Musical adventures into words

I get romantic about tapes. I think I'd still much rather have a mix tape than a mix CD, sod the assonance of the latter. The way there's never enough room to quite fit all the track-listing on, the possibilities for decoration of the actual casette itself, the way the covers always get lost and you suddenly find unlabelled beauties with worlds of surprise and possibility. I found an old Evening Session tape recently, which was a treasure.

I was foraging through some fond old tapes not so long ago, and kept meaning to write about them. I'll do the mix tapes one in part two of this post, as it seems more logical to write about genuine albums first (plus, it's going to take ages to wade through all those hundreds of buggers dating back to 1995)...



Indie Hits

Something simple and innocent about this tape. You don't really get indie compilations anymore (a nostalgic post about Shine tapes is achingly long overdue), and the ones from recent years were always endorsed by corporations like NME or by inane wallies like Jo Whiley and were dire as a consequence. I'm talking about ones that are released with current songs on rather than retrospectives, although some of those have been dire too (the Britpop boxset tracklisting was fucked).

I found a copy of Indie Hits in a Woolworths bargain bin, which were goldmines for me in the mid nineties (also got a load of Cure albums for 99pence round then too). This is the tape that introduced me to James, The Wedding Present, Lush, The Stone Roses, Ride, The Wonder Stuff, and crucially Mega City Four. I would never have discovered Mega City Four even to this day without the aid of this tape, I'm convinced, and they are a vital band for me, thoroughly overlooked, genuine and human and humble and melodically ace - proper indie, then. The track here is Stop (They say actions speak louder than words /whoever they may be/ Probably the one's who'll break your back/ to bolster up their insecurity).



Gratis Hits: Vol 1 (given away with Select music magazine, circa 1996)

Crocoldiles by Bawl is one of the loveliest lost songs of all time. The rest of the tape is largely gash (Suede waffling on, the lamentable Black Crowes, the embarrassing Space, Babybird probably muttering about death again, stoned bollocks from Tricky, etc), but this one track makes it one of the tapes that I look after really carefully and always know where it is. Probably I could track the song down via eBay, though I'm not sure it was a single, but I the tape is just pure treasure no matter what. Rather geekily, the receipt for the purchase is inside the tape (I did that a lot when buying music related paraphernalia, not sure if I'm alone in that, but I'm glad now because it's sillily sweet to look back on) and the date is October 19th, 1996, so there ya go.



Pale Saints: The Comforts of Madness
In 2002, I was amazed to find this for 50 pence in a charity shop in Woolwich, South East London, as it isn't the most indie place in the world (I was startled to find a best of by The Primitives too). I'd only heard whispers about this band, but hearing The Sight of You was a monumental moment indeed. One of the most dramatically gorgeous indie songs, ever.