Cassette experiment day 7 - OMD 'Crush'

Here’s a tip – If you have anything that you consider to be in the slightest bit precious please don’t store it in a cold, damp loft.

Today’s tape received an awful lot of play on assorted  cassette players in Minis, Triumph Heralds, Ford Escorts, Morris Travellers, Renault 5s etc., and then it was placed in the aforementioned loft (or to be more precise, lofts) for over twenty years – and now it doesn’t sound too good. I guess that’s one of the reasons cassettes have become so unloved and unappreciated.

Musically though, if you ignore the sonic murk that has been deposited by the intervening years, it’s still an impressive listen. For the first time on this album the OMD boys (still just in their mid-20s remember) pretty much abandoned their love of electronic experimentation and embraced POP with all of their eight arms. The album cracks away with the chirpy ‘So in love’ and the pace continues brightly, only dipping slightly at the dawn of side 2 with the murkier (and not just on this copy!) ’88 seconds in Greensboro’ and ‘The Native Daughters of the Golden West’, then picking up again with two of their finest tracks ever committed to vinyl (or, in this case, tape) ‘La Femme Accident’ and ‘Hold You’. Tucked away on side two at bands (that’s a technical term!) 3 and 4 they really do merit another listen, as does the whole album.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (to give them their Sunday name) had previously released albums that were better than this, but subsequently they were never as good again – sorry boys.

Label – Virgin Records

Year - 1985

In an attempt to conquer the accumulated years of murk on these tapes I managed to find four (!) old head cleaner tapes, including one from HMV with the prophetic slogan ‘Know HMV – Know Music’. In Durham and many other places this is about to become a reality.

Cassette experiment Day 6 - Elvis Costello and the Attractions -Almost Blue (1981)

There are some great albums that you listen to over and over again, but they have no further meaningful effect on your listening tastes beyond the forty or so minutes that you spend with them.

There are others that lead you into other worlds that you’d never before considered entering – and once entered you never really want to leave. In 1981 I believed I had fairly diverse tastes. I loved OMD, The Clash, The Human League, Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre and, crucially, I loved Elvis Costello. ‘Country’ music I didn’t love. I had heard a few songs by Kenny Rodgers and one or two by Dolly Parton, but beyond that I had absolutely no interest.

Then Elvis Costello released ‘Almost Blue’ in a (now very dog-eared) flip-topped cigarette-packet- style box and the world of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, George Jones and Gram Parsons slowly but surely opened up before me. It’s difficult to pick a favourite track here and I must be honest with you and admit that this is the first tape so far where, because of the high quality of the album and the very poor quality of my tape copy, I’m considering purchasing again on CD. I’m not sure if this reflects favourably or unfavourably on the concept of ‘the great 6 month cassette experiment’

Incidentally, the poor sound quality of cassette tapes may have initially caused me to incorrectly believe that Hank harboured some racist tendencies, as I misheard the opening lines of ‘Why don’t you love me (like you used to do)’ as follows;

Well, why don't you love me like you used to do,

How come you treat me like a one-eyed Jew?

So I’d like to finish with a very big ‘sorry’ to Hank and a very big ‘thank you’ to Elvis Costello.

 

Cassette experiment day 5 - BEF presents 'Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One' (1982)

When the history of 1980s cover versions is written, (back off! I’m doing it!) this album will have a special place therein.

I may be over-simplifying, but this is essentially Heaven 17 with guest vocalists (including their own!) covering ten classic songs originally made famous by no less than Lou Reed, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Glen Campbell and more – talk about setting the bar high.

Add to that vocalists hand-picked for their ability to carry a tune (rather than their popularity in the world of popular music in 1982) and you have one great album – side one sets the pace – side two surpasses it by some considerable amount. Three of the all-time great 80s covers appear on this second side; ‘Wichita Lineman’ and ‘Perfect Day’, both by Glenn Gregory, and the colossal ‘It’s Over’ by Billy Mackenzie.

Time hasn’t particularly been kind to the participants though. Two of them (Billy Mackenzie and Paula Yates) are sadly no longer with us. And probably the less said about Gary Gl****r (who covers ‘Suspicious Minds’ here and gets top-billing on the cover) the better.

If you’re interested there was also a Volume 2. Released some years later, it’s almost bound to feature here in a few weeks time if you play your cards right. If you don’t want to know the result, please look away now – it’s not as good as Volume 1.

Unusual credit – ‘Special thanks to John Foxx and Gareth Jones for their unsolicited help and encouragement’

Cassette experiment day 4 - The B-52's - Whammy! (1983)

I’m one of those people who think astrology is complete rubbish (a typical Cancerian), so I never bother reading my stars and give all things astrological an extremely wide berth.

With one exception.

Ever since The Floaters’ ‘Float on’ I’ve been an absolute sucker for any song where the group tell you their star signs. It’s illogical I know, but quirky too I like to think.

The B-52’s ‘Whammy’ has one of the great star sign songs – ‘Song for a future generation’ where our friends wax lyrical, Floaters style, about their star signs and their likes. Add to this the mighty veggie tribute ‘Butterbean’ (with the stunning lyric ‘pass me a plate full, I’ll be grateful’) and you have the makings of a pretty fine and unfortunately largely ignored album.

True it’s nowhere near the quality of their earlier stuff, but not very much is if we’re honest. You could probably lose the last three tracks for me – including the (on paper) appealing prospect of a cover version of Yoko Ono’s ‘Don’t worry’ which, unfortunately turns out to be just as ‘interesting’ as the original.

