Rip it up and start again

As the new car does not have a cd player and the radio has not been converted from Japanese frequencies to New Zealand so I only can pick up 3 (awful) stations, I have been listening to a lot of cassettes lately.

I have about 100 old cassettes stored out in the sleep out, some of these are just awful, some do not work but some are just fantastic. Most of these were either purchased or recorded in the early 80’s, though there are a few from the late 90’s before I had a car cd player. It is the late 70’s and 80’s stuff I have had the most pleasure listening to, old Wire, Joy Division and New Order, Killing Joke and obscure New Zealand bands. This has also inspired me to go back to my vinyl collection to record some mix tapes, especially the 45’s which I tend not to play when I do throw vinyl on the stereo. It has been a great musical re-education, there was so much good music happening back then, and a lot of it was so fresh.

I have been off sick from work for the past couple of days with a head cold that laid me down on Monday afternoon. Tuesday I had to go down to the local library to get some reading material and found a new book called “Rip it up and start again – Post punk 1978 – 1984”, it is quite a weighty tome, coming in at over 550 pages. A lot of it is full of twaddle with the author showing off lots of big words and name dropping all sorts of artists/activists etc etc, but it is a very interesting history of that immediate post punk period when I was a teenager. It also arrived at the time I have been listening to music from that period again. A recommended read.

So today I am listening to a whole range of fairly obscure artists from 78-84 – Swell maps, Throbbing gristle, Cabaret Voltaire etc etc