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.

Album Review: David Bowie - ChangesNowBowie (2020)

In November 1996, as he prepared for his 50th birthday celebration show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, David Bowie recorded a handful of rehearsal tracks for a radio special called ChangesNowBowie. That show, and those recordings, circulated in bootleg form for many years but were, in April 2020, set for an official Record Store Day release on a newly sanctioned (or official) album with the same title as the radio show itself.

That plan, of course, hit a snag when RSD was postponed in wake of the Covid-19 global pandemic outbreak which has pretty much brought the entire planet to a standstill. That 
setback didn’t prevent ChangesNowBowie being released in digital format (only) however, with a more extensive release (including vinyl, CD) earmarked for the rescheduled RSD date of June 20.

Unlike the three previous ‘Changes’ offerings - ChangesOne (1976), ChangesTwo (1981), and the 1990 hybrid compilation, erm, Changes - ChangesNow isn’t really a “Greatest Hits” type set. But it does include a few gems. Nine quite special tracks, and something of a pick n mix assortment of mostly stripped back acoustic takes on (again, mostly) older 1970s material.

For the ChangesNow sessions Bowie was supported by revered guitarist Reeves Gabrels (Tin Machine, The Cure*), bassist and co-vocalist Gail Ann Dorsey, and keys man, Mark Plati, but rather typically, the minimalist nature of these versions means its all about the man himself, and that incredible voice.

The radio interview itself and the general chit-chat narrative of the original broadcast has been omitted from the album, naturally. If you want that, you’ll just have to dig deep for the aforementioned bootleg editions. 

Highlights include fantastic takes on standards like ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, ‘Aladdin Sane’, and the live/cover favourite ‘White Light/White Heat’, which is easily the most uptempo, or straight up rock track of the bunch. There’s also the Hunky Dory sleeper, ‘Andy Warhol’, Ziggy’s ‘Lady Stardust’, and the Lodger-era ‘Repetition’. But for me, the pick of the bunch is Tin Machine’s ‘Shopping For Girls’, which is given new life on this. 

All up, it’s a cool addition to the wider Bowie discography. I’ve got the digital version of the album, which does quite nicely for now, but completists will want this on vinyl, so don’t sleep on RSD’s June 20 release date. 

* Incidentally, Bowie’s 50th birthday bash at Madison Square Garden was pivotal in Reeves Gabrels eventually joining The Cure. It was there, in early 1997, where Gabrels met Robert Smith, who performed a track alongside Bowie at MSG, with the pair going on to forge a close friendship. Years later, in 2012, Gabrels guested with The Cure for a few festival shows before later becoming a permanent member of the band. He remains a member of The Cure at the time of writing.

The Vinyl Files Part 7 ... The Cure - Japanese Whispers (1983)

Having released four albums by the end of 1982 - or five if you count Three Imaginary Boys (UK) and Boys Don’t Cry (US) as entirely separate works, which I don’t - each one markedly gloomier than the last, The Cure had reached something of a crossroads. 

The recording, release, and touring phases of the band’s desperately bleak fourth studio album, Pornography, had highlighted all sorts of problems, not the least of which were issues around Robert Smith’s depression, infighting over the band’s artistic direction, and debilitating levels of hard drug use. An alignment of events which took The Cure to the precipice, staring into a self-destructive abyss. It’s all there, laid bare, on Pornography. Which may or may not be the reason many Cure fans cite the album as the band’s pivotal work. 

Bassist Simon Gallup (temporarily) left the band after Pornography, and across late 1982 and all of 1983, The Cure embarked on a slightly more upbeat pop-embracing path, with Robert Smith honing his song-writing skills and repositioning himself as a master of the quirky love song. With that shift in focus came a series of standalone single releases and an EP - The Walk - and it’s those tracks which formed the core of what would prove to be the first (of 11, to date) Cure compilation albums, Japanese Whispers.

But Japanese Whispers was no ordinary compilation. It wasn’t a standard “best of” or “greatest hits” to-date set, and it concerned itself only with tracks which hadn’t featured on any of that first quartet of albums. Indeed, Japanese Whispers was simply a collection of the band’s post-Pornography singles through the late 1982 to late 1983 period. So, three singles - ‘Let’s Go To Bed’, ‘The Walk’, and ‘The Love Cats’ - and the associated B-sides, making it eight tracks all up. Yet oddly enough, it tends to play out like a regular album, and to my ears it’s a far more coherent piece of work than the transitional mixed bag studio album which followed in 1984, The Top. 

