The Cassette Box

Another excursion outside the box this week, and it’s a definite curio in the collection. Remember when I mentioned here that whilst packing to move house in 2014, I found two cassettes that I had no recollection of acquiring? Well, as mentioned in that post, one was Programmed for Fitness with the Green Goddess, the other was today’s entry. I think I may have bought this cheaply in a charity shop intending to gift it to David as a joke, but I obviously never got around to doing that. What we have here is Memories are made of this (18 Golden Love Songs) by Val Doonican. I can’t say the Big Valbowski is particularly my cup of tea, but I did like his, erm, “cameo” in ‘The Intro & The Outro’ by the Bonzo Dog Band. Anyway, unsurprisingly I’ve never listened to this before, and I’m not sure how much I’ll find to say about most of it, but the (arbitrary) rules I’ve set myself are that I have to listen to every tape, so here we go.   Artist: Val Doonican Album: Memories are made of...

  This week we delve back into the box once again, and it’s another tape that David copied for me in the summer of 2001. What we have here is a twofer, with Daisies of the Galaxy by Eels on side 1 and Knock Knock by Smog on side 2, so without further ado let’s get to it! Artist: Eels Album: Daisies of the Galaxy UK Record Label: DreamWorks UK Release Date: 28th February 2000 UK Single Releases from Album: 'Mr. E's Beautiful Blues' and 'Flyswatter' Mark Oliver Everett (aka E) has been making music since the mid-1980s, he signed with Polydor in the early-1990s and released two solo albums A Man Called E (1992) and Broken Toy Shop (1993). Whilst touring in support of the latter he began working with drummer Jonathan “Butch” Norton, and in 1995 the two of them teamed up with bassist Tommy Walter to form Eels. Shortly thereafter they signed with the fledgling DreamWorks label and like most people in the UK, I’m fairly sure I first heard Eels when Radio 1 started...

Today’s tape is another excursion outside the box and is actually the second tape that Kathy sent to me. As I recall she sent this at the same time as Songs from Down Under, so the summer of 2001. It’s a bit of a mish-mash featuring an Alex Lloyd radio set, some early Whitlams tracks, a selection of tracks from Area-7’s latest album and various other tracks she thought I might enjoy.   Artist: Various Album: Alex Lloyd – Live / Area-7 + Whitlams UK Record Label: None UK Release Date: 2001 UK Single Releases from Album: None   Alex Lloyd – Melting, Desert, Black the Sun, What a Year, Lucky Star  and  Snow: Six tracks recorded for Triple J’s Live at the Wireless programme sometime in 1999. I first heard Alex Lloyd in the year 2000 when ‘Black the Sun’ was Mark & Lard’s record of the week, and liked what I heard enough to mention him to Kathy not long after we started e-mailing. She was also a fan, and so made sure to include this set when she sent me some tapes fo...

Back to the box this week, and it’s another tape recorded for me by David in the summer of 2001. I’m not sure when I heard Radiohead for the first time, it was probably ‘Creep’ on daytime Radio 1 or something. I remember liking The Bends when it came out, but it was really OK Computer that made me sit up and take notice of them. When we were in Year 11, so before the sixth form afforded us the luxury of a common room, we were allowed to use the school hall at lunchtimes, so I remember that album often being played over the PA system not long after release.   In the months immediately before Kid A ’s release anticipation in the music press steadily grew and grew. I vividly remember tuning into Steve Lamacq’s show on the evening that four tracks from the album were being premiered for the first time. I was blown away, it sounded so different to what they had done before, but in a good way. I’ve seen influences cited including electronica artists on the Warp label such as Autechre a...

We stray outside of the main box again this week, with a cover mount cassette courtesy of Vox magazine that I’ve hung on to over the years for whatever reason. I was a big fan of Mark Radcliffe’s late-night Radio 1 show the Graveyard Shift, as to me it was pretty much the perfect radio show. Radcliffe and his sidekick, Marc ‘Lard’ Riley, were basically given free reign to do whatever they fancied. A typical playlist might feature psychedelia and garage rock from the sixties, punk from the seventies, electronica from the eighties, and Britpop and ambient music from the nineties. But it wasn’t just about the music, there were regular guests such as poets Simon Armitage (now, rather wonderfully, the poet laureate), Joolz, Ian McMillan and John Hegley, cult TV reviewer Kim Newman, cult film critic Mark Kermode, broadcasters Stuart Maconie, Andrew Collins and Katie Puckrik, authors Caitlin Moran and Will Self, BMX Bandits frontman Duglas T. Stewart, former Orange Juice drummer Steven Daly, ...

Another tape that David copied for me in the summer of 2001, today’s entry is Bentley Rhythm Ace’s 1997 eponymous debut album. Formed in Birmingham in 1995, BRA consisted of former Pop Will Eat Itself bassist, guitarist, keyboardist and programmer Richard March, and his drinking buddy Mike Stokes. Part of the late nineties big beat scene, the duo were somewhat inevitably signed to Skint records (albeit briefly), before an arrangement was reached that saw them transfer over to Parlophone.   I’m not sure where I first head Bentley Rhythm Ace, I suspect it may just have been hearing ‘Bentleys Gonna Sort You Out!’ on Radio 1, but I immediately liked their everything including the kitchen sink approach to music making.   Artist: Bentley Rhythm Ace Album: Bentley Rhythm Ace UK Record Label: Skint (original issue), Parlophone (re-issue) UK Release Date: 12 th May 1997 (original issue), 8th September 1997 (re-issue) UK Single Releases from Album: ‘Bentleys Gonna Sort You Out!’ (orig...

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...

  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...