I remember my early radio DJ days where callers would request for a song, and they would specifically ask (no, demand) that you remain quiet during the song’s intro because they wanted to record the song on tape.

This is somewhat corollary to last week’s piece about mixed tapes. ICYMI (wow, that’s so millennial lol), I talked about the lost art of making mixed tapes of songs recorded off the radio, and later putting a tape together by recording songs selected from LP records.

It seems unfathomable back in the day to even venture a thought that the technology we enjoyed then would eventually become obsolete, save perhaps for some, but as previously mentioned, lost art weighs in more heavily than technology, I presume.

Recording your music off of the radio was a rather crude but practical way of getting your music fix that could be played over and over again.

It had its setbacks though; the tedious, time-consuming process of waiting for the radio station to play the song you wanted to record took nearly forever. Good luck with calling in a request to a constantly busy phone line that never seemed to be free.

I remember my early radio DJ days where callers would request for a song, and they would specifically ask (no, demand) that you remain quiet during the song’s intro because they wanted to record the song on tape.

Of course, I would still sneak in the station’s cold ID into the song with a chuckle. But, that’s a different story.

Recording your music off the radio was how people saved music back in the day.

There were other ways back then to get your music fix. If trying to record your favorite songs off the radio was too tasking and took too long, there was always having someone else tape it for you, for a price. You would resort to a taping job.

Before the rise of the mall and centralized shopping, the biggest place to shop at was a department store, and they were located “downtown” — meaning, the Avenida Avenue strip from Carriedo St. to C.M. Recto Ave. and the adjoining streets that perpendicularly crossed its path.

If you wanted to avail of the new 45rpm single and LP releases, your best bet would be Record Bar row, along Raon St. Lined up along this narrow street were small, boisterous stores peddling the latest seven-inch singles and LP releases. I say boisterous because every store would have its own speaker blasting the hit/s of the day, an age-old ploy for attracting would-be customers walking by the crowded passageway.

There, one could avail of a taping job from any of the numerous record bars. Music lovers would bring their own cassette tape to them with a list of songs that they would like recorded. If memory serves, it was P1 per song and a deposit of half the total was required. The job would take a day or two, depending on the volume of job orders they had at hand.

Next to fraying your patience in front of the radio and pressing your luck on your own, this was as close as aural heaven as they came back then. Of course, sound quality left much to be desired, but convenience was what you were really buying here. Realistically, this was the 70s — what did you expect from P1 per song in the first place?

As time marched on and we found ourselves in the 80s, the taping job survived somewhat, evolving and taking on a different shape and form, or format as the case may be.

Taping jobs were still doing business, what with record stores that displayed (not sold) LP records merely as adverts for the albums you could have recorded (anyone remember Phoenix Records?).

While another specialty shop dealt in the same concept, it was more of a conventional record store that offered the same service, but only imports were available for taping, not titles that were locally available.

The shop built a buzz about itself, and become popular for the cutting-edge titles it carried, with local record companies even sniffing them out for possible local release.

other ways of being able to save music was turning to a taping job.

The taping job was alive and well in the 80s, thanks to A2Z Records. This little shop made a name for itself with taping jobs for (then obscure) albums by The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Smiths and New Order, their four best-selling JO’s at that time.

As long as the album remained locally unreleased, things looked in the up and up. They also did one better than the taping jobs of old, carrying an ample supply of blank tapes for their customers, a convenience that was well appreciated by their loyalists.

But, time catches up with everything and everyone, and so does technology. The digital age was none too kind for the DYI businesses, and soon the taping job became a thing of the past, as did the cassette tape and its ilk. Today, everything is, as they say, just a click, a finger stroke and a tap away, thanks to streaming music services. It’s all in the name of convenience and commerce, but nowadays, what isn’t?