Early on new year's day, I played some old tapes, and found myself feeling a pang of poignancy, hearing 1963 by New Order. It is one of the songs that bridged the way from commercial dance music to more guitar based stuff for me, as a young teen. Essentially, going from, say, MC Sar and the Real McCoy to The Smiths!

I got transported back to January 1995, and my absorption in the single as its video played on The ITV Chart Show. I don't remember the video being quite so quirky (it stars Jane Horrocks larking about), but I do know that the tune was one that had me heading to the music shop straight after the TV show, to buy the single. And I still have it, on tape. The cover is ace:

I seldom write blogs harking back with nostalgia, but I think this year will inescapably remind me of the magical year I started to discover a good deal of the bands that would mean so much to me. I find myself reflecting on how odd it was in 1995 for me as a provincial (and female) 14 year old to be listening to stuff like Billy Bragg, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, Mega City Four, Joy Division, Members, 80s synth pop, obscure early 90s indie outfits... I would unearth all this music through borrowing from the local library, raiding my aunty's compilations, reading music books and magazines, listening to 'retro' radio, secondhand record shops, market stalls with bootlegs... 

It was weird to be young and yet be heading backwards in time, then, and in an unprompted way: rare. Whereas now, it's taken for granted, with all that's available online, everything's reassessed and everything up for grabs. Back then, at my school, there were either dance fans (Helter Skelter, Nicky Blackmarket, Dreamscape, rave), or metaller kids (Iron Maiden, or Nirvana), and in between, just your current chart pop fans. I was totally alone in my corduroy flares, velvet suit jacket and Nick Drake tape from the charity shop. But this was what was to come... the borrowing from the past, the music revivals, the reissues, the album special gigs. I didn't know it then but what The Stone Roses' second coming, and then Pulp, Blur and Oasis and the like did for indie guitar music, in making it mainstream and entwined in popular culture and fashion was the beginning of all that, and nowadays, looking back to previous decades is more the norm. In general with all music, not much is left unearthed, left to the alternative or to the dusts of time...

I remember how ethereal Killing Moon by Echo and The Bunnymen seemed to me at that age, when I saw the video on TV:

It's just nice to think back fondly to how otherworldly it all seemed to me, and how secret it all felt, how I was almost enjoyably alienated in this sepia musical world that I could only find scant traces of, that I really had to dig around to discover, because there was no easy click of a computer button and instant access to history and details. I spent a long time listening to The Cure, for example, without any idea of what the band looked like. The only way I could obtain a poster of Robert Smith was later when I got my dad to photocopy an album sleeve, as borrowed from the library. Of course, the following year, they made a return to the fore, and I could live in the present moment, even see the band live, and meet Robert Smith himself...

I was muddling through and finding my own way independently, without any guidance or notions. I went out on a limb, and I actually had more in common musically with my 40 year old music teacher, who used to daub Fall lyrics on the whiteboard of a morning, and hum Smiths songs. It was more likely that any taping of albums I wanted was done via my dad's mate at work (in his 40s), than via anyone of my own age (Blackmarket Clash comes to mind).

So perhaps kids are luckier now, in a sense, as archive stuff is much more easily accessible and distributed... and widely welcomed.... But I still cannot help but feel a kind of warm romance to think back to my clandestine discoveries, my grappling with the unknown, and my mixed up music fandom, and all my delight within, all the same.

Loom, by Fear of Men (on tape)

This burning, bright red cassette is my latest treasure. I feel glad to still own the means to play tapes. With this Fear of Men album I'm reminded of certain 4AD bands but without the faux nostalgia/dreaming of older times... This is music that feels very new and of itself despite any subtle signs of influences.

I saw Fear Of Men playing as support when Dignan Porch released their album a couple of years ago. I remember Fear Of Men creating a heavy, fuzzy sound, so Loom surprises me with its softness and gently ethereal sounds, especially the vocals. Some of these songs have more of a singer/songwriter feel to them, stripped back, simple and not sounding so much like a full band. There is an incredible atmosphere to the songs, as well, though. This is really dreamy, hazy, swirling stuff, but not so much about layers as there's a sense of quiet that lets the songs breathe. Somehow, with Loom, I'm suddenly transported to a quiet, secret woodland haven.

I love Jess Weiss's voice, in particular. It seems to me it is not coming from someone who is overly conscious of the act of singing or being a singer/aspiring star, and nor is it striving as such, but remains very natural and clear, in a subtle but strong way. I really look forward to more gigs by Fear of Men, now, and getting caught up in their dreamy world.

