CASSETTE REVIEW: Kevin Greenspon “Waypoint” (Bridgetown Records)

                Somewhere in between the invention of the compact disc and the phasing out of the cassette tape, people in the music business figured out that they shouldn’t make cassette singles (aka cassingles) anymore because they are in fact bad for business. 

                If you ever look back at my cassette collection from my youth, you will find that something like 90% of the cassingles I own are the only music I have by that particular artist.   Back in the day, a cassingle could range anywhere from $3.49 to as low as 99 cents, but a full length cassette would easily be over $10.

  

                So you have to ask yourself: $3.49 for the one song that I like and hear on the radio, or about triple that for the one song plus ten more that are bound to suck. 

                In that way, I think that music has changed itself, evolved for the better in the sense that we no longer have the one hit wonder as much.  Now people just buy all sorts of crap and don’t care.  Hey, all of the songs on that CD you bought might be awful except for the one that you heard on the radio, but you don’t care.   You paid $13.99 so you’re going to rock that whole Taio Cruz album proudly!

                Though in a plastic case as opposed to the cardboard sleeve, “Waypoint” is in fact a cassingle from Kevin Greenspon, with the title track being the whole of Side A and the Side B song being “Renewal”. 

                Music has changed to the point now, in terms of how it is presented to us physically or digitally, in the sense that people can once again create cassingles that fans will buy simply because they know that the two songs will not show up on the full length.

                In fact, one of the few cassingles I can think of offhand that I own along with the album is for “Undone (The Sweater Song)” by Weezer, which has “Holiday” on the flip side, both of which appear on their blue album, so hey, money well spent by me on that cassingle, right?

                These are two great songs that even if you can find them on some tape released down the line, it doesn’t matter because having these two songs on this one cassette now makes it all worthwhile when you’re living in the cassette bubble that I am.

http://kevingreenspon.bandcamp.com/
http://kevingreenspon.bandcamp.com/album/waypoint