My Cassette Pet

Craig Stephen on the cassette tape mini-revival …

Defying logic, there has been something of a cassette revival over the past few years. We even have a Cassette Store Day – the format’s equivalent of Record Store Day, which has done much to revive sales in vinyl.

Its revival is one of the more curious revival movements because for decades the humble cassette effectively disappeared from store shelves. Well, in the west anyway. In some African countries, the Middle East and South Asia the tape has never gone out of fashion.

They’re cheap and don’t take up space so you can see their attraction. With new release vinyl albums now costing $NZ60 and upwards, it’s clear why a far more economical format might gain traction.

I wasn’t entirely convinced about the availability of cassettes so I had a look around. The JB Hi-Fi website has a section for cassettes for sale, and as I write there’s 15 listed. Four of those are reissues by De La Soul and there’s also 72 Seasons by Metallica and Autofiction by Suede. The retailer’s prices vary from $28 up to $49, but generally they are around the same price as the CD.

Marbecks didn’t have a separate tape section but did have a pack of blank cassettes, Southbound in Auckland had the same number as JB Hi-Fi and Real Groovy had 115 listed, which I guess was a mix of new and second hand.

There are even tape-only labels in New Zealand catering to bands that don’t have the money to invest in vinyl. This is a subject to be developed for later.

 In the big music markets, sales are on the up. The British Phonographic Industry says cassette sales have increased for 10 consecutive years – rising from less than 4000 in 2012 to more than 195,000 in 2022. That’s still small fry compared to vinyl and digital, but it’s a massive increase nevertheless. It’s the same for the United States while in Japan there are cassette-only stores and Tower Records, which is still around in the country but not anywhere else, has increased its shelf space of the format.

In the 1980s the cassette was sold at the same price as vinyl. Back then blank tapes abounded and the mixtape was an artform. This was a way of making tapes for your mates, or for yourself from a selection of albums.

You could select whatever songs you wanted, and in a preferred order too. Sod a ballad, I want just fast tracks, or I could rearrange an album whereby the weaker songs are at the start. Furthermore, I could tag on B-sides and unreleased tracks.

Meanwhile, live gigs were easily recorded and issued on cassette, providing a source - the legendary bootleg - for fans that otherwise wasn’t available in the pre-internet age.

While much of the technology we have used in the past has become obsolete (eight-track cartridge, mini-disks etc), cassettes, like vinyl, still have niche value for the music fan.

This mini revival comes as this writer is culling a box of cassettes. I have the ability to play them, I just don’t, so something has to give. I gave three to an op shop: the Stranglers’ No More Heroes because I now have the vinyl version, but the Wedding Present cassingle was a no-brainer: I just don’t like the band anymore.

Here a small selection from my all-time homemade favourite tapes:

The Associates double: Sulk, the American edition, which is slightly different from the UK release, is on one side, and Perhaps, released a couple of years later, is on the opposite. This was one of the first tapes I had and was made by a friend who introduced me to the band and other Scottish delights such as the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Cocteau Twins.

Midnight Oil 1982 to 2003: I’ve got very little Midnight Oil music as they were an oft-erratic band so it made perfect sense to go through half a dozen albums and fill up two sides of their best songs.

 Mix and match Vol 67: Hot Hot Heat – three tracks; Electric Six – three tracks; Maximo Park – nine tracks; and a bunch of tracks by the likes of Wolfmen, Razorlight, The Rapture, Stephen Duffy, and Manic St Preachers. This is quite a varied selection. The Maximo Park tracks are a selection of the B-sides compilation and 2007’s Our Earthly Pleasures.

Reggae Classics Vol 48: Reggae is so wonderful and there’s so many compilations around. I used to get loads of them out of the Napier City library and stick them on tape. This one features Gregory Isaacs, Mikey Dread, Poet and the Roots, Junior Murvin and many others.

Godzone’s Gifts: There are some great acts from New Zealand. This mixtape includes Goldenhorse, The Front Lawn, Collapsing Cities, The Bats, The Clean and Cut off Your Hands. Bands you might be challenged to lump together but it actually melds quite well.

David Bowie 1980-84: Nobody could truthfully say the eighties were a productive era for Bowie so this condenses the best of the early part of the decade, starting with Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, which takes up most of the tape. By 1984 and the Tonight album, he’s lost it, and the quality avoidance would continue until 1993.

And now for some that were commercially available, made in a factory.