Incidentally, this cassette is one of Island Records’ 1+1 tapes – the complete album on side one and the complete album again on side two. You can choose to keep side two if you wish, or record over it if you prefer. Marketed using the grammatically ugly tagline ‘One side what you like. One side whatever you like’ (I chose to keep both sides intact if you’re wondering)

‘Wig-Do’s by Phyliss of Tiffany Wigs’

Cassette experiment day 3 - The Lilac Time '& Love for All' (1990)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are only two kinds of people – those who consider ‘& Love for All’ to be a criminally overlooked pop masterpiece and those who haven’t heard it.

Once a regular feature of the turntable round our way (I have a copy of this on vinyl too), I listened to this today for probably the first time in ten years. It still sounds fantastic.

If ‘Laundry’ doesn’t make you cry then you’re made of stone – and I’d like to start a one man campaign (right here, right now) for ‘Let our land be the one’ to be adopted as our new national anthem without delay.

And if you think music is too expensive now, this 23 year old tape cost £8.49 when new – it still has its ‘Our Price’ sticker proudly displayed.

In not entirely unrelated news – I should never have embarked on this quest without first locating a functioning cassette head cleaning tape!

The great 6 month cassette experiment - XTC The Big Express

I’d like to start today by pointing out two things;

1 I like XTC

2 I have an annoying habit of describing something as ‘interesting’ when what I really mean is it’s not very good.

Now that I’ve got that cleared up I feel ready to tell you that I find ‘The Big Express’ by XTC to be an extremely interesting album. It has many of the attributes that you might look for in a great album, such as sea-shanty influences, whistling, seagulls, donkeys, segued tracks etc. and somehow still misses the mark by some considerable amount. I’ve always wanted to love this album, but somehow I just can’t seem to do so.

There are some good bits too though (just not enough of them!), but if you are able to listen to ‘Train running low on soul coal’ without being driven to hurl your cassette player out of your car window, then you have stranger musical tastes than me. And, let’s face it, with a title like that it should be outstanding!

On an unrelated note, while travelling through Durham today I saw a chicken enthusiastically looking for food on a grass verge right in the centre of the city. She may well have been squashed by now.

Cassette experiment day 1 - Sparks - No.1 in Heaven

As muesli eaters are keen to remind us, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life’ – in my case ‘Today was the first day of the rest of the great 6 month cassette experiment’.

With the weight of potential history weighing heavily upon my shoulders I cleared all evidence of CDs from my car (frighteningly there were 34 of them in there!) and chose my first cassette. Now not all of my tapes are of the same musical high quality, but I thought that for day one it was important to choose a really, really good one. As if 34 was the theme of the day I chose one that just happened to be 34 years old – Sparks’ ‘No. 1 in Heaven’.

A brilliant electronic pop album (I have an unproven theory that many of the best electronic albums were made in the 70s rather than the 80s) with Giorgio Moroder’s influence ‘front and centre’. It’s a six track album too and for some reason that’s always good news.

Not all of the tracks are fantastic, it dips a bit on ‘My other voice’ for example, but for my money the whole album builds towards the ‘goosebump moment’ when, halfway through the final and almost title track ‘The Number One Song In Heaven’, the tempo shifts and Giorgio, in near ‘I feel love’ mode finally pulls out all of the stops and the album races headlong to finish, as all tapes do, with the familiar hiss of the run-out.

I always picture a disco in heaven when I hear this song, with departed DJs playing this track – although as we’ve recently found out, not all DJs go to heaven.

If you enjoyed this post (and I really hope you did) then you can read about the whole six months on your Kindle. Simply search for 'The Great Cassette Experiment - The Joy of Cassettes' by Neil Pace. Thank you. 

The great 6 month cassette experiment

Yesterday, while loftsurfing ^TM I chanced upon possibly the least-loved items in my music collection – my cassette tapes. There are hundreds of them lurking in five big cardboard boxes, (around 85% of these tapes emerged during the 1980s, 10% the 1990s with maybe 5% or so from the 1970s).

It seems difficult to imagine now, but cassettes used to be the only way to listen to music of your own (rather than the radio DJ’s) choice while in the car (unless you count the short-lived but magnificent 8 track cartridge of course!). Once I got a car with a CD player (a V registered Ford Fiesta 1.25 Zetec if you’re interested) I don’t think I bought another cassette.

I realised yesterday that this is a major part of my music collection that I never listen to and I hatched a plan to rediscover the treasures (and trash) hidden within those five cardboard boxes – using my old personal stereo, a JVC CX-6, an auxiliary cable and an unfeasibly large number of AA batteries I will exclusively listen to music on cassette tape in the car for the next 6 months. Starting tomorrow, 11^th February 2013 and ending 10^th August 2013.

I figure it’ll be a great way to rediscover some great albums, but please rest assured I won’t shy away from the not so great albums too. Along the way I’ll blog about the albums that I listen to, but you’ll have to make allowances as the albums listened to will be generally my 1980s taste. I might throw in a few mixtapes recorded during the 80s and 90s, so you’re in luck if you’re a big fan of Fiat Lux, the Farmer’s Boys or I Start Counting. Another important consideration is this – cassettes were not usually my most preferred format (my recent top 50 albums only included two albums that I only own in cassette format) so many will have been purchased on tape because they were cheaper or difficult to find on vinyl – essentially this is a collection of ‘second-bests’ and in many ways that’s what makes it even more interesting (hopefully!)

If you'd like to join me on my retro journey you'll be very welcome!