The Derby Tape Recording Club
My first contact with the phenomenon of tape recording clubs was a pure accident. I bought a second hand reel-to-reel tape recorder at a car boot sale in Derby. The machine came with a carrier bag containing an assortment of different sized open reel tapes. When I started looking through the tapes and playing some of them it became apparent that they had all belonged to one man – Bill Howard, who turned out to be a member of The Derby Tape Recording Club. The tapes I found represented over 20 years of his recording activities as part of the club. Fascinated by the wealth and variety of the recorded material I had found I made appeals on local radio for former club members to get in touch so that I could discover more about this unusual hobby. The subsequent interviews and other donated tapes became part of a 6-part series produced for Resonance FM and eventually a programme on BBC Radio 4.
