Cassette Singles - Did You Buy Them ?

[dave910]

There was a period of time when I couldn't find a song on a 45 or when one wasn't available on a CD single. Sometimes the CD single was six or seven dollars! So in the mid 1990's I would sometimes purchase cassette singles. Since I owned a car with a tape deck this was perfect. Many times the store which I worked offered singles for bargain prices at $.99 or even $.49. Here are a few that spent time in my car. I still own two cases worth!

"Free As A Bird" The Beatles
"Real Love" The Beatles
"Big Poppa" Notorious B.I.G.
"Bang And Blame" R.E.M.
"Natural One" Folk Implosion
"One" U2

[daniel]

I never bought cassette singles, mostly because I never really cared for the cassette format in general. The only cassette we owned was the Pac Man Fever album, and I used to get really anoyed trying to find the beginning of a song I wanted to hear, lol!

[Railyn]

I had a handful. I think I still have all or most of them stuffed in a box somewhere.

I remember having:

Dare To Fall In Love - Brent Bourgeois
When I Dream Of You - Tommy Page
I'll Be Your Everything - Tommy Page
I Wanna Sex You Up - Color Me Badd
All For Love - Color Me Badd
No Myth - Michael Penn
Hard To Get - Star Club
Everlating Love - Howard Jones
Mysterious Ways - U2
Cover Girl - NKOTB
Step By Step - NKOTB
I'll Be Loving You Forever - NKOTB
This One's For The Children - NKOTB
You Got It (The Right Stuff) - NKOTB
Ordinary World - Duran Duran

I may have had one or two more, but I think that's it. My reasoning for buying them was simple: my mom thought buying tapes/records was a total waste of money. It was one of those total mom-isms - if it was something she wanted, fine. If it was something that I wanted, no. She'd let me peruse the bargain bin at discount stores, and she would let me buy stuff used at flea markets/thrift shops/yard sales, but she'd get huffy if it wasn't a holiday or birthday, and I wanted a tape.

So back to the cassingle: I could scrape a few bucks together over the course of a week or two (like the change left over after I'd bought my lunch at school) and get a cassingle on my own. Not as good as the whole tape, but if I didn't know anyone who had the tape and would copy it for me, I could at least get my favorite song.

Another bit of logic behind it was that because it was hard for me to get tapes, I hated to "waste" one that I could get when I wasn't sure if the whole thing was good (see Star Club, Michael Penn, etc above). They turned out as one-hit-wonders, so it was a good choice. If it turned out the whole things was good and I could "put in for it" as a gift from someone, then at least I had a song or two to hold me over.

As for cd singles, I have:
Hobo Humping Slobo Babe - Whale
Every Morning - Sugar Ray
Therapy - Infectious Grooves
.....and I forget the rest - I think I have another one or two - likely promos I picked up somewhere

I bought the Whale one when I first got a CD player in the car, and for the same reason as the cassingle - I doubted the rest of the cd was good, and in 1994 CD's were still expensive. The Sugar Ray song was given to me, I think. The Infectious Grooves was one I grabbed for Nelson somewhere at a used cd store (Ozzy is on that song).