I suspect Japanese Whispers served as a softcore introduction for many US-based listeners, or any new pop-loving Cure fans emerging in the wake of increased radio play. Which itself was a direct result of the band’s commitment to a rather more inclusive “pop” aesthetic. The fact that ‘The Love Cats’ had given The Cure its first Top 10 hit (in the UK, at least) perhaps tells its own story. 

I’m really not 100 percent certain how this came to be in my vinyl collection. I have an idea, but I certainly can’t recall ever purchasing it, despite owning all of the previous Cure work on either vinyl or cassette. None of which survived the great enforced collection cull of 1992/1993. I mean, I’m a fan of the band, and I’ve subsequently replaced the stuff I sold with CDs or digital files, yet still, here sits Japanese Whispers, in all of its black wax glory, my only actual Cure “record”, a shiny happy testament to a band in recovery mode, and I can’t recall quite how it got there. 

(The Vinyl Files is a short series of posts covering the best items in your blogger’s not very extensive vinyl collection)

Albums of 2018

It’s that time again. Time to revisit some of the albums that made the biggest impression on everythingsgonegreen across 2018. The obligatory year-end “best of”, or in the case of this blog, those albums that got the most ear-time on my pod throughout the year. There’ll have been better albums released in 2018 than the ones listed below, for sure, no doubt, but if they didn’t make their way into my collection then they won’t have made the cut here. These are simply the “new” albums I own copies of and listened to the most, no more, no less: 

10. Cat Power - Wanderer 

I’ve endured an on-again off-again relationship with Chan Marshall’s music over the years, so I couldn’t really call myself anything other than a fair weather fan. But I thought Wanderer was a welcome return to form for an artist who hasn’t had her problems to seek over the past decade or so. It was certainly one of the more unexpected additions to my collection, and an album that kept growing in stature with each and every listen. Wanderer felt like a very deliberate return to the basics which served Marshall so well when she first emerged a couple of decades ago: strong songwriting, subtle hooks, simple structure and arrangements ... all geared to place emphasis firmly back on that sultry, seductive vocal. It was a very consistent set, with no real stand-out tracks, apart from the Lana Del Rey collaboration on ‘Woman’, which might just be something close to a career highpoint. A mature piece of work that possibly flew under the radar of all but her most committed fans. It didn’t get a full review on the blog but the above should suffice.

9. Darren Watson - Too Many Millionaires 

I can’t pretend to be all that knowledgeable about the blues, but I know enough to appreciate the fact that Wellington’s own Darren Watson is a serious talent. Too Many Millionaires is merely the latest in a long line of releases to prove that point. My review can be found here. 

8. Dub Syndicate - Displaced Masters 

I try to grab at least one release from the On-U Sound catalogue every year. I’m a man of routine and habit, and some 30-year-old habits can be hard to shake. Plus, I know what I like, and I like what I know. This one is a late 2017 release, of sorts, but as I was quite late getting to it, I’ll include it here regardless. Great for On-U devotees, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. My review can be found here. 

7. The Breeders - All Nerve 

I wasn’t too impressed with All Nerve after my first couple of listens. In fact, I recall messaging a friend much earlier this year to say “the new Breeders is just like the old Breeders, but not in a good way” ... as though I was expecting some kind of revelatory experience. Labouring with the belief that somehow the band would show signs of progression, or somehow offer something different from the tried and trusted MO used on EVERY other Breeders album. But with false expectation being the mother of all disappointment, I then decided to just relax and enjoy the album for what it was. And it turned out to be another genuine grower. Familiarity became anything but contempt, just feelings of warmth, comfort, and a much fuller appreciation of a damned fine rock n roll album. An uncomplicated rock n roll album. A stop-start fast-slow hybrid of fuzz, surf, and power pop guitar. Everything I could realistically expect from the return of the band’s Last Splash-era peak line-up. So yes, not a lot different from the old Breeders, but still a bloody good album. Another one that didn’t get a full review on the blog.

6. Marlon Williams - Make Way For Love 

It wasn’t so much a breakthrough year for Marlon Williams because he’d already achieved that much, but he did win best solo artist and album of the year at the NZ Music Awards, plus a highly coveted Silver Scroll. My review for Make Way For Love is here. 

5. The Cure - Torn Down 

Another year drifts by without any new music from the still active and touring Robert Smith. But there was this, Torn Down, a Record Store Day special. A fresh set of Smith remixes of old material, and a belated sister release for 1990’s Mixed Up. That will have to do. Truth be told, I loved it, and my review is here. A review, incidentally, that was the blog’s most read/hit “new” post of 2018. 

