The Music Centers of Quetta

The Music Centers of Quetta

Before there was MP3, there was TDK. Before there were Spotify and iTunes, there were Sangeet Palace and Odeon Music Center, Quetta.

Next to books, music occupies a huge space in my life. It also gets a significant chunk of my free time. And as in reading, so in music: I am an omnivore. I read across the genres and listen to many kinds of music. In this post, I am going to reminisce about some of the more popular and well-known music centers of Quetta, places that unfortunately no longer exist in reality but are very much present and alive in the minds and hearts of the music aficionados of the city’s old cassette tape sub-culture of the 1970s and 1980s.

I give the pride of place to Odeon Music Center. Others may disagree but as far as I can recall, this store had the largest Indian (and maybe Pakistani) music collection. Situated in the rather obscure and poorly lit Lalazar Market in the middle of Liaquat Bazaar, it used to be a double-sized corner joint with dark glass panels always adorned with huge, colorful posters that depicted famous Bollywood movies and actors: Sholay, Deewar, Dostana and Yarana with Amitabh Bachan; Anand, Amar Prem and Kati Patang with Rajesh Khanna; and, Aandhi and Mausam with Sanjev Kumar, and so on. And yes, the posters of the ubiquitous, lovely Zeenat Aman, the “sex symbol” reefer queen of the era dressed in hippy rags with her dazzling, alluring smile. Her posters were always among the big selling items of popular culture and her images could be seen everywhere, painted on the backs of auto-rickshaws and trucks and gracing the walls of college and university dorms. Even now, a predatory capitalist behemoth like Apple (the iPhone and iPad maker) cannot resist using her images for the promotion of their products. Odeon music center was equally impressive from inside, with wall-to-wall racks brimming with LPs, tapes and other music paraphernalia. It specialized in high quality stereo and echo recording and did not sell cheap pre-recorded tapes then. It had some of the finest recording equipment, big brand names like Teac, Kenwood, Onkyo, Sansui cassette decks, amplifiers and equalizers and Kenwood, JVC and Technics speakers. My father and my uncle Nasim always got their tapes from this store. All my father’s TDK and Sony Lata tapes carried the shiny silver and gold stickers reading “Odeon Music Center” on them. Recording of one’s favorite selections on a tape of one’s choice would take at least a week and sometimes even more.

Dum Maro Dum!
Zeenat Aman: The Poster Queen of the 1970s

Tip Top Music Center was in Fateh Khan Market on Jinnah Road. Although not as impressive as Odeon when it came to history, reputation and authority, it had its own charm and place in the music culture of the city. First of all, it was situated in a rather strange place, in a market that nobody then identified with tapes, music and colorful movie posters. Unlike the old and established arcade style markets in Liaquat Bazaar, the old Anderson, or maybe “Under the Sun” Bazaar---the “three big” being Liaquat Market, Hashmi Market and Sunehri Market---Fateh Khan was a relatively newer place with shiny shops selling cheaply produced shiny goods---fake copies of big brands---imported (smuggled) from the then newly emerging economies in South East Asia, places like Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore etc. This music center also had a different décor and atmosphere: no dark glass panels and especially no scent of vinyl mixed with the unmistakable mustiness that was a heady cocktail of tobacco, tea leaves, old carpets and aged timber. Or, in this place music not only looked differently, but it also smelled differently. But it was music nevertheless, good music. Like Odeon, Tip Top was also famous for its good quality recordings and it too boasted a huge collection of Indian/Bollywood music. But unlike Odeon, it sold pre-recorded tapes as well. My uncle Nisar was a regular customer, and so was yours truly.

Most of the pre-recorded tapes that I used to buy, and still have with me, were bought at Sangeet Palace on Abdus Sattar Road, Quetta. The owners of this old music store were three brothers, one of whom, Javed, was my class fellow for a while at Balochistan University. These pre-recorded tapes were the cheaper items. They were mostly manufactured in Karachi, Saddar Karachi to be precise, and sold all over the country, including at the music centers of Quetta, of which Sangeet Palace was the largest and the most famous. For a long time they were fixed at Rs. 25 per cassette. The tapes were mostly “Asahi” brand, and they were most probably Hong Kong or Thailand copies of the original Japanese Asahi. In the beginning, their recording quality was poor but over time they got better and better. Carrying miniature-poster pictures of Bollywood stars on the tape jackets and wrapped in cellophane, they weighed far less than the TDK, Sony, BASF and Scotch tapes. All cheap plastic, including the tiny screws that held the tape body together! For me, Javed was also a good source of information about music, about the ever-evolving music technology and what was new or latest in the industry then. Our Google then! Sangeet Palace did not deal in on-demand recordings. They only sold pre-recorded items but during the later years, in the early and mid 80s when VHS appeared, they expanded into the video business selling in mass quantities to smaller businesses which were mostly in the rural areas of the province. Sangeet Palace and other music stores like Bambino on Archer Road that sold the affordable pre-recorded tapes made music accessible to the masses. Not everybody could afford the high-quality Odeon Music, Disco Music and Tip Top merchandise.

