It’s difficult to imagine anyone left on the face of the planet (already familiar with the man’s work, that is) who isn’t aware that singer/songwriter John Wesley Harding and critically acclaimed novelist Wesley Stace are one and the same. Henceforth, he has announced that he will record under the name Wesley Stace, and hopefully never again be asked why he assumed the name of a 1967 Bob Dylan album, misspelling and all. “It’s like what happens at the end of a Spider-Man or a Batman movie,” says Stace. “When the superhero reveals his true identity to his girlfriend.” “Girlfriend” may be the operative word on Stace’s new album, Self-Titled (Yep Roc), in which a 47-year-old man, now comfortably married and living in Philadelphia, reflects back over the loves of his younger life. Stace will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Stace: I am not seriously going to tell you that this is the audio experience of a lifetime or that, in the same way, that vinyl sounds better than mp3s, this is a sonic upgrade on cassettes or DATs, or whatever the equivalent might be. I am only saying that there is a curious satisfaction in buying very cheap old eight-track cassettes (or cartridges)—which mostly come from the years 1970-1974, the glory years of this most American of formats—and inserting them into the side of this design classic until they slot into place with a thunk. Mine happens to be blue, so I swiped this picture from eBay.
The format somewhat dictates your listening. At a garage sale, I recent bought an eight-track “caddy,” which contained a bunch of tapes: at least three Bread albums, two Chicago albums, two Cat Stevens, the greatest hits of the Moody Blues (double album!), four Yes tapes, Harvest and Hard Rain by Bob Dylan (a bit left field, that one). It’s like the sellers knew I was coming, and were determined to prize $8 from me. (“Here he comes! Remove the Mantovani and James Last and throw in the soft-rock stuff!”) Of these tapes—what the machine hasn’t broken, because it loves them to death: the tapes are very old and the glue has dried out (they can be mended, if you can be bothered)—the Yes albums have given me most pleasure.
Plus it’s just a great machine to leave out on the counter, or put by the side of a swimming pool. I may also add: “It looks like a detonator. It sounds like dynamite.”
No music is going to sound better on this than anything else: Tapes wow and flutter quite a lot in that attractive way we remember from our pre-digital youths (and let’s keep in mind, analog products may get scratched or wobbly sounding but nothing, nothing, is as heinous as a digital flaw or “artifact”). On the other hand, there’s some music that sounds perfectly good on this, as good as you need it to sound. Bread might be the perfect example of that.
Oh, and The Plunger? That’s how you go from selection from selection. I’m serious!! That’s how it works!
Panasonic, as you can see from their own advertisement, were “just slightly ahead of [their] time.”
