My first mix tape

I'm sure everybody over a certain age will be able to remember their first mix tape.



Over at Hidden Track, in a recent Friday Mix Tape, they surmised that everybody had a few of their choices on their first playlists. A couple of their selections came close to mine, but I didn't hear anything by the Grateful Dead for many years yet. (See their selections here .)

I thought that if I looked hard enough around my house I might be able to find a mixtape old enough to come close to being my "first" one that either was made for me, or that I had created for myself to listen to. (Pre-fab chart hits albums like "Throbbin' '84" and the like don't count.) As it turns out, all my old mix tapes (bar one or two later ones that I gave to my kids) I had thrown out before I moved to West Australia a few years back. I had to delve into the dark recesses of my mind to recall something...and here's what I came up with.

Around 1987, my uncle took a 6 month working holiday to Europe. He left his beloved '72 HQ Holden wagon with my dad to look after. The day after dad picked up the car, he presented me with something - a kings ransom of sorts; my uncle's in-car cassette collection. I listened, learned, discovered and educated myself about heaps of music that I'd never really heard before, and I made myself a number of mixtapes purely from this collection. Only one survived for a number of years, as I only had a limited number of tapes, and they had to be recycled in order to record more music. That original mix-tape is the oldest one I could remember and, although it didn't survive the great chuck-out of 2007, I can still remember most of the albums my uncle had in that tape box (as evidenced by the fact that I grew to love them all so much I bought copies for myself over the ensuing years), and the likely tracks I'd selected for my mix.

The selections that I can remember from the collection are below. It's pretty obvious that you could assume that I had "catholic" tastes at the time. But hey, what 11 year old doesn't? While a lot of this music was still fairly current at the time of the original compilation, it is now the type of music a dreadful commercial radio station like Triple M will play ad nauseum.

In this day and age, the art of the mix-tape is all but dead and buried. These days, it is replaced by "playlists" within iTunes. The art of sequencing and selecting the tracks in order not only to make them fit the length of the tape, but to get as much music on each side without the songs cutting out halfway through them (a common problem) and also to make it enjoyable to listen to from start to finish.

It's ironic then, that this recreation of the mix tape is presented to you now in a Grooveshark playlist...

Enjoy.



What we have here:

1. Beastie - Jethro Tull (from "Broadsword and the Beast")
2. (I Love It When You) Call Me Names - Joan Armatrading (from "Track Record")
3. Bad Boy For Love - Rose Tattoo (from "A Decade of Rock")
4. Refugee - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (from "Damn The Torpedoes")
5. The Number Of The Beast - Iron Maiden (from "The Number of the Beast")
6. Under Pressure - Queen and David Bowie (from "Greatest Hits")
7. Down Under - Men At Work (from "Business As Usual")
8. Espresso Love - Dire Straits (from "Making Movies")
9. School's Out - Alice Cooper (from "Greatest Hits")
10. Things Don't Seem - Australian Crawl (from "Crawl File")
11. Bustin' Loose - Moving Pictures (from "Days Of Innocence")
12. Don't Do Me Like That - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (from "Damn The Torpedoes")
13. Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar (from "Crimes of Passion")
14. Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac (from a commercially available classic rock Compilation album that I've forgotten the name of)
15. More Than A Feeling - Boston (from a commercially available classic rock Compilation album that I've forgotten the name of)
16. She's Not There - Santana (from a commercially available classic rock Compilation album that I've forgotten the name of)
17. Stay Young - INXS (from "Underneath The Colours")
18. Cheap Wine - Cold Chisel (from "East")
19. Solid Rock - Goanna (from "Spirit of Place")
20. Another One Bites The Dust - Queen (from "Greatest Hits")
21. Africa - Toto (from a commercially available classic rock Compilation album that I've forgotten the name of)
22. And She Was - Talking Heads (from "Little Creatures")

100 LPs Shortlist #9: Ratcat - "Blind Love/Tingles"

Quiz question: Who was the band who kick-started the 90's alternative rock revolution in Australia?

If you were thinking Nirvana or Silverchair, you'd be wrong.