Pre-recorded tapes from Sangeet Palace, Abdus Sattar Road, Quetta

Of all the recorded English tapes that I ever bought and still have, the majority are from Disco Music Center. This music house, situated in one of the smaller markets called Zulfiqar Market in Liaquat Bazaar, was the only one in the city that specialized in high quality English music recordings. It was a tiny, tiny place, so small that three people inside it would make it look and feel over-crowded. A kiosk, a cubicle, in fact. The owner was a mustached guy--a dandy who always wore strong perfumes---related to Haji Fateh Khan of Lodi Maidan, Nichari. I think he was his son-in-law. His younger brother owns and runs some kind of an adventure or sports club in Quetta, if I am not wrong.  Almost all of my Pink Floyd, Neil Young and Bob Dylan music is on Disco Music recorded TDK and Sony tapes, some on the more expensive Chrome and Metal tapes. English (middle-of-the-road-)rock and folk music---the two genres I mostly liked and often listened to in those days--- but especially the music of the 70s’ big rock bands like The Eagles, Jefferson Starship, Creedence Clearwater Revival, America, Toto, Led Zeppelin, CSNY, Cream, Journey, to name a few, required a different kind and level of recording skill on the equalizer and the amplifier. I mean a different use of settings than those required for the recording of Bollywood music. Since it was the age of vinyl, most of the famous bands and singers were originally produced on LPs from where they were transferred onto individual tapes and that required some very specialized equipment and recording studio skills. There were no programmed presets on the equalizers and amplifiers. They had to be manually manipulated and/or adjusted according to taste and demand. Tapes were recorded individually and it was a time consuming task. In Quetta of those days, Disco Music was one of the few places, if not the only place, where these tapes were made and sold. They cost a pretty penny then, more so when recorded on the high-end metal and chrome tapes for a more refined, sharper and bassy sound. My heartbeat would race, my mouth would always water, so to speak, as soon as I would step inside that rare, almost magical cubicle overflowing with the treasures of LPs and especially with the expensive equipment carrying brand names like Onkyo, Marantz and Nakamichi (amplifiers), Sansui and Technics (equalizers), Kenwood and JBL (speakers) and Teac and Denon (cassette decks). It was like stepping into a different world, a dream world.

Disco Music Tapes

Tapes from Off-Beat Music Lahore (TDK A Series)

In the early 90s a new music store opened in Shalimar Market, on Abdus Sattar Road. It was called Digital Sound. Like Disco Music, this store also specialized in English songs and music but its collection was limited. The owner, however, was very knowledgeable about Western rock and pop music especially about the bands and their legendary rock guitarists and performers: Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Santana and Mark Knopfler et al. He had spent a quarter of his life in Europe and had first-hand knowledge about some of the music icons of the day.

There was also Gulistan Music House which sat on the corner of Suranj Ganj Bazaar and Jinnah Road. A huge art-gallery of a place, it was a strange music store, perhaps even not really a music house but a front for some other, darker business. There were colorful posters of show business celebrities---from James Dean and Frank Sinatra to Raj Kapoor and Amitabh Bachan---all over the place, on the walls, on the wide and tall window panes and even on the glass showcases, but the place just did not look like, did not feel like, and especially did not smell like music. It was on the other extreme end, the barren end, of Odeon Music or Disco Music, if you know what I am mean. It was a ghost house of a place, a haunted exhibition hall, as far as music was concerned, or as far as what I thought then what a music center should have been like. There used to be a few LP jackets taped or nailed to the white walls, a few tapes in the wide showcases running the entire length and breadth of the store and no signs of the real things, the treasures of a good music house: the Kenwoods, the Sansuis and JVCs, the Onkyos and the Technics. I don’t recall ever buying anything from there.

The superior stuff: A TDK metal tape

Virgin Air, Lahore cassette tapes (TDK B Series)

Years later after I moved out of Quetta and went to Punjab for higher studies, I amassed tapes from music centers in Lahore and some even from Peshawar. Among the famous music stores in Lahore was, of course, Off-Beat Music in Fortress Stadium. I still have many of their tapes with me. Off-Beat had a nation-wide presence and anyone who listened to English music knew about it. Then there was, sort of its rival, Virgin Air Music in Liberty Market. But not really. Another small place, also in Lahore, was called Kin Electronics. I still have some Paul Simon tapes that I bought there in the early 1990s. Some of my tapes were bought at Teen Beat Music, Peshawar, which was the Off-Beat of that city.