Various – C86: The superstar of a long line of New Musical Express cassettes and a legend of compilations. A Nuggets for the 1980s.  Somebody has even written a book about the cassette which was later released on vinyl that same year (and much later on a 3-CD deluxe edition). The timing of the release was crucial. An underground indie scene had been brewing for a couple of years and came to the boil in 1986 with clubs and scores of releases. The twee or jangly scene featured bands that apparently only wore anoraks, had floppy fringes and played guitar music that sounded like the Byrds or Love.

 The first side of C86 included many of those scenesters: Primal Scream, The Pastels, The Bodines, Mighty Mighty, The Shop Assistants, the Soup Dragons and the Wedding Present. If it was only a round-up of all the greatest twee songs of the time it probably wouldn’t have the impact it did. Conversely, an album that showcased a burgeoning scene was in fact a varied, Catholic collection with the inclusion of agit rock-dance band Age of Chance, sarcastic bastards Half Man Half Biscuit, and acts such as Miaow!, Stump and The Mackenzies. It was a deft adventure into a world that had no boundaries.

The The – Soul Mining: Soul Mining is a classic of the time but at seven tracks was deemed to be too short for American tastes even though most of the tracks stretched to more than five minutes and ‘Giant’ clocked in at 9:34. So a version of ‘Perfect’ was added to some versions and the UK cassette version had another five goodies. It’s likely that at least one of these tracks was from the discarded Pornography of Despair album.

The Phoenix Foundation – Trans Fatty Acid: This tape came with initial editions of the band’s Give Up Your Dreams vinyl album released in 2015. Of the four tracks (all great btw), there’s a special cover of Can’s hit single ‘I Want More’. 

The Cure – Standing on a Beach, The Singles (And Unavailable B-sides): Now, isn’t that title a giveaway or what. With the extra space on the tape, there was always the opportunity to expand the track listing, and in this edition the 13 singles were joined by a dozen B-sides. These included the likes of ‘Another Journey By Train’ and ‘The Exploding Boy’. Some tracks were B-sides for a good reason, but some could have been included on a studio album. 

Various – The World At One: Another NME cassette only release available by sending a cheque or postal order and hoping that you received it in a week or so. The World At One was one of the most valuable of the series as it introduced readers to music from Bulgaria to Zambia to the French Antilles. Readers could hear almost certainly for the first time Jali Musa Jawara or Kass Kass. It was issued in 1987 as the term ‘world music’ was becoming a saleable asset.

Orange Juice – The Orange Juice: Over to my OJ-obsessed mate Scouse Neil for this one … “The Orange Juice cassette, which I got from a Woollies sale for the giveaway price of £1.99, had the 10-track album on one side, and a whole side of B-sides and 12-inch mixes on the other. Considering I hadn’t heard some of these versions before, this was like gold dust to an OJ fan. Apparently, the tape version sold more than the vinyl, which is not saying much since it was the only one of their albums not to make the Top 100.” Scouse Neil did perk up a bit at learning that the album reached No.28 in the New Zealand charts in 1984.

Bow Wow Wow – Your Cassette Pet: Released in November 1980 only on cassette, and therefore it was classified as a single for the UK charts. They were musically inept but something of pioneers as a single released a few months earlier ‘C-30,C-60,C-90’ (a nod to the different lengths of tapes) was apparently the world’s first cassette single.

For the record, the first compact cassette, in the format that became million sellers, was first introduced in 1963. The first Walkman appeared in 1979.

Guest Post ... Party Fears Ten: How Scottish post-punk saved the world (sort of)

Following our hugely popular (no need for the BS – Ed) list of Aussie bands that weren’t shit, the bard of Montrose, Craig Stephen - the contributor formerly known as Porky - removes his porcine disguise to uncover 10 of the finest Scottish post-punk bands …

But, what, no Altered Images? Gasp.

The Scars

This Edinburgh band was formed in early 1977 by brothers Paul and John Mackie. A window ad in a record store roped in idiosyncratic vocalist Robert King and drummer Calumn Mackay and away they went. Long after their first gig at Balerno Scout Hall, the four-piece signed for fabled local label, Fast Product, which was notable for issuing early releases by The Human League, Gang of Four, The Mekons and Joy Division. Their debut album, Author! Author!, arrived in 1981 and earned five stars in Sounds and a rave review from the NME’s Paul Morley. I can’t disagree with either of those writers: it wasn’t always an easy listen but it was a magnificent piece of work; a kind of post-punk goth menagerie. Ahead of their time some say, and despite leaving a back catalogue of excellent singles and the album, The Scars were gone by 1982. 