4. Thievery Corporation - Treasures From The Temple 

From all accounts - not least the word from the duo itself - Treasures From The Temple is supposed to be a “companion” release to last year’s largely overlooked Thievery Corporation album, Temple of I and I. Mostly because it’s a collection of remixes and leftover work from the same recording sessions. But it’s also a whole lot more than that rather underwhelming description would suggest. It’s an immaculately produced, eclectic mix of reggae, dub, hip hop, synthpop, and electronica that defies any real definitive genre categorisation. You could argue that the music of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton (plus assorted associates) hasn’t really evolved much since the release of the duo’s 1996 downtempo classic (debut) Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi, yet the formula applied back then still works today. The best of the plethora of guest vocalists who feature include rapper Mr Lif, reggae dude Notch, and the divine Racquel Jones. One small reservation: the glossy production and sheen on a couple of roots reggae tracks somewhat detracts from the authenticity of those vibes. It may have worked better if they’d left some grit or dirt in there. No full review on the blog for this one either.

3. Moby - Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurt 

This one is a bit deep and cynical in places and I’m not really sure why I’ve grown to love it as much as I have. Is it because of those traits, or in spite of them? Whatever, if it wasn’t exactly a comeback album for Moby (who remains prolific), it certainly heralded the return of his music to my own cynical and frequently insular world. Reviewed here. 

2. The Beths - Future Me Hates Me 

2018 could hardly have gone better for The Beths; extensive touring, a well received debut album, and massive amounts of barely anticipated global exposure. My review of the superb Future Me Hates Me is here. 

1. Antipole - Perspectives 

Perspectives tapped into my often suppressed love of all things dark and dramatic. It’s an album of remixes, drawing its source material from Antipole’s late 2017 release, Northern Flux (reviewed here). I didn’t manage to give Perspectives a review on the blog because it arrived in early November and I’ve spent the past six weeks or so fully absorbing it. Fully immersing myself in it. I think my familiarity with Northern Flux - which is effectively a stripped back version - only enhanced my enjoyment of Perspectives, with the remix album adding depth and texture to a set of tunes I had already fallen in love with. There’s a fair amount of additional percussion and synth thrown into the mix on a lot of these tracks, layers of the stuff even. And more generally, there’s an extra edge to the production not always evident on the original album. Although Northern Flux comes with its own standalone charms, of course. Perspectives includes remix work from the likes of Ash Code, Delphine Coma, Kill Shelter, Warsaw Pact, and Reconverb, to name just a few. I knew nothing of Antipole at the start of 2018, but discovering the band, and then digging further into the Unknown Pleasures label - and associated acts - opened up a whole new world. And yes, I realise it’s probably a little unusual to have a remix release as my album of the year, but I make up my own rules as I go along here in the padded cell that doubles as the everythingsgonegreen office. 

Close but no funny cigar: 

Through the first half of the year Rhye’s Blood got a fair old workout, but ultimately the chilled out take on soft-core disco was perhaps a little too lightweight to stay the distance. 

Suede’s The Blue Hour was yet another solid effort from one of my favourite bands of the past 25 years. Suede rarely falter, and this album was yet another quality addition to the band’s extensive discography. 

First Aid Kit’s Ruins held some appeal, before I decided it was all a little too similar to Stay Gold, the band’s last full-length release from 2014. I remain a big fan of the Söderberg sisters and their sweet border-defying harmonies. 

Local band Armchair Insomniacs caught me by surprise with their eclectic self-titled debut, which was highly polished and crammed full of great hooks. Where the hell have they been hiding? (Reviewed here) 

Also flying a little under the radar - for all but committed club fiends - was the globetrotting, sometime Auckland-based DJ Frank Booker, who raided his own archives to digitally release two disco-drenched mini-albums, Sleazy Beats and the Untracked Collection. Both on Bandcamp, both superb. Sleazy Beats qualifies as my short album or EP of the year.

There were plenty of reissues, retrospectives, and deluxe releases to catch my eye (and ear) across 2018, my own favourite addition being a toss up between Yazoo’s box set Four Pieces (the duo’s two albums plus demos and remixes), and Bronski Beat’s Age of Consent deluxe. The Yazoo release probably edges it on account of the volume and variety it offered. 

Compilation of the year - the inspired and long overdue late 2017 collection of New Zealand disco-era classics and not-so-classics, Heed The Call, reviewed here. 

Gig of the year? I didn’t get along to as many gigs as usual this year, but with a focus on quality over quantity I can’t really say I missed anything - or anyone - I really wanted to see. For my money, for the night, the vibe, and the company, it’s hard to go past Pitch Black’s sonic dub-driven extravaganza at San Fran in Wellington in mid-March. Reviewed here. 

In terms of cinema-going experiences, unlike last year, I can’t really hand-on-heart say there were any music-related films that held much appeal for me in 2018. And I include Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born in that assessment. But of the films I did see and enjoy, Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri was probably the pick of an otherwise quite limited bunch. And although it was a late 2017 release, and I didn’t catch it in a theatre, I thought Paul McGuigan’s Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool had easily the best soundtrack of all the films I viewed during the year. 

