The Cassette Box

Back to the box this week and boy do we have a doozy! Yes okay, I admit it, I’m a wrestling fan. These days I don’t really watch that much (though I still enjoyed going to live shows before the virus shut all that down). But back in the nineties and into the 2000s I was a big fan. When I moved away from home for university, I had access to a public library that also loaned out CDs for the first time. I took full advantage of this by borrowing ten at a time and then taping them. I think maybe the novelty of seeing that they had these was more of a factor in me copying them than me actually ever wanting to listen to them as actual music releases. I’m not 100% sure I’ve ever listened to either all the way through, and I’m really not sure what I’ll have to say about a lot of it, but the rules are that I have to listen to everything in the box, so let’s get on with it. Artist: James A. Johnston Album: World Wrestling Federation: The Music, Volume 4 UK Record Label: Koch Records UK Re...

Okay, this is definitely a bit of an oddity in the collection! It’s another one that isn’t from the main box, however I have absolutely no recollection of when or how I acquired it. Back in the summer of 2014 I was in the process of moving house, and whilst packing things up in preparation, I found this tape (along with another, which we’ll get to in due course) hidden away on a bookshelf. I racked my brain at the time but could not of the life of me remember where it came from. I have two theories: 1.       I bought it cheap from a charity shop because it amused me 2.       Someone (possibly David?) bought it cheap in a charity stop and gifted it to me because it amused them For the uninitiated, Holland & Barrett are a chain of health food shops, and the Green Goddess (aka Diana Moran) was the exercise guru on BBC1’s Breakfast Time programme in the 1980s. I can find no mention of this tape online, but have to assume it was s...

This week we take our first trip outside of the main box of cassettes, with a compilation tape my friend Kathy made for me in (I think) the summer of 2001.   Artist: Various Album: Songs from Down Under UK Record Label: N/A UK Release Date: N/A UK Single Releases from Album: N/A   A bit of background then: Back in early 2000, I happened to be listening to James Whale’s show on the recently re-branded talkSPORT (the station had been known as Talk Radio, but switched to a more sports oriented output which included a name change in January 2000, however slightly confusingly they still had some non-sports based content, including Whale’s programme). Now whilst I certainly don’t agree with the man’s politics, he would sometimes have some interesting guests on, and so it proved on this particular night. The guests were a band called My Drug Hell, who I wasn’t previously familiar with, but who performed a song in session called ‘Girl at the Bus Stop’ that even on first listen I ...

  This is another one that David taped for me in the summer of 2001. It’s a compilation of the Beta Band’s first three EPs, released by the Scottish band over the course of 1997 and 1998. Artist: The Beta Band Album: The Three E.P.’s UK Record Label: Regal UK Release Date: 28 th September 1998 UK EP Releases collected: Champion Versions EP , The Patty Patty Sound EP and L os Amigos del Beta Bandidos EP To kick off we have the Champion Versions EP , which opens with the magnificent ‘Dry the Rain’. Featured in a memorable scene in High Fidelity , I’m pretty sure that that is where David heard the band for the first time. I hadn’t long started university, and he came to visit me for the weekend (we were going to a Fairport Convention gig at my local theatre on the Saturday evening, but he came down the afternoon before). In order to occupy us on that first evening, I rented the VHS (youngsters ask your parents) of the film from Blockbuster (youngsters ask your parents) which...

Okay, so first up we have Grandaddy. As mentioned in the introduction, my friend David copied a fairly sizeable number of albums for me in, I think, the summer of 2001, and this was one of them. I'm not actually 100% sure where I heard the band for the first time though. I know 'A.M. 180' was Mark & Lard's record of the week when it's was released as a single towards the end of 1998, so it may well have been then. That same track was also included on an NME cover mount CD called Independent and All Still Taking Liberties - Volume 1 a few weeks later. I have that CD, but I think I bought it from the second hand record shop Hag's in Lampeter, West Wales, a little while later (by which point I already knew of Grandaddy) rather than with the paper when it was released (Hag's had a bin of old cover mount CDs and cassettes that they sold for 50p or a pound, so it was a good way of picking up tracks you liked on the cheap), so it must have been Mark & Lar...

Well hello there! You may be wondering what it is you've just stumbled across, so allow me to explain. My name is Jodie, I'm 38, male and I live in the UK. From a young age I've always enjoyed listening to music, but it was during the mid-1990s when I really became something of an obsessive. Through reading the likes of the NME , Melody Maker , Select and Vox , and through listening to the Radio 1 shows of Mark & Lard, John Peel and Steve Lamacq, and the Radio Wales shows of Adam Walton, I very much nailed my colours to the Britpop/indie/alternative mast. Over time (particularly as I started to listen to Peel more regularly) my tastes did broaden, and nowadays I tend to listen to more library music, jazz and BBC Radiophonic Workshop related soundtracks than anything else, but back then it was all about those guitars. Anyway, despite developing a love of music, as I was still at school, my income was obviously limited. I'd hear tracks from favoured artists on the ra...