In 1990, a small, start-up indie label with major label backing sprung up and started signing small bands from around the country - The Screaming Jets from Newcastle, The Hummingbirds, the Trilobites and Tall Tales And True from Sydney, Martha's Vineyard from Perth, all scored hits of various magnitudes, but there was one band from their initial crop of signings that went stratospheric...Ratcat.

Ratcat were instrumental in bringing the alternative/underground into the mainstream. They were an inner-city Sydney band, playing small venues and releasing independent singles and albums, and had done for about 4 years before they unleashed the "Tingles" EP in 1990, on the rooART label. It went gold in no time at all. The lead track "That Ain't Bad" was a noisy yet simple scuzz-pop gem that starts off quietly with just bass, drums and vocals, but when the chorus hits, the wall of guitars is so thick and heavy it's like a smack in the face. The rest of the record comes through with plenty of great cracking tunes, heavy on the noisy guitars with plenty of melody.

Noise-pop/shoe-gaze - or whatever the buzzword of the time was - bands didn't sell massive amounts of records, because critical acclaim doesn't often translate over into record sales. Ratcat's nearest contemporaries at the time would have been bands like Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Neds Atomic Dustbin, Dinosaur Jr, Inspiral Carpets and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

What's more, for any indie record to hit the mainstream charts and get airplay on mainstream radio in 1990/1, let alone an AUSTRALIAN one, was no mean feat. The only other local bands at the time to come close were The Hummingbirds and The Screaming Jets. And then, in 1991, things went nuts.

The biggest locally produced record of 1991 was their single "Don't Go Now" which hit number 1. In May the accompanying album "Blind Love" sold over 100,000 copies and the band was hot property, with their gigs filled by screaming girls everywhere. They quickly issued a live mini-LP by the end of the year and a rush-released follow-up in 1992 called "Insideout" but by the close of the year they star had faded.

Early in 1992, Nirvana and the Seattle grunge scene became the biggest thing since the last big thing and Ratcat were quickly forgotten. Their massive impact in those early months B.N. ("Before Nevermind") has been played down by rock historians of the last decade or so and the band, while they have continued to gig and release records, have not scaled their once dizzy heights again.

The band are doing some shows to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their landmark "Blind Love" LP. Take a listen below to both the Tingles EP (the first 6 tracks) and the Blind Love LP (the rest) to remember how great they were.

100 LPs Shortlist #8: Anthrax - "Persistence of Time"

I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday...

It was 1996. Radio JJJ were hosting Jason Newstead of Metallica to premiere the first single from their first album in 5 years - "Until It Sleeps". I was sitting in my car, in the carpark of a McDonalds, chomping on a caramel sundae, en route to my next guitar student's house. I was listening to this bass-player berate anybody who'd dare to speak up against the mediocrity of the song. I'd missed hearing the playing of the song so I paid no real attention to the jibbering.

They played it again. And I hated it. I was upset and outraged on so many levels.

In protest at the perceived weakening of the bands resolve and of their muscular sound, I went looking for some real thrash metal. Enter Anthrax.

"Persistence of Time" is the last album of the band's first, some would say "classic", period. Lead singer Joey Belladonna would leave/be fired not long after this album. It also happens to be their darkest, heaviest and most pummeling record to date.

In 1996, post-"Until It Sleeps", my need for metal was satiated by this record. I moved from my Metallica fixation and onto other things from here. It's still a perfect car album. The goosebump-inducing into to "Time" is still great. The seemingly strange choice of cover version contained within of "Got the Time" by Joe Jackson is incendiary.

Anthrax would morph and change into the 90s and beyond, but this was a unequivocal high point in their career. They never left heavy music behind, but they never made a record this consistent again. Turn it up and MOSH!!!!!

Songs To Wear Pants To!!!

Songs To Wear Pants To!!! One of the coolest and greatest websites on the planet for music!!!

Andrew Pants, the author and creator of STWPT (real name Andrew Haung) is something of a Canadian musical prodigy. Proficient in playing a number of instruments (and a number things that he passes off as instruments), he writes songs based on subject suggestions sent in by readers on his site, then he records them, playing all the instruments himself. The songs vary in style from flat out punk to Gregorian-style Chants, and all points in between.