Right. That’s that, annual stocktake completed. Happy festive things and thanks for reading in 2018 …

Album Review: The Cure - Torn Down (2018)

My good buddy Ron is probably the biggest Cure fan I know. Ron queued on Record Store Day just to pick up a copy of the band’s RSD special, Torn Down/Mixed Up Extras, on picture disc vinyl. Ron’s also something of a vinyl purist. To the extent that the download code he received as part of his purchase meant very little to him. I’m not nearly as fussy, and naturally I was more than happy to put it to good use when he offered it to me.

Therefore, this review takes no account of the album’s packaging or overall presentation, just the music as found on the Torn Down portion of the release, not the wider expanded RSD reissue of Mixed Up. The download itself offers 16 tracks of old Cure, revisited and remixed by Robert Smith himself.

Of course, it’s a full decade since we last had any noteworthy or new Cure material. Which means the band - in its touring incarnation - is now starting to resemble a nostalgia act, and is in grave danger of losing any relevance it once enjoyed. However harsh that assessment will seem to fans of The Cure. I’m certain Ron, for one, would dispute and condemn such blatant blasphemy.

All of that said, this release is a timely reminder of just what it was that made the band so special in the first place. Keen fans will note that Smith is nothing if not pedantic, or very deliberate, with his track selection - each of the band’s 13 studio albums contribute one track each, with the remaining three makeover choices being culled from three compilations (Japanese Whispers, Mixed Up, and the Greatest Hits package of 2001). This means we get a terrific overview and a career-spanning set of remixes, with no single era of Cure music finding favour over any other.

It’s seldom the most obvious choice of track either - who knew, for example, that Faith’s gloomy album cut, ‘Drowning Man’, could be given an entirely new lease of life thanks largely to the addition of several layers of glistening synth. That remix - the Bright Birds Mix - is certainly one of my own favourites from the album.

There’s all-electric takes on ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ and ‘M’, which strip away the acoustic elements of the original album versions, as each track veers into a most unlikely trip hoppy realm.

‘A Strange Day’, ‘Just One Kiss’, and ‘Shake Dog Shake’ all stay relatively faithful to the originals, before an injection of additional sax on ‘A Night Like This’ (the Hello Goodbye Mix), turns it into a strange blend of yacht rock and acid jazz, with trademark levels of angst thrown in for good measure.

The Edge of the World Mix of Disintegration’s ‘Plainsong’ is another highlight, with just the right amount of gloss added by Smith, enough to allow it to remain true to the original, while also benefitting from the additional spit and polish applied.

‘Never Enough’ is the only Mixed Up contribution to get a makeover on Torn Down, and it comes in the form of the Time to Kill Mix, which, truth be told, is perhaps a little less compelling than that original take.

At this point, I should admit, my knowledge of latter period Cure is quite limited. I’m a big fan of most work up to and including Disintegration (1989), but most of the 90s is a void, or a big black hole for me in terms of Cure releases. The epic Bloodflowers (2000) temporarily pulled me back into the fold, but after that - post-millennium - I start to struggle again when it comes to recall and recognition.

Which basically means there’s a fair amount of stuff on Torn Down that I’m less familiar with - tracks like ‘Want’, ‘Cut Here’, ‘Lost’, and the closer, ‘It’s Over’. This probably doesn’t matter too much, as each of these tracks hold some appeal, but the danger is, over time, across repeat listens, the Torn Down remixes will tend to become something akin to definitive versions for me. For what that’s worth, as it’ll be different for each listener.

It also means that the second half of Torn Down feels a little more like new Cure, for all that I lamented earlier the lack of actual genuinely new Cure material. Which, I suppose, must be a good thing, right?

Torn Down is a worthy addition to the band’s extensive discography, not least for the wide scope of the project, and for the superb attention to detail on offer. And as a nice sequel, or sister release to the hugely popular Mixed Up. Thanks Ron.

A Labour of Love

I posted a link on my Facebook page earlier this week that generated quite a lengthy thread. The link was this blogpost from Michele Catalano (click here) over at medium.com which looked at the lost art of the mixtape. The post generated plenty of comment, and no little amount of collective nostalgia, proving it was a subject near and dear to the hearts of people of a certain generation.

Catalano completely nails what it was that made a mixtape something special, and offers some food for thought on how a lot of the love has been lost with the throwaway nature of the way we consume and share music today.

