No other object exemplifies the 1980s and Generation X culture quite like the cassette tape.
For the first time, it took the music out of the hands of radio DJs and put the power to control the playlist in the listeners’ hands.
Whether you were blasting your cassette tapes on a boom box for all to hear or enjoying them on the solitude of a Walkman, cassettes offered a new freedom to a generation of music fans.
But by the 1990s, cassettes quickly became obsolete, replaced by the newest in music technology, the compact disc.
Today, people are rediscovering the warm sound, the durability and recordability of cassettes as they are enjoying a retail and underground resurgence.
Music journalist and Gilbert resident Marc Masters is the author of the new book, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape," a comprehensive history of one of the most impactful artistic media of the 20th century.
Masters came into the KJZZ studio recently with a shoebox full of cassette tapes to talk about it.
