ONCE I KNEW by THE RECYCLED STRING BAND. Story by Luke Davies.

Wangaratta, summer, 2013

I was having a chat with  Vin. It’s become a regular thing. Friday arvo on the phone. It’s a good catch up but also part therapy.  All these years after my stroke in 2018, speaking for me is hard work.

I didn’t use the phone for a few years, so our calls are good practice for me now.

Last Friday’s call covered lots of different subjects – cricket, poetry, music, the weather, mowing the lawn – but we mainly we got talking about book covers, CD covers and the like and how critical it is to have something interesting to catch the punter’s eye if you’re trying to sell your product. I got speaking about how I once sold music in USB sticks.

I remember walking into an op shop in Wangaratta, more than decade ago, and buying a box load of cassettes. Lots of different artist and music types, from Kamahl to Canned Heat to Val Doonican. They were so cheap, I couldn’t resist. They were in good nick, the cases had little or no scratches.

Then a few days later I went into Officeworks to get something, but noticed a display, a clearance bin of USB sticks.  Each USB had a picture of that boy band One Direction on them, seemingly not selling big in Wang. I bought the lot. I can’t recall the price, but it would have been cheap, I was a busted-arse musician after all.

How to marry these two bargain buys together?

I had a fellow musician friend in Melbourne; her casual day gig was working at a place that made old- fashion ink pad stamps. She made a stamp with my band’s name and our album name, so I could then reverse the cassette covers and stamp them. I also made up stickers to cover up that One Direction picture on the USBs and something for the back label.

Used some Blu-tack to hold the USBs into the old cassette cases. The USB contained all the album tracks in different formats, a couple of bonus tracks, some pics of the band and instruments, other general PR stuff. We had something new and different to sell.

There was also the surprise element of what cassette cover you got on the inside: Canned Heat, Kamahl, etc.  Was it something cool or not? It was all part of the fun.

We sold them at folk festival gigs, people often wanted them more than the CD!

So part luck, part marketing guru, always Recycled and Reused.

(As for the cassettes themselves? I played a few – Canned Heat, for example – but most ended up in a shoe box that has been lost in the mists of time.)

Stereo Story 863

This story was first published at our partner site Almanac Music on 21 October 2025.