Let’s be clear, by “mixtape”, we’re talking about collections of tracks or songs compiled from vinyl to actual cassette tape. Or in later years, those recorded from CD to cassette tape, rather than any of the more recent definitions of the word. It’s interesting too, that much of the “art” itself was lost during that very transition between vinyl and CD. 

Funkin' Marvellous (1987)

But mixtapes were never just random sets of songs transferred from one medium to another. A quality mixtape had to have a theme or a specific person in mind (usually the recipient). They had to include songs/tracks from a variety of source material. Across a 90 minute time-span – with a C90 always preferable to a C60 – you couldn’t include more than a “couple” of tunes (at most) from the same artist. The title of the mix had to be specific and relevant, and preferably the cover or inlay had to be handwritten by the compiler.

Most of all, a great mixtape had to be made with love and care; be painstakingly compiled and crafted, not clinically thrown together like we tend to do with mp3 or wav file playlists today.

These were just a few of the basics, and not rules unique only to everythingsgonegreen. These things were more or less unwritten but widely accepted prerequisites when it came to the now lost art of making a mixtape.

I made dozens of mixtapes through the course of the mid-Eighties to mid-Nineties. I’d buy boxes of TDK or Sony cassette tapes in bulk, and I loved the sense of anticipation involved in opening a new box, and removing the cellophane from the first hitherto virginal untouched tape. It was something of a ritual.

Some tapes were made for purely selfish reasons – often taping music from the collections of friends or flatmates simply to “acquire it” – but mostly I made tapes as gifts for friends and acquaintances of the era. Because I loved the music and genuinely wanted to share it, or as with a few cases, because I wanted to be “the guy” who shared it. Sometimes I just needed an excuse to pass on my “message” – whatever that message may have been on any given day or week. Ahem.

 

A Festive Compromise (1988)

So Catalano’s post was inspirational and as the Facebook thread evolved and started to take on a life of its own I was able to share a few photos of mixtapes made for me by a few of the friends involved (in the discussion), and they were able to share photos of long-since-forgotten-about tapes I’d made for them.

One particularly astute commenter, no stranger to compiling mixes himself, made the point that “the perfect mixtape is always just out of reach. There’s always at least one track that doesn’t quite work, or another that would be better” and how we were always “limited by what records we owned or could scrounge from friends.” Quite something, coming from a guy who owns more than 3,000 records.

As the owner of several boxes full of cassette tapes, many of them being those of the home-produced variety, I also understand the significance of the mixtape as a time-marker. Or the idea that each tape works as a standalone reminder of the period during which it was made. Each tape being representative of something, be it a genre, a place, a friend, or a lost love. Each has a short story behind it, and works as a memorial for days we’ll never get back again. A snapshot of a brief moment in time. And I like that.

*Funkin' Marvellous (September 1987, mixed): This was compiled and created in the DJ booth at Clares Nightclub one afternoon in 1987 by my (then) best friend, who also happened to be the resident DJ at that club. This is a good mix of funk and pop, with a hint of nascent hip hop and house music flavours. The value of 12-inch extended dance mixes is aptly demonstrated on this one, near the end – during the fade for the wonderful State of Grace tune – when DJ turns MC briefly to apologise for a messy transition: he’d been disturbed and the record played out longer than was ideal … a nice personal touch that always made me smile when I heard it.

*A Festive Compromise (December 1988, unmixed): This was compiled and created by yours truly in the lounge of my Hataitai (Wellington) flat during the week between Christmas and New Year in 1988. My partner/flatmate of the era was a design student who had returned “home” to Auckland to spend the festive season with family. I worked in hospitality and time off at New Year was nigh impossible. Thus, I was stuck at home and perhaps feeling a little dark (you think? – Ed). I partly raided the record collection of our other flatmate – who was also (rather more mysteriously) absent – to create what would later become one of my all-time favourite road-trip tapes. The title, of course, references a lyric from the Cure track featured.

 

Speaking of ...

 

Obscure: Observing The Cure

A new book of interest – to be released in September:

“Andy Vella has been observing The Cure since 1981. Foruli Codex (@foruli) is delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of 'Obscure', Vella's book of rare and unseen photographs of the band. 33 years in the making, 'Obscure' will be published worldwide in September 2014. This visually stunning and beautifully designed volume has been compiled with the full input of Robert Smith, who has also written the foreword.”

More details here

Classic Album Review: The Cure - Disintegration (1989)

I can’t pinpoint a specific time, a date, or even a year, but at some point in the mid-to-late Eighties, I found myself no longer listening to the music of The Cure on any regular basis. The band had long dominated my world of music consumerism, and (back then) only New Order could rival it in terms of numbers so far as my “music collection” was concerned.