The site has been in existence for nigh on seven years now, and it shows no signs of abating, thankfully. At the time of writing, there are 545 songs available on the site, and over the duration of it's existence, the songs get better and better. Although, they tend are slightly less unique than they were when they started. You see, Andrew has a two-tiered support mechanism going with this site, right from the beginning. If you sent in a song idea via email, in the beginning, he would write a song based on your idea, but it wouldn't be any longer than 71 seconds long (1:11). If you pledged money for him to write a song, he would write it at standard length (say, up to 4 minutes or more). These days, the free songs can be any length, and it's rare that any are as short as some of the early classics like "A Bug Fell in Love With A Cat", which towers in at a whole 9 seconds in length.

At times sublime, quirky, or just downright hilarious, it is very much worth the time and effort to suss this site out. Andrew Pants, in my opinion, is a genius. I have included a playlist of songs from the site to listen to below (close to 100!!!), but it helps if you go to the site and read the background information about each song to full appreciate them. You won't be disappointed!

Assorted highlights to check out here include:

"A Bug Fell In Love With A Cat"
"If You Play This Song Backwards It Will Sound The Same" (TSATF note: and it does too!)
"Toilet Flushing Shelving Unit"
"I Am A Clam"
"I Am A Sad Sad Toaster Made Of Glass"
"Celtic Techno Burrito"
"I Am The First 50 Digits Of Pi"
"Gniht Elohw Eht Esrever"
"Shoot The Zombies"
"Everything I Didn't Like About My Previous Girlfriend"
"Crunk Juice"
"See Through Grumpy Unicorns"
"I Am Tuna"
"Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows"

and many many more!

Enjoy the sampler on offer below, and get over to the Songs To Wear Pants To site and get some more great tunes into you!

Foo Fighters - Back and Forth

I managed to catch one of the limited screenings of the new Foo Fighters documentary "Back and Forth" on the big screen on the weekend. It is coupled with a run-through of the new album "Wasting Light", played live in a band room, and shot with multiple cameras in 3D



It was a very candid film and a very informative and revealing. It begins with Dave Grohl joining Nirvana, working through their all-too-brief career and then onto the beginnings of a new project which he tentatively called "Foo Fighters"; a project he opted to explore and build upon rather than take on the job he was offered as the drummer in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers!

There's plenty of great music within, as you all know. It was interesting to see the growing pains that the band went through in their early days, including having to be compared to Nirvana at every turn, as well as being asked the most banal questions from rock journalists who all wanted to know about whether the songs were about Kurt. I was disappointed that they didn't spend much time talking about their music videos. Their videos are consistently entertaining and often very funny, with the band happy to take the piss out of themselves at will.

The documentary takes on the touchy subject of certain band member's addictions and overdoses, including those of Kurt Cobain, but it is curious how Dave's own battle with substances was omitted from the film. He is known for his wild drinking, and he even overdosed on caffeine during the making of the "Them Crooked Vultures" LP. Or the fact that he was picked up for driving over the prescribed alcohol limit in Australia circa 2006. It also overstepped the Beaconsfield mine tragedy in Tasmania, which resulted in the trapped miners having a song dedicated to them on the "Echoes Silence Patience and Grace" LP.

On the whole, it was a very entertaining watch, and even the most casual fan of the band can get a lot out of it. Those looking for gossip and mudslinging won't find much here, but at least this doesn't bear any of the tawdry melodrama of Metallica's "Some Kind Of Monster" - there's no public therapy sessions in this one!

The live set in 3D at the end just demonstrates how tight the band are as a unit and just how great the new material really is. The songs pack a punch, as well as being very hooky and melodic. The record flows well from start to finish and even the slow songs are worth a few listens. The 3D vision was impressive, with a camera set up close to Taylor Hawkin's drum kit. It looked close enough that you could almost reach out and grab the cymbals, or steal the picks from Dave Grohl's mic stand!

Highly recommended. Although it's a shame it won't be visible in 3D anymore though.

