Vinyl was replaced by a magnetic ribbon, it was a digital CD format, even later the music stopped going beyond the Internet. It would seem that material carriers have forever gone the past. Nevertheless, you can easily find vinyl adherents and CDs ready to lay out any money for rare records. Our St. Petersburg Svyaznoy Milan Logunova, the author of the report on BDSM-VEDERS , goes to the raid on the landmark multi-format audio shops in St. Petersburg in search of those who, today, in 2016, are returning not to CD and vinyl, but to the good old cassettes: why, in the name of what and how much it costs?
Imagine that you have a child, and you have a choice: to cultivate perfectionism, independence or practicality in it? For example, you can buy him an expensive fat velvet diary so that the motivation appears to write in it with a neat beautiful handwriting and becoming a snob-aesthetic. You can buy him an absolutely white diary so that he can scan him with stickers, paint or decorate him with any other way. And you can buy him the first one that came across-the cheapest, with some kind of machine or hare, and say that he never steam because of all garbage and does not spend time and money on it. Now imagine that you are raising not a child, but your own taste. And, investing in vinyl, as if you hope that under this natural pure sound of the plate they will also bury you. When buying cassettes, you learn to live one day-today you enjoy the noise of the tape recorder under an inexpensive vinyl, and tomorrow you erase the summer and write down the ingenious creations of your newly made rock band. There are other options. For example, buy CD, throw music from it to a computer and not enter into any disputes about musical media. Of course, you can still not buy anything at all, not to download and not listen. But this is a completely different story.
Why all these conversations? The fact that over the past thirty years of the world musical industry has survived several waves of cultural and technical mini-revolution, when the musical technique, which was the most advanced yesterday, became outdated from the next day. However, over time, it became clear that the question of which carriers to invest in music lies in many planes - both in the economic and in the worldview, as well as in the plane of taste, fashion, traditions, excitement, “density”, “hardcore” and others. According to my observations, the more importance in a person’s life is, the more he is interested in its shape, quality, cost, convenience. And yet, are there those who combine tape recorders and cassette players and continue to buy music on the good old MCs forgotten by all?
A tomb of progressive competition
Point: "Rock-Ostrov" Address: Kirochnaya St., 8 Life: Twenty -four years At the machine: Sergey, works twenty -two years Cassett's price: 20 rubles
This is nonsense that there was no commodity diversity in the USSR. In the early nineties, people brought dozens of accumulated boxes with plates here and changed them to CDs, and in the two thousandths these same people brought back CD and said: “Well, return my favorite vinyl.”
As for the cassettes, then in front of me there are forty things here. They still treat them respectfully: they were placed in black globes and closed in a closet. In the mid -nineties, the cassettes made up a good half of the goods, after ten years they stopped ordering them at all. They cost less than travel on the bus, they are sold at such a price that just get rid of. Only one person will ask about the deceased once a week: mainly collectors who are interested in not so much music itself as the collection of companies: Sony, Basf, TDK ... There is still nothing to listen to them in the store: one broken tape recorder is dusting in the corner. CDs, here, by the way, is also only in the remains, but still there are a couple of racks. There are a hundred records per sold disk. There are two halls in the store, and the first is intended to attract tourists: here they once shot a scene from the film "Brother", and the photos are very old-school. And if we talk purely about music, then as already said, the “island” can be traced a new round of vinyl popularity: sales are expanding, young people come. About five years ago, new production launched in Europe, the player can now be connected to USB, headphones and any columns, and the records themselves cost from 500 rubles to the sky -high amounts - who can afford what.
Sergey:
- Understand, Vinille is more durable. Firstly, electromagnetic fields act on the cassette, which leads either to washing or to distorting the recording. Secondly, the material itself is a magnetic coating that crumbles, stretches, and on the plate how the furrows made, so they remain, if not beaten with a hammer, of course.