Pre-recorded cassette tapes. Price in the 1980s: Rs. 25 each

The Tape: TDK

TDK was the king of cassette tapes. At least it was in Quetta. In fact, quality music, good music, meant TDK. Period. It was a solid, jet black product made of opaque plastic with simple designs. The most popular was the “normal bias” “D” series tapes, especially the one-hour duration D60 with the decal printed in red, and the 90-minutes duration D90 with the decal printed in green on the black plastic. The two-hour duration D120 became available late in the 80s, or maybe in the early 90s, but was not that popular. The D series was followed by the screen-printed, transparent plastic “A” and “B” series tapes, which were not bad, but didn’t quite feel like the real thing, the legendary sturdy black D tapes. The competitors of the mighty TDK were mainly Sony, Maxell, BASF and Scotch, the last two being non-Japanese products. I liked the Sony and Maxell tapes, too. Sony Chrome II was a fine thing. Maxell black had the same heavy and sturdy look and feel as the D series. They were quality products as well. I got my BASF and Scotch tapes from my late uncle, Sikander Ali, who had brought them from Germany. They were also good products but not as popular in Quetta as the Japanese brands like TDK and Sony. Only a few stores sold them. The BASF tapes with their yellow and orange stickers on black background were very attractive. To this day, they remind me of the 70s superstars like the reggae king Bob Marley and especially Al Stewart and his catchy guitar tunes and songs. I guess it is because the first time I ever heard an Al Stewart song ---“Year of the cat” and also “On the Border”, for example--- was on a BASF tape given to me by my uncle.

The Mighty TDK D Series D60 and D90 Tapes

BASF and Scotch tapes

In the year 1980, the British new wave/synth-pop band The Buggles announced the death of audio, or of “the radio star” with their hit song “Video killed the radio star”. The age of MTV had arrived with a big bang. Music became “video music” or "music video". The prevailing zeitgeist was that it, or at least popular music, was no longer an aural-only experience but also visual, or more visual than aural. Arguably, like the modern waves of fashionable theories, discoveries and inventions spreading like jungle fire in other fields of life that were fast coarsening ethical and aesthetic sensibilities, dulling intelligence and killing imagination, or simply rapidly infantilizing the thinking and feeling habits of many people then, a phenomenon known as "dumbing down"---for example, first only children but later adults too were no longer able to find text-only books interesting, they got “bored” easily and quickly and started demanding books with more visuals, with more pictures and illustrations, to which the publishing market responded positively with books, including textbooks, carrying pictures on almost every page--- the new format music videos were doing the same with until-then a purely sonoral and aural art form of music. "MTV is to music as KFC is to chicken!" as someone snapped then (Lewis Black??). 

Now, some may think that when the MTV/video revolution arrived, the cassette tape disappeared. Not really. It is true that some of the iconic music centers of Quetta closed shutters and vanished into history, but many of them diversified and started selling VHS tapes and movies as well. I have already cited the example of Sangeet Palace. In such cases, “music center” gradually but surely morphed into a business that mostly rented out pirated Bollywood and Hollywood movies, first on Sony Betamax and then exclusively on VHS tapes. However, the cassette tape was still very much there. I think what really killed the cassette tapes, the unique sound of music on them, and the equally distinct sub-culture that had formed around them over the decades, was the compact disc, or the CD. This new technology changed the game entirely. It literally did “kill” the tape and that had profound implications, not just for the singers and performers but also, and especially for the fans, the millions of music lovers. After all, as the guru himself, the great Canadian media critic and sociologist/philosopher Marshall McLuhan, has said: “The medium IS the message” or “It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.” Change the framework, the worldview, the way we see, understand and feel things, and you change the very nature of whatever is captured in that frame. The gullible souls---totally ideologized, thoroughly conditioned, completely bamboozled----of course, will keep on babbling the manufactured mythologies and falsities that come neatly packaged with every new gadget and technology nowadays, inanities like, "It depends on how one uses it". No, it doesn't: An AK47 machine gun is not a screw driver just like a B-52 bomber is not a bicycle. But this point for another post in the future.

Try buying a cassette tape from any of the “music centers” of Quetta today, if they are still around, that is. They will probably think you are a Rip Van Winkle, a mad man, a crazy woman. The current generation, now known as the iGen, has never seen a real cassette tape, let alone used one. For them, both the medium and the message have shifted radically and there is no way to make them understand what the cassette tape once was, what it actually meant to a whole lot of people in a place like Quetta.

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