Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Now That's What I Call Vaipa Mix Volume 1

One of the most popular pop/rock music compilation cassettes/cds that came out in Mizoram during the late 90s was the Now That's What I Call Music! series of assorted hit songs . I owned one of them which was the Now That's What I Call Music! Vol 3 and my memory not  being what it is anymore the only songs I remember from that cassette are Wet Wet Wet's (hehe) If I never see you again and Shampoo's Trouble

If you dropped in on any self respecting Mizo teenage music lover's house you were sure to see one of these cassettes lying around. Speaking about cassettes/CDs ,the Mp3 format has taken out some of the fun of owning music. Back in the day one had to purchase the whole cassette if you wanted to listen to a song by your favourite band and even if you didn't know the other songs you slowly got to love the other non-hit songs too because yuo more or less ended up listening to the whole Side A or Side B; you couldn't even hit the NEXT button to skip a song on tape. (Some high end music systems had the ability to automatically stop forwarding when the next song comes up)

The first cassette that I owned was Metallica's Black album back in 1992 and my mother didn't approve of the mean looking snake on the cover and almost didn't buy it for me but I told her that the songs in the album were about how the evil snake that made Eve eat the apple was punished severely by God. (No I didn't actually say that, I probably instead threw a tantrum and swore to never eat veggies again). 



Another fun thing to do with cassettes was exchanging cassettes with friends - we would borrow and lend each other cassettes and give em back after a week. Some friends who were lucky enough to be the first to get their hands on a cassette which was quite hard to find became quite popular in school! I still remember when Hmingthansiama bought the latest Aerosmith "Get a Grip" album and he brought it to school and we actually made a diary where we made a note of who would get to listen to the cassette next.

Not much fun in exchanging MP3s is it? Hah! 

The pitfalls to owning cassettes was that you would have to often stick broken tapes with cello tape or rewind them using pens (quite a popular post on Facebook a year ago..) and friends borrowing them and never returning them again! I'm still looking for my Magnsasound Slow Rock Volume 3 Cassette. 

Bibliography:
Aerosmith - Get a Grip
Now That's What I Call Music

Note: I only wrote this post because I didn't want to let a good blog title go to waste. Sorry.My previous blog entry was titled Vaipa Mix :P



7 comments:

Calliopia said...

Finally, an update! *does cartwheels in head* I wonder how many NTWICMs were eventually made. I won't google though. The rewinding cassettes with pens is still a popular Fb post btw, especially by the new to the net greenhorns. In fact, they keep bringing up all the old one-time funnies that you spilled your guts out laughing over a decade ago. I don't remember my first cassette buy but among the first ones we owned were Saturday Night Fever and Tom Jones that my mum brought back for us from Delhi. And you know what, you were lucky that you had these cassettes to buy. In my growing up years, all we had was the shortwave radio and blank cassettes and we had a bunch of these Hitachi cassettes with songs recorded from the radio. Hmmmm that makes me nostalgic.

Aduhi Chawngthu said...

Ehe hei chu back from the dead an tih ang chi hi emi? The first cassette we owned was some gospel cassette which I now realise was distributed by Jehovah's Witness people, I still remember the songs. One of the first cassettes we (ie my brother) bought was Europe, I think the year was 1989. And then there were the blank tapes, pressing Play+Record and then singing some song (and if you were my brother and his friend you wouldn't get the song right in the first instance) and plays and jokes etc etc. That was fun.

ku2 said...

hetia TV.Amos'an kan dilna ngaipawimawha chi inthliarna chungchanga thu bengvarthlak tak a rawn phuhchhuak hi kan lawm hle a, kan thupui nen inman chiahlo mah se, eng engemaw a rawn ziah vang tal pawhin kan lawm em em ani.

Ni, mixed tapes te kha a hlu asin, ngaihzawngte'n min han mix saka, a hla awm apiang kha min phuahchhan ah khan kan inngai a, nuamve thei tak chu ani ve thin. inngaihzawn tawhloh hnuah erawh khatiang hla ho kha a 'bum' duh riau.
Khatianga tape hla 1 a tawpa in fiorward tawp zel ang chiah khan Pink Floyd cassette khan tawp hun a hre miahlo mawle, kan test thin!

Alejendro said...

Cassette reel chat zawm chu hnehsawh tawh rap. Play ngun deuh phei kha chu a reel hi a lo ei ve hman ziah a.. kan ti chat a, kan han zawm leh a.. a zawm lai a skip lai thleng khan hre bel hlur zel.. :-D

"Bryan Adams - So Far So Good"

Album kha ka neih hmasak pawl a ni ve a.. a kawm a tire awm ngei mei kha.. tun thleng hian khami album kha chuan lung a la ti leng..

zinkual said...

you talk tapes, i say vinyl, 33 and 45 rpms!! a tawp lamah kha chuan a lai kaw lian 45rpm a lo chhuak a, a lai thun neih loh chuan a mangan thlak thei rap.

Mimihrahsel said...

comment reply ngai leh awm si lova, ka comment ve lo mai ang aw

Unknown said...

hi there! i got the chance to look at your blog. it's nice to to see someone who also collected cassette tapes like I did back in the 90's.

i happen to read that you had "Slow Rock Vol 3". do you also happen to have the rest of the Slow Rock series? I used to have all 6 series but lost them. too bad. I try to look for copies of those cassettes but couldn't find any anywhere...