Demand waiting room
Point: Ellington Commission Address: st. Marata, d. 53 Life: A year and a half At the machine: Valentine, bard, guitarist, music teacher
Cassett's price: 10 rubles
Bright day. Commission. The floor is forced by boxes with vinyl, a couple with CD-disks was clung between them. Music plays the full. A man sits in the corner behind the cabinet, collects boxes from CDs. - Hello! Are there any cassettes? - Eat. In the trash. - Okay ... Do they buy CD well? - Do you need cassettes? Yes, take them from me for 25 rubles - all at once!
The plates in Ellington cost up to 1,500 rubles, which is still quite decent and corresponds to at least some quality, but the compact disk in the primary state is better not to see: smoked yellow boxes that the seller disassemble, soaks plastic in his bathroom in a specialist, wipes away, and then collects a box, disk and cover back. This causes some tenderness when you find out that the seller Valentine in the past is a music teacher. Nevertheless, not everyone will continue to humbly admire the content, having managed to work with the form - with the one that the collectors left, but ordinary people come from the Soviet Union. People who still agree to the lowest quality of the CD, but certainly disagree to the cassettes.
Valentine:
- Honestly, I did not assume that no one would buy cassettes at all. A year ago, I recognized the demand, and he seemed to be. Someone on the garbage found and brought here, someone from the house remains. First, I put a price tag on them 150 rubles, then 100, then 50. After a few months they began to take only 10 rubles. The best was sold out right away - Russian and Western rock, and nobody needs all this Russian pop.
In a nearby store, they told me that one day one oligarch came to Valentine: he asked a whole box of cassettes for 500 rubles and to put it off, promised that he would come and take it later. The seller was delighted, waited, waited, waited and waited, but did not wait, was upset and decided to go through another purely Russian formula: it was not what they would buy better, but that which is not ashamed to keep it. A kind of reconciliation strategy with the buyer.
Shelter of forgotten toys
Point: "Culture" Address: Foundry Prospekt, 58 Life: nineteen years At the machine: Elena, works starting from the opening
Cassett's price: 30 rubles
For which you can’t help but love rock stores is that you will definitely choose a kind of kosukha there a kind woman-punk woman. But what Russian rock stores are difficult to love for, it is because you are unlikely to find music there. For example, in “Culture”, and this, by the way, is the oldest rock store Peter, the last order for rock was made in 2003, because the power of the Internet-there is nothing to nostalgic here.
But during a detailed examination, everything is not quite deplorable: from the very entrance I was met by a rack from CD at 100 - 150 rubles apiece, and a little further - as many as nine audio cassettes and several videos with the clips of metal corrosion and Iron Maiden. When I asked about the cassettes, the seller was not at all surprised, only made me a reprimand that I was late. As it turned out, there are shops that love to do cleaning, but there are those who do not like. So, “culture” does not like cleaning so much that a year ago there were a dozen racks with only licensed cassettes here, and all of them grabbed them in a year. Nine are those that remained. Plus a whole CD wall.
Elena:
-Part of the cassettes we had on the commission: the rock musicians had money, they went to sign up for the “goodness”, then they went shopping and offered. Now everything is the same, only with CD. For example, there is such a group “Troll to be a spruce”, and their fans believe that they must have their own disk. Plus, there are young people who fundamentally does not pump music from the Internet, and there is a surprisingly much of it.
Russian death on a pause
Point: Tent "Retro" Address: Sadovaya St., 32 Life: Ten years At the machine: Oleg
Cassett's price: 30 - 350 rubles
On the step, before the steep collection store of junk, I wanted to summarize the intermediate results of all that I managed to find out: firstly, the cassettes are shit because they are pouring and they have no furrows; Secondly, they are found in garbage dumps; Thirdly, hipsters have already dismantled all the remains in the stores. And people are dying.
By the way, about mortality. The seller Oleg, when I began to load it with my cassette problems, presented me with such an argument: the record is designed for about five hundred runs, and the cassette itself lives in itself for a hundred years. It turns out that if someone tells you that Vinilni does not deteriorate at all, and the cassette is already pouring, then most likely before us is an unlucking vampire who does not very often listen to music on plates, but hears to the holes of the cassette. Or someone is just cunning.
