Also available on cassette; the poor man's cratedigging

I’d like to start this blog by voicing a suspicion that I’ve kept quiet about for quitensome time: I feel as if I’m being deceived on a grand scale.

By my favourite musicians, by producers I idolize, by blokes in the pub I used to work at, and even by my own father.

Decieved about what? About Vinyl, or more specifically, the experience of acquiring it.

The above musicians, producers, friends and relatives, as well as pretty much anyone else who can legitimately claim to have ‘been there’ have all painted me a fucking nice picture of vinyl shopping in days of yore.

Something along the lines of ‘You’ll just never get it again; record shops were about exploring the new releases or the bargain bin and picking up something great, you took a risk buying vinyl! Your generation are utterly, pathetically addicted to screens that record shops are now a thing of the past, Blah blah, analogue, blah blah, fuck mp3s’ has been recanted to me by almost every one of the above parties.

Musican’s and producers are even more liberal; describing (or sometimes showcasing) an Aladin’s cave of LPs adorned with exotic artwork and obscure titles contained in their cellar, or reciting stories finding life-changingly amazing albums at the bottom of barrels in a shack in a far flung corner of the world on expeditions in search of such great rarities. 

It just seems unrealistic that things were ever so good, and my own experiences of record shops definitely doesn't match those above.

So why am I so concerned about this deception?

Because I’m jealous.

Being one of the ‘digital generation’ does seem to have taken some of the thrill out of music finding. The drip feed of facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and in the case of the dangerously criminal ThePirateBay constantly seems to provide endless access to music old and new without the need for anyone to swap their boxers for some jeans and leave their sofa.

But I want to put trousers on and leave the sofa, I want to explore music and not be sure whether or not I’ll like what I’ve bought, I want to find obscure that has (up until me) a completely ignored work of pure genius.

I want the experiences of my favourite hip hop producers, the one of charting new depths grotty locations to acquire music that I can steal bits from and recycle like a badman.

Fast-forward (or backward) to another point in time, and I’m doing my usual rounds of the dodgiest secondhand shops in BFD, without a fecking clue what I’m looking for, and I come across a basket of cassette tapes going for 50pa pop.

I look through them and the first thing that comes to my mind is a quote from History Boys about the recent past being the most obscure time in history. The tapes have titles like “Atmospheric Synthesizer Vol. 1 – Over an Hour of Music!” and “Klaus Wunderlich – Celebration” (yes, as in the Kool & The Gang one, yes as interpreted by a German electric organ/synth player). But there is also so some seriously cool stuff there – “Disappearing World – Music from endangered cultures from remote regions” being a particular favourite.

In my excitement, I felt like I had died and gone to obscure Valhalla, my own experience of the archetypal record shop.

It seemed to be everything I’d been looking for.

Being a wannabe music producer I restrained myself from buying the whole box of about a hundred and picked five or six of my favourites.

After a brief reconnaissance-like listening of all the tapes as soon as I got back, I was abit disappointed with some(particularly Klaus), but I didn’t care. 

It was a challenge to find good stuff and that was part of the appeal. It certainly beat all my vinyl shopping experience in terms of excitement, obscurity, and price. Not that I haven’t had fun going to Piccadilly Records and being a recommender for a record-buying friend, but it seems abit more like an expensive hobby than a creative necessity not that there’s anything at all wrong with that. I just like the randomness of cassette tape shopping, even if I don’t necessarily have to do it, it’s probably a more successful replication of crate digging way back when than, well, going crate digging.