Josef K

They lasted two years (if that), released one album during their existence, and scrapped another - a decision that is almost universally regarded as one of the biggest mistakes in pop history - but Josef K are one of the most feted and cultist bands to emerge from the post-punk era. Franz Ferdinand, for instance, love ‘em. Josef K were formed in 1979 and after one single on the obscure Absolute label signed to Alan Horne’s Postcard Records. Two singles were released on the legendary label and in late 1980 they were preparing to issue their debut album, Sorry For Laughing, when it was suddenly shelved, apparently because it was “too polished”. It wasn’t till July 1981 that a Josef K album came out. The Only Fun in Town featured reworked versions of five of the songs on the Sorry for Laughing album. A month later they broke up. You can get both albums on a combined release and make up your own mind which should have been issued first.

The dizzyingly esoteric Associates

The Associates

Anyone who had had the pleasure of visiting this writer’s previous enterprise, Porky Prime Cuts, will be familiar with my love of The Associates, who were responsible for the most lavish and extraordinary album of the entire 1980s, Sulk. It was a hugely ambitious effort, in terms of sound, attitude, and lyrics, with Billy MacKenzie’s spellbinding octave-scaling voice to the fore. It even spawned some hits – Party Fears Two, Club Country, and Love Hangover, leading to some fantastically over-the-top TV appearances. Other contemporary former indie-experimental bands like the Human League and Scritti Politti achieved success but they did so by embracing a commercial sound and swanky clothing/dashing hair-dos. In contrast, The Associates told the world through their third studio album: this is us, take it or leave it. Sulk was both opulent and strange. MacKenzie's lyrics were dizzyingly esoteric, with Skipping’s infamous couplet "ripping ropes from the Belgian wharfs / breathless beauxillious griffin once removed seemed dwarfed", baffling everyone. Their year of magnificent triumph was also their last as MacKenzie and Alan Rankine parted ways before Christmas. MacKenzie revived The Associates two years later, but other than the operatic pop opus of Waiting For the Love Boat it was never quite the same.

Simple Minds

Clearly we’re not talking of the Don’t You Forget About Me-era Minds, or frankly any version of the band after 1983. In the cavalcade of mediocrity that Jim Kerr et al have subjected the world to over the past three decades, it’s easy to forget how sublime the Glaswegians were in a frighteningly glorious spell from 1979 to 1983, with seven albums running the gamut from euro electronic to proto-stadium rock. Empires and Dance (1980) is long forgotten but is memorable for the futuristic single I, Travel. A couple of albums released on the same day in 1981, and effectively siblings, developed the prog rock meets new romantic sound. The zenith was New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), released in the second of those years. Margaret Thatcher was in power and there was war, mass unemployment, and inner city decay, but there was a feeling that music shouldn’t be dragged down by it all. Kerr’s vocals are masterly, bridging the great divide between the new romantic era and crooners. Three singles from New Gold Dream became unlikely hits, including Promised You A Miracle, but it was the lumbering, neo-experimental tracks like King Is White and In the Crowd and the title track that shone brightest. By 1983, the Minds were moving in new directions and while that would end in U2-esque stadia glitz, there was life in the old dog yet, and Sparkle in the Rain straddled the synth pop Minds with a beefier sound.

The Cocteau Twins

They weren’t twins nor they were from one of the main centres. They hailed from the unlikely oil refinery town of Grangemouth. Initially, they were dismissed as dour, sun-hating goths, which wasn’t entirely dispelled by their opening records. They cast out a spiky, dissociative sound with Liz Fraser’s ethereal, high-pitched vocals and nonsensical lyrics. A committed fanbase propelled them into the UK top 30 in 1984 with Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops, and there was plenty of critical acclaim (one tale is that Prince ordered their entire back catalogue), but they remained very much an acquired taste until 1990’s Heaven Or Las Vegas opened them up to a new audience. There is now a massive reissue project taking place so there’s no excuse for not seeking them out.

An early Orange Juice line-up

Orange Juice

A Glasgow mob that had a monster hit in 1983 in the shape of Rip It Up, which broke free from the synth coterie of New Romanticism to smash into the UK’s top 10. Orange Juice were founded in the ever-so-pleasant suburb of Bearsden, originally as Nu-Sonics by Edwyn Collins, Alan Duncan, James Kirk and Steven Daly, with a name that immediately eschewed the macho posturing and pseudo rebellion of punk. They released a handful of promising singles, including Blue Boy and Simply Thrilled Honey, during 1980 and 1981 on Postcard. Polydor Records snapped them up and released the You Can't Hide Your Love Forever album in 1982, but Kirk and Daly left that same year. There would be a few more line-up changes before they split in 1984. Edwyn Collins went solo and would record a Northern Soul tinged epic A Girl Like You that was so huge it could only be avoided in the UK during the summer of 1995 by hiding in a cupboard.