Unlike other points where I visited, life is in full swing in the “retro”, and the goods are updated. Perhaps due to the proximity of Apraksinov’s court. The seller Oleg is sure that the cassette can never become less popular in Russia than, for example, vinyl, at least because of the price. Who, for example, will now buy a head for a vinyl player for $ 100? And the speakers to him? And micro -men? According to MC adherents, all sound problems do not go from the quality of the carrier, but from the quality of the deck. And the deck should be sutured, otherwise why sits down on an analog sound at all if the device cannot reproduce all its advantages?
Oleg:
- The analog sound has always been more valuable, and this can be seen at the prices of CD and vinyl: the very first disk in the world were “Abba Visitors”, and how much is it sold now? The original costs 500 euros. Well, maybe the first beets will be sold - for a maximum of 1000 euros, but definitely not modern music. And Vinil? At the first publication, “Yesterday and Today” sealed the cover, because when printing did not like the color, and now this copy costs 4,000 euros. The charm of vinyl just in these red editions, because this is the first press and there are flaws on them. The blue edition can increase the distance between the paths, and the sound will become cleaner, but people just like these very shortcomings of the analogue.
In the “retro” ordinary cassettes cost 30 rubles, but sometimes you can get chrome it for 350, and the metal will cost all dollars 10 apiece.
Painting of aesthetic idealism
Point: VINYLBOX Address: traveling st., 26 Life: three and a half years At the machine: Philip, works for three years
Cassett's price: 150 - 1200 rubles
On this joyful note about chrome high-quality cassettes, I decided that there would be enough beggarly stores, it is time to go to the sales points of the modern Andergrade vinyl nineties or two-thousandths, where even Noize MC can be found on records. But as soon as I started talking about magnetic records, a peremptory fell upon me: “Dear! Cassettes are too gorgeous for us. ” And this is told to me in the place where the plates of the American entries of Vysotsky for 26,000 rubles hang over the counter.
Later they explained to me that in recent years, popular things on cassettes really began to come out at the bases: Grimes, Joanna Newsom and others. But these cassettes cost 1,000 rubles apiece, and in Russia, where they are still used to collecting the remains from flea markets, it is unprofitable. And what lies in the corner on the shelf is either the same Soviet version from the owner of the store, who decided to go on the mezzanine, or St. Petersburg Samizdat. Samizdat is when twenty to thirty-thirty copies of home records or records directly from concerts of unpredictable quality. But Vinylbox has modern small print plates of 1,000-1,500 rubles apiece, they come from Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Rostov, Peter ... For example, the “Bolshoi simple number” record was once helped to release the store itself.
Philip:
- The cassette in any case sounds dirtier than vinyl, and no difference - it is old or new. Of course, a person likes imperfect sounds, and that is why sterilized CDs are now rewriting to vinyl. But this is the same figure. The largest European factory is in the Czech Republic, everything is sent there: electronics, voice, but nothing else is needed. So the question with an analogue is rather a fetish question than audiophilia: holding the plate is much more pleasant. As for the cassettes, the good ones cost inhuman money, while we are used to in Russia, that they were 150 rubles maximum.
Elite of the Old Variety
Point: "Background" Address: st. Marata, 28 Life: Ten years At the machine: Dmitry
Cassett's price: 300 - 500 rubles
The same St. Petersburg Samizdat, which is “sometimes brought”, is called GoTape. This is such a production of cassettes for those who want to introduce at least a little professionalism to the group, where (so to be) they decided to be published on the analogue, only once cheaper than in the Czech Republic. With them, the St. Petersburg Cassette Libe Floe cooperates that I was found in the “phonotek” on the shelves under the shelf on the code phrase “please show the cassettes”.
