Introduction

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 radio and read reviews of new albums in the music press, but CDs (I'd missed the vinyl era) were expensive. Every birthday and Christmas I'd ask for certain albums, but that could only go so far, so I turned to every skint music lover's best friend back then, the humble cassette tape. I'd borrow albums from friends, and fill C60s and C90s full of the albums of the day. Friends would also tape stuff that they thought I'd like, and I'd reciprocate for them. Of course the preponderance of CD writers, larger computer hard drives, and then downloadable MP3s (and sometime later, streaming services), along with finding gainful employment and thus having more disposable income to actually buy the albums I wanted to hear, meant that my cassette dubbing dwindled to nought sometime in the early 2000s.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and I'm talking to my mum on the phone. She mentions that whilst sorting through some stuff, she's found a shoebox full of cassette tapes of mine and would I like them? The nostalgic pull is strong, so of course I say yes. Almost immediately after this conversation, the world is hit with the coronavirus pandemic, along with the associated lockdowns etc, so this is pushed to the back of my mind, however a couple of weeks ago it popped back into my head, so I asked if she'd mind posting them to me, and she duly obliged. 

What we have therefore is a shoebox containing 33 cassette tapes, mostly recorded for me by my friend David, I think in the summer of 2001. I've combined these with some tapes that I've hung on to for various reasons (some compilations made for me by my friend Kathy, and a few more recent purchases from the mini-cassette revival that we've had over the past few years) and I thought it might be fun to blog my thoughts as I re-listen to these, in some cases for the first time in 20 years. There's nothing too obscure there, but there is some stuff that doesn't get talked about a great deal nowadays, and I've ended up with 52 tapes in total. As you might imagine, I didn't actually have anything to play the tapes on, so I've purchased a USB cassette player (specifically the Reshow Cassette Player) which has the added advantage that it can be used to digitise the tracks as I listen. I've entered all the titles into random.org, so I now have a nicely randomised list to work with. As an aside, I know I definitely used to have more tapes than that (I have vague memories of having three shoeboxes full), so I might have a dig around the next time I visit my parents, see if I can unearth some more, but for now roll the first tape!