Albums from summers past

Breezy but hot summer has reminded me so much of youthful afternoons listening to Vauxhall and I. And how I seldom dig it out nowadays. I actually still only own it on the same cassette tape that I taped it from the library with, back then! Had to have a bit of  a dig around to locate it. On the flip-side are a bunch of classic/repeat Peel sessions, mix of stuff like New Order, Sleeper, Gene, The Cure, The Housemartins, oh and John Peel saying he'd need thousands of pounds to hear any more session tracks by The Farm...

The slew of six songs on the first half of this Morrissey album are absolutely, unadulterated perfection, for me. Now My Heart is Full, Hold onto Your Friends, and Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself, in especial. The opening line of the latter kept getting in my head with the weather, and made me need to hear it again. The rest of the album is good to excellent, but it's the first half that makes this album for me. Ah, so much yearning. The songs really take me back to a point in time, and, yep, I was often found indoors, supine, and writing letters to odd people in Luxembourg, and the like...

Another breezy sounding album from this sort of time, again borrowed from the library and stealthily recorded onto tape, and still needs to be replaced on CD, is this one:



Singing my heart out, dreamily, such a romantic, prettily melodic collection of songs...quiet, sometimes lovelorn, but assured vocals...emotive, poetic lyrics....really very literate and eye-opening to me as a teenager, I even made a homemade lyric booklet to fit inside the tape case - days before the internet! I copied them by hand often - though this time I must've used not even a computer as we hadn't one, but an electronic typewriter...The inter-vocal play with female and male is so nicely complementing...Dive for Your Memory so evocative of being on a cliff....reminds me of picnics by water, and cycling in the sun, writing letters to endless pen pals on my bed of an afternoon with the tape on...the harmonica part of Quiet Heart drifting out of the window, plaintively...

Streets of Your Town is the highlight of the Go-Betweens' 16 Lovers Lane, for me, really feel the cool breeze when I hear this song...

Still such a painfully underappreciated band, so many perfect songs, and I'm glad I could appreciate them at such a young age. This album is seamless for me, not a band song on it, one of my favourites.

 

More summer album posts coming...

1998 mix tape

Found this old mix tape that a pen pal made me in 1998.

In true indie-pop teenager style, the holes of a kids' audio story tape were sellotaped over to enable recording, and the tracklisting is stamped with pink Barbie images and red hearts. Lost touch with this pen pal way back, but I sometimes get to wondering if the people from those pen pal days still listen to indie, and if music is still quite as important to them as it was then. I'm still in touch with the odd few, but those that are just out there somewhere, that I haven't had contact with in years, I wouldn't know and get curious when I find old pieces from the past.

I'd forgotten all about that Snug song. And I couldn't place the song that turned out to be by Ballroom, but oddly could sing along a bit after all these years. I think I owe it to this pen pal for encouraging my love of Uresei Yatsura. Another sadly missed/overlooked little 90s band. I had never heard Millie before this, and I still remember my reaction to how much she stood out like a sore thumb on the tape! Grew to love that song, though. It's a wonderful, playful mix up of stuff on this tape - Abba, Nirvana, reggae singer Millie, Radiohead, Angelica, Sebadoh... summed up her tastes well. This was before the internet, and this pen pal was a bit younger than me, so for a 16 year old, a pretty amazing compilation/tastes. I love the mix between CD sound and the scuffle of vinyl stopping and starting too. Internet/digital, you just can't provide that! The tape still plays perfectly well - 15 years on.

Here is a ropy photo of the tracklasting - handwritten in biro:

 

And here's the exact tracklisting, for reference:

 

Side A:

 

1. Snug: think i'm square

2. Belle and Sebastian: dog on wheels

3. Pavement: passat dream (actually, the song on the tape is 'Starlings in the Slipstream', if you're curious for precision!)

4. Yuresei Yatsura: no no girl

5. Ballroom: her sweet saliva

6. Blue: villa rosie

7. The Bluetones: heard that you were dead

8. Millie: my boy lollipop

9. Ultrasound: kurt russell

10. Nirvana: about a girl

11. The Pastels: don't worry baby

12. Sebadoh: temptation tide (cuts off)

 

Side B:

 

1. Radiohead: prove yourself

2. Abba: dance (while the music still goes on)

3. Delgados: M-emulator

4. Uresei Yatsura: black holes

5. Elastica: stutter

6. Bluetones: sleazy bed track

7. Blur: peter panic

8. Belle and Sebastian: Dylan in the movies

9. Bis: dance to the disco beat

10. Radiohead: lucky

11. Angelica: teenage girl crush

12. Uresei Yatsura: strategic hamlets

 

Would anyone else save their boxes of old mix tapes in a house fire? Mine are all in different places and in quite a jumble, but no less the precious.