Dmitry Shpalikov is a cassette producer, and he is sure that the fashion for cassettes for knowledgeable people has long began, or rather, revived. Real music is a physical possession of the product, and, unlike the CD, the cassette has a circulation, it can be exclusive: each Floe cassette has a copy number, there are no more than fifty in the circulation. There are several issues, a couple of tracks from which cannot be found on the Internet. Once Dmitry sold all the copies of the cassette, and he urgently needed it, and he found one at all at Avito, and the seller was in America and sold it for $ 50. I had to buy. But the most important value of the Samizdat cassette is that it is given to a very small circle of people, you can listen to it from beginning to end, without fear that it was cut or processed from the author’s version.
Dmitry:
- In America you will go to the store - and there are always shelves with cassettes. This culture did not disappear anywhere in the world. Synecdoche Montauk released only on the cassettes, Arial sound cool on the vinyl, the Massive Attack work very competently with the figure, but the Slaver is terribly made by CD, and you can only listen to them on the vinyl. Auktsyon got out on Vinyl, sending a digital record, and this is heard as a digital recording. We came up with a myth that the analogue is steering. There are simply good hands and there are shitty hands - mastering plays far from the last role.
Musical protection
Point: Hellstore Address: st. Bolshaya Morskaya, d. 17 Life: seven and a half years At the machine: Alexey
Cassett's price: 30 - 100 rubles
Even taking into account that many cassettes are recorded from the numbers and this is such an analog sound with a pinch of doubt and a taste of suspicion, there are still people who only buy cassettes. They really exist.
Hellstore is such an exception to the world of rock stores, because there really is music, and all rocks, where two-thirds of the racks are CD, and one third is cassettes. Vinil here is even less than cassettes.
Alexey:
- The assortment of cassettes is large, because it is interesting, first of all, to me myself. I do not think that it is worth cutting off at least some kind of rock music as flawed, this applies to vinyl, and cassettes, and CD. There is that someone likes vinyl more, but there is something that looks better on the compacts. For example, it is more pleasant for me to listen to Thrash or Hard'n'heavy on Vinil, but Black Metal is on compacts. Music is something individual.
The stronghold of radicalism
Point: Society of collectors Address: st. Korsakova, d. 53/10 Life: ninety -three years At the machine: Alexander
Cassett's price: -
I am solemnly entering this temple with the intention to hear the last word of the expert that cassettes are cool and all collectors have long wanted to return them. I go to the leader of the pack. But having heard the word “cassette” from me, he is crooked as a curse. - What are you interested in such a certain form today?
However, a little later, I was taken out of the hall with vinyl and CD and took me into a comor with a small collection exhibition of cassettes. There were about a dozen of them. Having shown me one of them, my guide said that these Soviet rarities from the landfill from the obsolete compacts could no longer be listened to, and then he suggested that I undertook to write material about cassettes only because I did not try to listen to them.
Then they told me that, yes, there seems to be the production of cassettes in the world, someone is trying to invent something, for example, seven-hour cassettes have recently appeared, but those things that are now sold with us are a continuous Soviet homemade nonsense of Chinese quality, and chrome and meter forty years ago are the rarest exceptions, only confirming the rule. Of course, you can indulge cassettes, but only in two cases: if, by incredible coincidence, it happened that some record remained only on the cassette and nowhere else (for example, from the meeting of friends), or if you have an analog voice recorder of Panasonic. Кассету ведь можно стереть и взять на неё интервью, а если вдруг дело дойдёт до суда, то цифру могут и не принять, а вот аналог принять обязаны. Может быть, в этом и есть предназначение устаревшей культуры сегодня?
Alexander:
— Если я продюсер, то я попрошу принести запись на бобине, а не на кассете. Бобина большая, приятная, удерживает качество и имеет намного больше спроса. Коллекционеры записывают с винила только на бобины. Как-то музыканты принесли мне запись сорокалетней давности. Включили — всё плывет! Потом они нашли где-то ту же запись с бобины. Хороший звук, как сейчас записали.
— А чего ты туфту такую гоняешь? Нормальное есть что-нибудь? Ты что, немой? - No. — Плеер такой реальный, а одет как обсос ...
Текст и фотографии Милана Логунова Санкт-Петербург 
Illustrations Sasha Serdyukova Moscow 