As a fifteen year old living in New York City, I think that I can proudly say that I AM youth corrupted by the media. Everyday on my way to school I see adds in the subway promoting alcohol and sex and fish fillets from McDonalds. It is your job CAKE, to de-brainwash my fragile mind with nostalgia and great music. The once great collection of cassettes in my house has dwindled to a few hand marked tapes of who knows what and a Monty Python special. Please help me help society by saving my brain.
-Ella S. (New York, NY)
Cake - I spend a lot of my time on the water. My labmates and I are getting our PhDs in marine ecology and ecosystem restoration. We're out on boats for a good chunk of the year and only have a tape deck available to us for listening to music out on the water. I'd have never thought it, but even Willie Nelson's Stardust gets a little old after a while. We've made it a mission to restore the glory of the cassette tape while we're restoring ecosystems. We're huge fans, and after dubbing this onto a field-worthy beater tape, your autographed tape would take a prominent position in our lab. We'll send pictures. You guys get me through the day.
Luke Cole (Charlottesville, VA)
Dear Cake,
No 80s artifact better captures the years of teenage angst than cassettes. From the first tastes of Pabst, to the failed attempts with girls in the backseat, cassettes were always right beside us. Loudly playing the soundtrack of our hormone-injected life. Nothing sounded sweeter than the squeaky sound of cassette player wheels turning steadily to the rhythm and beats. Those mixed tapes made for lovers and friends still carry the messages and themes of chapters of life we longingly look back to. While our cds skip, our tapes sit idly, awaiting the day we can find another tape deck.
Cheers,
Andrew Wojecki (Houston, TX)
Mr. Ramblejamble,
I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am old enough. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I have exercised my teeth for sunset tape cassette feeding time. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am eager to eat your tape cassette. I am worthy of a baby. I am shaped like a pear.
Zac Tallarico (Bethlehem, PA)
CAKE,
Of course I don't deserve an autographed cassette, but consider this. About a year ago a friend of mine visited and laughed at me because I was making a mix-tape for my (at-the-time) two year old daughter. He thought I was cursing her to a life of mockery on the playground as she would be the only one still listening to tapes. She has a nice little collection of tapes now including Johnny Cash, Dave Van Ronk and his jug band doing Peter and the wolf and she likes Tom Waits. How about some CAKE?
Larry Dooley (Madison, WI)
I just got married and traded cars with my wife who has a much further commute than I do. She gets the 2001 Taurus that works quite well, I get the 1996 Lumina. The Lumina has no air conditioning, and actually always blows hot air. Always. As for why I still listen to cassettes, when my mother in law first bought the Lumina, she immediately replaced the standard CD player with the most basic stereo just to get a cassette player. So now I rock a cassette player. In a sweaty, purple Lumina.
Brian Lang (Novi, MI)
Hi ! I'm french so sorry for the mitcakes,mmmhh the mistakes but... Wait! when I'm thinking about what I did just write, the first reason why I should deserve a free cassette is that it would help me to improve my english when I go working. My english teacher always told me when I was a child that sacramento english is the cream of english! The second reason is linked to the first one : in my old frenchie car, with wich I go working (either my job and my frenchkiss technic) the music can only be listened to on a cassette player! So I really can tell : I deserve this free cassette!
Jérémie Dourthe (Bordeaux, France)
Hi Cake! My sister Penny deserves a free autographed cassette. She introduced me to your music back in the nineties. We got to see you guys perform in Phx at the Celebrity Theater. Great show. My sister was recently diagnosed with ms and I've moved in to help with her kids. She still does most everything and won't let it drag her down. She's been a dancer all her life and at forty-something, she still looks like she's in her twenties. She refuses to stop working. She just can't dance as often as she was able to. Thanks much!
