NOT BEING WHAT YOU’D CALL A QUICK STUDY, I immediately grabbed an old shoebox and started filling it with cassettes plucked from the greater cassette stashes located around the house. I told myself, and I lied when I did so, that I would listen to the tapes in the box at the rate of one per week, maybe two and possibly even three if things went well. Instead I have been looking with fear at the box for a month now, because its contents only make me yearn for more obscurities, more out-of-the-way treasures like the ones that had been hiding around the house waiting to be rediscovered. If only tapes were better sound storage media! Their objet d’art potential would be massive if only they didn’t loudly proclaim their own pending obsolescence. But the ones that still played were quite wonderful, and worth talking about.