Below are a couple of highlights from new record: "Dear Rosemary" and "Bridge Burning", Live on Letterman

100 LPs Shortlist #7 - Extreme - "Pornograffitti"

Can it really be 20 years since I first heard this album? Sure enough, it was February 1991, six months B.N. (Before "Nevermind") when I was handed a tape of this by a friend on that hot summer's day at the very start of the school year....

What blew me away was not just how great sounding or technically proficient the guitar playing was, but just how melodic and inviting the music was. Guitarist Nuno Bettancort's playing was technical, to be sure, but it didn't sound or feel unapproachable, like, say, Yngwie Malmsteen was. The guitar parts were instantly singable, very cleverly played and memorable. I totally loved that about this album.

Lyrically the songs seem to lend themselves to a song cycle, on the themes of sexualisation of pop culture and media saturation and how they seem to be mutually benefiting one another. How prescient - not much has changed in the ensuing years. The ambition in this record was almost tangible, and so it should be. After all, Extreme's biggest musical influence was Queen.

Most casual listeners would remember the band's Mega-hit single "More Than Words", an edited version of which went to No.2 in Australia. I would have loved to have seen the faces of the people who bought this album on the strength of that song...they would have gotten the shock of their lives! The only other song that remotely sounds like that would be the follow-up single "Hole Hearted" (which was omitted from the vinyl LP because of space reasons). The album is mainly made up of highly charged rock music with funk and rhythmic leanings, with a few curly bits thrown in. The only real time the band hit a flat spot is on the track "When I First Kissed You". Intended to be an affectionate Sinatra tribute, it suffers from flat production and a bad synth-piano track and equally bad synth-strings. Then again, piano playing is not what this record is about - the guitars are the real winner here.

This is definitely a guitar player's album - Nuno is a musician's musician. He frustrates me because he can play far better than I can and he can't read sheet music....but I digress. This record is beautifully crafted and well played. It still sounds great today.

"Pornograffitti" seems to strike the perfect balance of intelligence, ambition, and song-craft. There is plenty to excite the musos, but there is still heaps for every other music fan to enjoy here as well. In 1992, with the LP "III Sides of Every Story", they over-extended themselves and tabled a concept so bloated that it ultimately was crushed under the weight of its own ambition, but that's another story...

Check it out...

Compilation albums? Good or bad?

This is a new style of post that I'd like to start writing - not all the time, mind you, just semi-regularly - called "Digest" where I discuss and opine on topics of note that I think are worth thinking about.

This post comes as a response to Don's comment from my recent Blondie post. Drop over to his site Try To Be Amused and say "Hi".

Tonight on Star 104.5 FM they have a regular series at 6pm called "Cover To Cover". The text from their website says: "Every Sunday night at 6 we play from start to finish one of the greatest albums ever made!"

The reason for this post is that I have strong opinions on this week's edition, where they are playing "ZZ Top's Greatest Hits".

Personally I have no issue with ZZ Top, or their greatest hits for that matter. If anything this 1994 release is missing many great tracks from their early career that can be found on "The Best of ZZ Top" released in 1977, but I digress.

Where I take issue is the labeling of "ZZ Top's Greatest Hits" as "one of the greatest albums of ever made". The issue is not the music (which is incendiary) nor the station and its programmers, but that the album in question is a compilation.

The album, from its inception as a long playing LP in 1948, was always about the creation of a long-form work; something that would have required a good deal of planning and thought in order to produce a work that plays well for an extended period of time, and something that would be considered worthy of a larger price tag than that of a single or an EP. Jazz and classical artists have always employed this principal, and if one was to study the book "1001 Albums you Must Hear Before You Die", a large portion of the albums in the section for the 1950s are jazz albums.

Popular music artists, usually by the hand of their record labels, didn't put a great deal of thought into the LP. Probably assuming that the teenagers of the time, if they could afford it, would buy anything with their idol's face on the cover, the albums that were churned out were often piecemeal affairs. The first few Elvis LPs were thrown together from newly recorded sessions with RCA and older tracks from the Sun Records vaults. Even the first Elvis LP in England wasn't even the same as the US version! This was largely the standard practice until the Beatles started to concentrate on the LP as a serious recording medium.