Tim Pingleton (Thorndale, PA)
My grandmother has been estranged from our family for two years. I would to be mend our family and didn't know how, until now. I know for sure that Nana has a cassette player, while we don't. If I win this cassette, it would be great to use it as an excuse to see her and extend an olive branch, and know that CAKE brought our family back together again.
thank you,
Gwen Deanne (Lyons, CO)
Hi,
My daughter, Chloé, she's 4 years old, she really enjoy music, and she's taking everywhere with her a small cassette player her grandma gave her. When she asked me to find her tapes, the only one that I could get was Guns n' Roses "Appetite for destruction". So she plays it. Again. And again. And again. Please. Do that for me. I'm getting crazy. No more "Paradise City" !
Thank you. Oh, please excuse me for my outrageous french accent. I'm from Belgium.
David & Chloe Pierrat (Grand-Leez, Belgium)
Dear CAKE,
In eighth grade, 1996, I had braces and traded a Snickers bar for a tape of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Not only did I get Nevermind, there was a mix of Nine Inch Nails, Offspring, Bush and Smashing Pumpkins. That BASF cassette became my bible for alternative rock. As a DJ in college, WKNH FM, I recorded several of my shows on cassettes. When I’m feeling nostalgic I’ll use my Walkman and give them a listen. Cassettes were pivotal for my music education.
Sincerely,
John Frazzetta (Merrimack, NH)
I still listen to cassettes because they are imbued with a kind of magical aura. My father gave me some of his old cassettes when I was a kid and I’ve been enchanted by them ever since. He used to make his own mixed tapes and he would cut out little images of the bands and tape them to the front of the cassette. The cases were thus fatherly gems of artwork. My dad and I would love CAKE cassettes; they would really complement our musical archive. It would ‘prolong the magic’ of both the cassette medium and my childhood.
Best,
Lisa Molnar
(Hamilton, Canada)
Dear Cake,
The reason I need a free cassette is because the car I drive does not have a CD player. The car I speak of is no less than a 1981 DeLorean. I have attached an image of me with the car. The DeLorean has a cassette player... and I need Cake when I roll back to 1955!
Thanks!
John Feldman (Prior Lake, MN)
My entry:
My cassette is a toaster, and can load 2 tapes at once, mix them, or play them systematically for all 4 sides. I deserve the tape because I have a mix tape with the songs "Opera Singer" and "Open Book" on repeat around 24 times. My alarm clock is wired to a cassette with a plug timer - it looks like something from a horror movie. On my bedroom floor you find over – let me count them - 173.5 tapes. The .5 is three halves of old cassettes. In high school, I got a medal - "Most Cassette Obsessed."
Sincerely,
Ted Morin
(Nepean, Canada)
I believe I deserve a Free Prolonging the Magic cassette because we are dancing to a cake song at our wedding reception in February. I have moves & everything. My husband is not a big dancer, but we both love Cake & "Love You Madly" fits our relationship very well. Also, when you choose this message as the winner you can bring it to your show in Dallas on April 30th...we will be there!
-JuneBug - April Rohrbaugh (Iowa Park, TX)
My name is Thomas Patrick Brubaker, I'm 16, and have been listening to CAKE for over half of my life. When I was in fourth grade I chose to play the trumpet, so that I could be like Vince DiFiore. I've been playing trumpet for seven years now, my friends and I often play CAKE songs together, and are going to your concert in Hartford CT on May 28. Although I own every CAKE album, we only have a record player with a cassette deck in my house, so I can't listen to CAKE when I'm at home. Help me!
Thomas Brubaker (Niantic, CT)
Dearest Cake,
I hope very much that you will consider me as a candidate to get a free Cake cassette. My husband has been putting off installing a cd player in my 1989 Volvo for over 2 years now. The radio reception is horrible in my car, so I'm stuck listening to the screaming of my 2 year old. I have a cassette player in it, but no cassettes worth listening too. If I get the Cake cassette, my dreams will be fulfilled and my ears will be healed.
Christy Harlan (Hickory, NC)
Dear Cake,
I do not deserve a free signed copy of Prolonging the Magic on cassette because, having only ever owned this album on cassette (original – not a copy) I decided that it was time to buy the CD, and I did so earlier this week. So as much as I would love to have a signed copy and as much as I love the album, I think three copies would be excessive. Hope to see you back in the UK some time soon.
Peace, Jeremy (London, England)