It wasn’t really a conscious thing, a deliberate decision, or anything quite like that, but somewhere along the way I simply ceased to care. I guess I just felt sure that the band at its best had already been captured on those early albums, and to a set of ears fast becoming attuned to the disco-ball excesses of club and house music, much of the band’s post-1985 work was starting to come across as little more than lightweight throwaway pop fare.

It took me a year or two to realise it, but Disintegration was different, and it was an album to pull me (temporarily) back into the fold. This album finds Robert Smith right back to his dark goth-flavoured best, and Disintegration stands as a major return to form … albeit one that turned out to be rather fleeting in the end.

The more high-profile tracks on here will be well known to most – even non-Cure enthusiasts; ‘Pictures Of You’, ‘Lovesong’, ‘Lullaby’, and ‘Fascination Street’ having all been given considerable exposure both at the time of the album’s release and over subsequent years.

All four cuts are decent enough examples of what can be found on Disintegration, but it is perhaps the lesser known tracks that really impress the most – which is always a good sign. ‘Last Dance’ is classic Smith and sounds as though it wouldn’t be out of place on either Faith or Pornography, ditto the intense ‘Prayers For Rain’ and the epic ‘The Same Deep Water As You’, both of which are superb.

While the theme and the general feel of the album is essentially heavy and foreboding, its excellent production ensures it remains fully accessible to even the most casual of fans. Even with lyrical emphasis placed on the cryptic, and on relationships and matters of the heart, seldom does it plunge the suicidal depths of the aforementioned Pornography album.

All of the usual Cure markers are present and accounted for – multi-layered keyboards, trademark pulsing bass, and of course, Smith’s excellent guitar work with its heavy reliance on the careful art of repetition. All the while Smith’s unmistakable vocal towers above what is quite often a wall of sound. The polish applied in terms of production provides the perfect finishing touch.

Disintegration stands as a snapshot of just where Smith was at in 1989 … able to embrace his natural “pop” instincts without compromising the “traditional” sound of The Cure. Recommended.

 

Prayers For Rain:

 

 

 

Classic Album Review: The Cure - The Head On The Door (1985)

By the mid Eighties, the music of The Cure was starting to evolve. The 1984 album, The Top, had been a lightweight and far more pop-orientated affair than previous efforts, while strong radio-friendly singles like the funky ‘Let’s Go To Bed’ and the jazzy genre-bending ‘The Lovecats’ also marked a notable change of direction for the band. Suffice to say, Robert Smith had started to reveal a happier side, and a hitherto untapped penchant for idiosyncratic pop music was slowly but surely being unveiled.

So by the time The Head On The Door came out in 1985, The Cure had already taken a couple of giant leaps towards mainstream/crossover success, and in all respects this album succeeded in consolidating the band’s new found popularity with the masses.

It’s not that Smith and co had completely abandoned the goth-pop formula and post-punk leanings that dominated earlier work, it’s more that The Head On The Door struck just the right balance between the light and the dark.

It helped of course that the album contained a couple of brilliant singles in the form of ‘In Between Days’ and ‘Close To Me’, both of which enjoyed high rotation on the increasingly influential MTV playlist, something that did much to enhance the band’s fledgling popularity outside of the UK.

‘In Between Days’ is quite simply one of the best songs The Cure ever released and it doubles as The Head On The Door’s opener. Propelled by a repetitive baseline (an old Cure trick) and Smith’s virtuoso guitar (he’s not the best guitarist in the world but he’s certainly one of the most instantly recognisable post-punk guitar heroes), ‘In Between Days’ reflects the coming together of those two strands of the band’s sound – its bouncy upbeat tempo being almost at odds with its murky lyrical content.

‘Close To Me’ on the other hand, is far more straightforward, and even today probably represents one of Smith’s finest “pop” moments. Bright, inventive, and undeniably romantic, it helped establish Smith as a master of the eccentric love song. The catchy lyrical hooks and cheery synth certainly helped highlight the band’s new commercial sensibility.

Instrumentally and musically, The Head On The Door found The Cure adopting a far more diverse and worldly approach than ever before, one that incorporated several strong international flavours – as with the Japanese feel of ‘Kyoto Song’, and the Latin/flamenco guitar on ‘The Blood’.

‘Six Different Ways’ is a poppy little number, devoid of very much at all outside of exposing Smith’s vocal at its most quirkiest, and it almost threatens the filler status I’d definitely assign to ‘The Screw’, which sounds more like a half-finished and rather annoying idea than a fully-fledged track befitting an album of this quality.

‘The Baby Screams’ finds us back in familiar bassline-driven territory, while the much loved ‘A Night Like This’ (was this a third single?) is a dark repetitive guitar-based track and one of Robert Smith’s best ever laments of lost love, with – unthinkable for fans of the band’s earlier minimalism – what appears to be a pretty darned impressive sax solo.