Further thoughts on music buying/HMV

Here's a genuine overheard person on a mobile phone - the location was a little secondhand book shop:

'I'm in a book shop'
[pause]
'I'm old school - I still buy CDs!'

My heart sank. And I just felt the really strong urge that I am not of these times. It was someone not that much younger than me. Something like that makes me feel so sad - it's so odd and alien to me that buying any kind of physical music product can be seen as, what, kitsch? A stylistic choice? Or just plain old fashioned.

I enjoyed Stuart Braithwaite's addition to the great HMV debate, recently.

He has a good point about extremely low pricing making CDs seem disposable when once they were £15. I remember paying £15.99 for CD albums that weren't even new release, and I remember cassette albums in their last days in the album charts being £15.99 too, which is pretty shocking to look back on. The in between always seems fair to me - and a lot of independent record shops have got that right, eg new releases at anywhere between £8.99 and £12.99.

And the below is too true to:

'As a trusted brand, HMV could quite easily have used its position to establish digital music sales far earlier and far better than it did. Filling its shop floors with iPods was surely an act of cutting one’s own throat, and I had a discussion with someone working in Waterstones recently who felt the same way about its stores selling ­Kindles.'

It will be interesting to see what changes get made to the stock/store policies should a buyer take over HMV.

It's incredibly hard for me to comment or get my head around any potential for there to be a next generation who expect all their music free and therefore for music buying to end totally, as I don't know anyone that feels that way, and the most hardcore music fans I know all adore and use record shops in towns and cities - they also tend to see the urgent need to support bands direct, buying albums and t-shirts at gigs so the band get the money direct, and so on. The thought occurs that new music is so much more ubiquitous now than when I was a teenager, there is almost no escape, and TV shows and advertising in particular have gone indie soundtrack in a way that baffles me that would not baffle those growing up now - a song by Clinic in a Weetabix advert is still beyond comprehension to me! Music seems to mean much less in many ways, too - it is fashion, it is commodity more than ever.

I was recently excited to visit a new shop in the provincial town I grew up in, which specialised in band t-shirts (I'd harboured dreams about opening up a record shop there, selling albums and merchandise, as I didn't think just albums would be a success, in such a shopping-centre-driven place). Then I realised the horror that it was all in the name of fashion - it was all stuff that is worn more as a logo of cool/identity than fervent music fandom - a Ramones t-shirt now can sit alongside a Jack Wills one, it is just a style choice. I'm not the first music fan to find themselves seeing band t-shirts in trendy high street stores, and to see people wearing them in the street, and find myself wondering if they even own albums by this band. I once had a flatmate who worked for a major record company but whom owned about 20 CDs, and I once saw on her packing list for a festival trip - 'Rolling Stones tee'. There wasn't a Rolling Stones record in the house, and no other reference to them to be seen/heard from her either. And there is huge peril there that that's a big part of how music has come to seem disposable to people...

On a brighter note, the staff at HMV Curzon Cinema seemed positive about the cinema remaining functional, due to the part ownership by Curzon - which is such a relief. Had some drinks there and celebrated. Also, bought a few items in the actual HMV store.

I leave the mini free versions of this 'zine in there regularly, but I do wonder who is picking it up, and I do wonder if there are that many 'old school'(!) music fans out there that are bothered about/interested in such a thing as a printed music fanzine anymore. Unless it becomes fashionable via an article in the mainstream press and is generally seen as some hip current phenomenon, it does seem to be a niche/dying art for a perhaps soon-to-be-lost generation - and it makes me very reluctantly... twee.

Mix tape heaven - literally!

I've just been poring over stacks and stacks of somebody's old compilation tapes! They were in the bargain box outside a shop. Yellowing pen ink, italic handwriting, themes, puns, and me unable to contain myself from proclaiming: Mega City Four! See See Rider! Ride! The Cure! Julian Cope! Birdland! Also umming curiously - Young Gods, Tim Pope, Fuzztones, Therapy?, Pet Shop Boys. Never Enough by The Cure seems a favourite. I love the perfect tryptich of - Now They'll Sleep by Belly / Leave them All Behind by Ride / Treason by Teardrop Explodes! I am an absolute romantic about this sort of thing. So ecstatic to unearth and have access to such stuff - it's personal. Somehow I knew it was a male who had made the tapes, and I proved right. I can't wait to listen to all this and write more on this topic! I am also curious about the Pixies mix versus what Pixies mix someone made me about eleven years ago. I love music fandom!