I watch this man on YouTube who has a channel called The Professor of Rock. He details the history of rock music in a number of ways and usually always has an interesting background story.

A while ago, he did an intro on what it was like to try and capture that perfect song back in the day with a cassette tape deck or recorder (at one time, we kids wanted music on the school bus so badly that I would carry on just a basic, one speaker tape recorder that played music like AM radio).

He went on about how difficult it was to capture that song in different ways: having a finger on both the play and record tabe, anticipating when the commercial was going to end, and cussing the DJ when speaking over the opening instrumentals of a song.  Or just waiting, and waiting because the DJ would promote a new release and it would soon be played.

Or just waiting to capture that song we kept missing or trying to fit as many songs on one cassette as possible without having the song end because of the end of the tape.

One song that was hell trying to catch for me was John Stewart's Lost Her In the Sun.  Sometimes I would just hit record and get it all just to try and get one song and for the longest time, about all I had was the opening lyrics to this song and then the dreaded end of the tape.  Every time I would play this tape and get to that song and it would prematurely end stunk. 

Still, it was such an enjoyable journey and endeavor to capture these radio-played tunes.

Back to the school bus - soon, after taking that tape recorder on the bus, a buddy in a scheme to one-up, ended up getting the first ever "boom box" in our little town - and was it expensive back then.  On top of that, looking back, it was so exciting when he would explain what the dials and levers were on this new thing and even if the equalizer only came in about three, four, or five adjustable levers to enhance sound back then.  And the sound.  Wow.  It blew us away.