our tech was always secondhand or we came to it late because it was too expensive when newer.)

I remember saving Sibelius compositions on floppy disk so that means I was definitely still using them in upper school (didn’t even know notation software existed before then).  Although by Sixth Form I think I had a USB stick.  Not sure if I also had a dinky mp3 player by then too or if that came a year or so later

[Warbodog]

9 to 11 disks

Annoyed that I had to type this out so it looked less like “9-11.” The terrorists have ruined that number range.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I recall using floppy disks for running programmes with our first computer(s), 

Same. Big old 5 inch actual floppy discs that were used to boot up everything.

[Ben Saunders]

I remember saving Sibelius compositions on floppy disk

All my homies hate Sibelius. My music teacher in high school would burn a free copy for you if you gave him a blank CD.

[Author]

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