Starting with their second LP "With The Beatles", The Beatles worked to create albums as a great piece of work that could be played from start to finish and were always quite annoyed that the American record company would either alter the track lists of the British LPs to omit tracks, or they would cobble together tracks from various sources to create entirely new LPs altogether. Where the Beatles released 14 albums (counting two compilations) and 2 EPs and copious singles of unique material in the UK between 1962 and 1970, In America they released 21 albums. No album was identical on both sides of the pond until "Sgt Pepper..." in 1967.

In the days of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, it was highly common that singles were not present on the albums. As singles were only present on the market for about 6 months at most, once they were gone, they didn't return. The market then demanded some form of singles "collection" whereby all these stray tracks could be collected and thus the compilation was born.

Don't get me wrong - a compilation has its place. For example, it is a great place to get an introduction into a substantial catalog of works by a band or artist. If one likes what they hear they can delve into the albums to find many more hidden gems.

For some artists, the best albums they ever made were compilation albums. The dubious and checkered discography of James Brown is a classic example. Despite making LPs since 1959, he rarely ever thought about making a fully sequenced, cohesive statement on an LP. Every one of his studio albums (at least up until 1974's "The Payback") were albums thrown together from many different recording sessions. In some cases, no two tracks had the same personnel and were quite often dubbed with "canned" applause and reverb to make them sound live, when in fact they were recorded in a studio. His great singles, like "Hot Pants", "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag", "Super Bad" "Sex Machine", "Soul Power" among others, were actually long jams, sometimes as long as 15 minutes, but were released as singles with 3 minutes each side, and faded out to make a nice smooth ending. In some cases, the same faded endings were added to the LPs of the same name too, never giving the listener the benefit of hearing the full, unedited tracks. Thus, his compilation albums "In The Jungle Groove", "Funk Power 1970", "Make It Funky - The Big Payback" and "Foundations of Funk" are actually the best albums to listen to because they compile the tracks as they were recorded, with no dodgy studio fiddling or razor blade editing, and they ROCK! But again, they don't have the forethought of a proper album - they are each just a collection of previously recorded music thrown together on an album.

Johnny O'Keefe was the same - a "best of" album will always appear on a list of "Great Aussie albums" because he made vital, essential singles, but never a great album.

The album has evolved over a long period of time, but for contemporary/popular musicians, oftentimes it is a piece of work that captures an artist's work at a point in time. Once it's there, it cannot be changed. It captures the songs, the attitudes and the energy of the artist at that moment - they'll never be quite the same again. That's the great thing about it! The heart and soul of the music as it was, there and then, captured for prosperity. It is usually a conscious effort to create a full piece of work, when creating a studio LP.

A compilation album will never ever be what a studio LP was intended to be. How can a record that is slapped together from bits and pieces across a wide period of time ever hope to be? It can only ever be a summary, an overview, a mere window into a bigger body of work that can lead to bigger and more interesting things for the listener. Let's face it: "Queen's Greatest Hits 1" is brilliant from start to finish, but a listener is missing out if they never hear "A Night At The Opera". Taken as a complete whole, "...Opera" is mind-blowing and a totally essential listen, but only 2 of its songs appear on "Greatest Hits". By only sticking to "Greatest Hits" you make such amazing records like "...Opera" redundant and the listener does themselves a great disservice.

There's no denying, however, their importance in introducing many a new listener to some awesome music, and that's why in my personal list of 100 albums there will probably be a few of them because, in my view, the studio albums of the bands in question (such as Blondie or Joan Armatrading) overall just weren't all that great, but a compilation was killer!

Therefore it is my conclusion that a compilation can't necessarily be called one of the "greatest albums ever made". A more objective few of the greatest albums of all time, however, should not include compilations unless there is a very good reason for it.

My view is that if you wanted to play any ZZ Top record on "Cover to Cover",
choose "Eliminator", "Tres Hombres" or "Fandango", not "Greatest Hits".

Any comments, criticisms or anything, leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Cheers!