The closer ‘Sinking’ is a monumental combination of heavy synth and introspective/dark lyrics, and it challenges ‘Push’ as the album’s main highlight outside of the singles. ‘Push’ features a brief but wonderful set of psychedelic lyrics, and with its waves of cascading guitar it has lost none of the intensity it first wooed me with nearly 30 years ago ... it remains one of my favourite Cure tracks.

The Head On The Door still rates as one of The Cure’s best albums, it cemented Smith’s reputation as a clever wordsmith and exposed his love of the short sharp quirky pop song. Over the course, Smith went on to change many of the default rules that originally applied to his band’s music, and despite the occasional glance back over his shoulder (see Disintegration, Bloodflowers) – with some degree of success it has to be said – this album gave The Cure genuine fresh momentum, and there really was no turning back beyond this point.

Push:

 

Classic Album Review: The Cure - Pornography (1982)

Having been a fan of everything The Cure released prior to Pornography, I recall being fairly quick off the mark to pick up a copy as soon as it came out. I also remember feeling a little underwhelmed and generally pretty disappointed with it, and my opinion on the album hasn’t changed much in the intervening years.

I guess what I appreciated most about The Cure’s earliest stuff was the simple structure of many of the songs, and an almost minimalist approach to making pop music. Yet with each new album from early 1979 through to 1981 – from Boys Don’t Cry through Seventeen Seconds to Faith – the band’s sound became much fuller and increasingly more complex. By album number four, Pornography, simplicity and modest pop forms were evidently the last things on Robert Smith’s mind.

 

I don’t mind the darker angst-ridden stuff (some would say I live for it, even) – see reviews for Seventeen Seconds and Faith – but Pornography always felt like one suicidal step too far; too dense, too bleak, with too much gloomy synth, and a touch too much wailing or generally indecipherable vocals. Maybe it’s just a production thing, but it doesn’t work for me.

I realise Pornography is the album most likely to feature at the very summit of many Cure fans’ “best ever” lists, I’ve even seen it cited as Smith’s masterpiece, but it still rates well down the list for me; ahead of some of the band’s more frivolous and lightweight pop excursions certainly, but below the likes of Seventeen Seconds, Disintegration, Faith, Boys Don’t Cry, The Head On The Door, and even Bloodflowers.

Nonetheless, ‘The Hanging Garden’ remains one of the band’s best singles, ‘One Hundred Years’ is a strong opener, and ‘A Strange Day’ is another obvious highlight on Pornography. The rest I could probably live without.

 

 

 

Classic Album Review: The Cure - Faith (1981)

Sometimes it’s all about your first exposure to an album. Where you heard it, how you experienced it – the context, the sense of occasion, and sometimes something like the sound quality of the equipment you hear it on can have a huge bearing on the impression it leaves ...

I recall one of the first times I heard Faith - it may very well in fact have been THE first time - shortly after its release, probably sometime in late 1981. I was sitting in a friend’s pride and joy Mitsubishi GTO (or a “get turned on” as he referred to it), marvelling at the vehicle’s sleek lines, instantaneous response, and all-round Boy Racer “cool factor”. It was night time, the dashboard was a collection of bright lights and flash buttons. It looked for all the world exactly as I imagined the cockpit of a jumbo jet would, and right in the middle of said dash was a state-of-the-art car audio (or a “cassette stereo” as we knew it). The GTO was also suitably equipped with - what were in those prehistoric Hi-Fi days - speakers to die for.

 

Then it happened. Press play … the tolling of bells, the rolling, almost funky bassline of the album’s opener ‘The Holy Hour’. Then the reckless angry abandon of the excellent single ‘Primary’, followed by the dark paranoid angst of ‘Other Voices’ ... just three tracks in, I was already hooked, an instant convert, and there would be no turning back.

I was indeed “turned on” and tuned in to The Cure. It is something that stayed with me, and even today I have difficulty listening to Faith without being transported back to that place and time, that motor vehicle, and that sublime car audio.

The opening three tracks are mere tasters for what follows. Faith is an album without filler, a true classic of its type and genre, a breakthrough of sorts, even though commercial/mainstream success on a global scale (not to mention bouts of self-parody) was still a few years away yet for Robert Smith & co.

The only real criticism I have of Faith is its length, just eight tracks clocking in at around 37 minutes. Given that the epic single ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ was released shortly afterwards, and never actually made its way onto any other “standard” Cure album (although it is included on various subsequent compilation packages and 2005’s Deluxe version of Faith), it is not as though Smith was struggling for quality material during those years of prolific output 1979 to 1982.

