Last weekend I stopped by my local record store to browse their tapes for sale. I recently repaired my Sony cassette deck and have been playing any tapes I have on hand.
I wanted to find new tapes to listen to, and not necessarily music I was familiar with. I like the idea of finding inexpensive music to buy and the excitement that comes with listening to it for the first time.
I found a stack of tapes, many of which were just .99 cents, and have been listening all weekend.
One tape that grabbed my attention was Jonas Hellborg’s The Word. Released in 1991, The Word features Jonas on Wechter Acoustic Bass Guitar and Tony Williams on Drums along with the “Soldier String Quartet” of Laura Seaton, David Soldier, Ron Lawrence and Mary Wooten.
This album is put into the jazz/fusion genre and Hellborg’s work extends to wroking with Jon McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra in the 1980s.
This tape is exactly was I hoping to find when shopping in the store, an inexpensive jazzy release that I can play in the background while working from home.
Why bother with the cassette? Well, interestingly, I’ve had a hard time locating this album on the major streaming services. You can find it on YouTube or even Bandcamp, but not Apple or Spotify.
So for .99 cents I have this great album to listen to, all because I was looking for interesting albums to buy on cassette. So many cassette and CD releases have not made it to streaming services yet. This is why I love shopping for LPs and cassettes, you never know what you’ll find.
Aaron Hartley 