The Skids

The finest thing to come out of Dunfermline since steel tycoon and public libraries proponent Andrew Carnegie. The Skids were formed around the nucleus of Richard Jobson and Stuart Adamson, who would go to form Big Country, a band that, for very good reasons, were never going to get onto this list even if it was expanded to 97. They had several top 20 hits - Into The Valley and Working For The Yankee Dollar, as well as Masquerade, and there was the excellent album, The Absolute Game, released in 1980. And there was The Saints Are Coming, which was so good it had to have the tag team of U2 AND Green Day to cover it. They had songs about the conflict in Ireland and signing up to the British army because Fife’s traditional industries had been decimated. And there was also a song about Coronation Street’s uber curmudgeon Albert Tatlock.

That Desperadoes compilation you've probably never heard of ..

Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes

A little twee, perhaps, but no list should ever be fundamentally entrenched in their ideals, and therefore this Edinburgh act, formed in the mid-80s sneak their way in on account of their slightly subversive singles and for being, well, damn fucking good.  Their sound was typical of the mid-80s, with scratchy guitars, melody, and a male-female vocal dynamic. A string of singles and EPs, such as Splashing Along and The Adam Faith Experience, saw the light of day, but no studio album emerged – although there was certainly enough material for one. That would be rectified in 1989 through the compilation, A Cabinet of Curiosities, which reunited their early singles and EPs to splendid effect. It was not all love and lust and breaking up: a later single, Grand Hotel referenced the IRA’s bombing of the Brighton building that nearly killed Mrs Thatcher. And there was no Jesse Garon in the band: the name was appropriated from Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley. Ain’t that just sick? But brilliant.

The Fire Engines

Ingrained in that same Caledonian post-punk movement of Postcard Records, The Skids, and a smattering of short-lived but no less brilliant acts, the Fire Engines, irrespective of their seemingly squeaky clean name, were more abrasive and discordant than their peers. The Engines (named, in fact, after a 13th Floor Elevators’ track), packaged their debut album, the manic Lubricate Your Living Room (Background Music for Action People!) in a plastic carrier bag. A subsequent non-album single, Candyskin, was an about-face that accentuated Davy Henderson's nasal vocals and introduced a string section. They had ideas aplenty, but despite another illuminating 7-inch, Big Gold Dream, disbanded in late 1981. Henderson and Russell Burn would seek chart success and world domination (neither succeeded) in Win which this blog has explored in the very recent past.

Cartoon punks, The Rezillos

 

The Rezillos

Their cartoon punk sound earned them a tour with The Ramones and a deal with Sire, but after only two years and one album, they were gone-burger. That was some album and they even featured on Top of the Pops, with the cheekily named single Top of the Pops. Guitarist and songwriter Jo Callis helped the Human League achieve mega-success, while co-singers Eugene Reynolds and Fay Fife formed the Revillos, a sort of continuation of the Rezillos, but with a bigger 60s pop sound. The Rezillos have recently reformed and unlike many of their contemporaries, aren’t being laughed at. The Rezillos are alluded to twice in The Bridge by the well-known Scots author Iain Banks. So there you go.

The Jesus and Mary Chain

Who’d have thought a new town could spawn such a magnificent monster. The Jesus and Mary Chain were formed in East Kilbride, a Glasgow overspill. Their coruscating debut single, Upside Down, scared children and grannies alike. They played notorious gigs at which pissing off the audience wasn’t an issue, and unleashed Psychocandy, one of the most anti-pop but brilliant albums of the 80s. Brothers Jim and William Reid and two mates made a record that was one part bubblegum pop and three parts lacerating guitar feedback. It sounded like Abba covering The Birthday Party while locked in a mineshaft. They never did quite match those feats thereafter, but a sensible move towards the mainstream resulted in a good few pop albums, like the follow-up, Darklands. They’re still going and are still very potent.

And with that final inclusion, Craig offers up not 10, but a distinctly OCD-defying 11 great Scottish post-punk bands. Let’s be honest, he’s done well to stop there. Thanks Craig.