Of the remaining five tracks, the (albeit gloomy) title-track itself is probably the pick of a brilliant bunch, suitably positioned as the album closer. The multi-layered doom extravaganza that is ‘The Drowning Man’ is very much a mini-epic in its own right, while ‘Doubt’ gives us another flash of Smith’s rather more animated form of disaffection with the world, ala ‘Primary’.

‘All Cats Are Grey’ and ‘Funeral Party’ are probably my least favourite tracks on the album, both are perhaps a little too dreary for my taste, but even in saying that, I’ve learned to love both for what they are over years of repeated listening.

Robert Smith would, of course, go on to create some of the murkiest gloom and doom ever committed to vinyl, and many consider Faith to be the initial instalment of a somewhat glum trilogy, one that also features its 1982 follow-up, Pornography, and 1989’s Disintegration ... I’m not sure whether that still stands, but regardless, Faith is a perfectly fine standalone album as it is.

Highly-recommended – more so if you happen to find yourself trapped in a confined space, surrounded by booming speakers, and propelling forward towards the point of no return at what feels like the speed of sound.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Classic Album Review: The Cure - Seventeen Seconds (1980)

This is the first of five classic album posts featuring the work of The Cure ... all written a while back, and I’ll post them to the blog in chronological order:

Every avid music fan has a special place in their collection for a select number of albums they’d consider all-time favourites. No two all-time lists would ever be identical because taste is such a subjective, personal, and often intimate thing.

If ever I was attempting to compile any such list of personal Desert Island Delights, Seventeen Seconds is just as likely to be one of those albums sitting right near the very top. And I guess for me, that’s been the case for more than 30 years now. This, despite the fact that many of the band’s hardcore fans are unlikely to rate Seventeen Seconds as their “chosen one”. Yep, taste is a very personal and intimate thing indeed. As Robert Smith himself suggests on the excellent ‘Play For Today’ ... “it's not a case of doing what's right, it's just the way I feel that matters, tell me I'm wrong, I don't really care ...”

 

Having been seriously impressed when Faith came out in 1981, I worked my way back through the then not-so-extensive (at that point) Cure back catalogue and Seventeen Seconds quickly established itself as the benchmark by which I would judge all future Cure releases.

Through the years I’ve found myself returning to it and it never lets me down. For me, it captures perfectly the headspace I found myself dwelling in back in those late teenage post-punk years of 1980 thru to 1983, and although any rational sane person may consider such a notion pretty unhealthy, it remains a period of my life that I just can’t let go. Just another one of those boring “soundtrack of my youth” … “best days of my life” scenarios - call it a time, place, and had to be there, thing.

And how many seriously deranged (or otherwise) post-pubescent Gothboy-wannabees could relate to the words contained within the album’s finest moment ‘A Forest’ … “come closer and see, see into the trees, find the girl, while you can ... come closer and see, see into the dark, just follow your eyes, just follow your eyes …”

And to give Smith his due - he got the next bit right as well - the girl was NEVER there, and yes siree, it was ALWAYS the same …“running towards nothing, again and again and again and again …”

(*Unlucky in love, your blogger adopts a mock tortured pose for effect*)

From the experimental atmospheric instrumentals (of sorts - they’re rather more like interludes) ‘A Reflection’ and ‘The Final Sound’ through to the classic simplicity and repetition of ‘In Your House’, ‘Play For Today’, ‘M’, and ‘Secrets’, this is a finely crafted piece of work. Then there is, as mentioned above, the utter and total genius of the band’s seminal work ‘A Forest’; hugely influential, often copied, frequently covered, but never bettered.

It is often said that familiarity ultimately leads to contempt; in the case of Seventeen Seconds the opposite applies. That familiarity takes me to the sort of comfortable warm zone seldom found amid dark, stark, and otherwise obscure surrounds. Each to their own, but this is a back-of-the-hand album, I know every last chord change, each and every nuance in Smith’s burgeoning voice; conscious nor subconscious anticipation of either never wears thin.

The 2005 Deluxe Edition CD release – at least my third such copy of the album through the years, but my first on disc – contains a bonus CD which features different versions of the tracks, live versions, alternate takes, home demos of non-album material, rare ‘Cult Hero’ stuff from the band’s earliest incarnation – but to be honest, none of it could be considered “essential listening” regardless of how collectable it may once have been. I was a little disappointed with some of the sound quality on the bonus CD – I really wanted a definitive version of ‘Another Journey By Train’ (an instrumental b-side of some repute) but found the demo on this distorted and muddy. Still, that must be considered only a minor complaint, and it takes nothing away from how I feel about the original album as a whole.

Seventeen Seconds … a measure of life.