New student group trades concert tapes

The time to invest in Maxell Audio Cassette stock is now -- thanks to a new campus club. The Penn Tapers Alliance (PTA), a group of die-hard rock fans dedicated to trading audiocassettes of rock concerts, organized at the University late last month. According to PTA founder Ted Kartzman, a College senior, the club is a trading post for students who collect taped recordings of their favorite groups' live performances. It is also a forum for students with similar musical interests who want to discuss the most recent Phish or Grateful Dead concerts, he said. "I decided to join so I could meet people with common interests," College sophomore Dave Roush said. "I'm trying to build up a bigger collection -- it's my hobby, I guess." Roush said he does not trade tapes in order to save himself the price of a concert ticket. In fact, he often buys recordings of concerts he attended in order to pick up on subtle nuances in the background music. "It's a way to remember what you didn't hear when you were there, and remember what you did hear," Roush said. For Wharton sophomore Abbott Wang, collecting Phish recordings is akin to "collecting baseball cards." "I don't listen to everything I have," said Wang, who has spent about $300 this year on blank Maxell audiocassettes to make dubs of his friends' recordings. "It gets boring." Wang said he spends so much of his time and money on the hobby because of his interest in the musicians' lives. "[At a concert] there's a lot of talking in between the songs," Wang said. "It's a way to get a deeper understanding of Eddie Vedder." Kartzman said he thinks some of the approximately 700 tapes in his collection are going to be very valuable one day. "This stuff is going to be vintage," he said. "And I'm sure I'm still going to love it when I'm 40 -- I play it for my parents and they love it." Although the PTA met for the first time several weeks ago, it already has 30 student members and four members from other universities in the Philadelphia area, Kartzman said. He added that the club only advocates the recording of groups that do not prohibit private recordings of their concerts -- such as the Grateful Dead, the Dave Matthews Band and Phish. But despite PTA's integrity, Kartzman said he does not think it will be easy for the newly-founded group to get funding from the Student Activities Council. "I don't think they'll look favorably on us," he said. "We're not helping anybody, [and] we're not helping the community."