The Afterword

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Random versions of albums bought in obscure places

by 29 Comments

I’m not sure if this has been asked before but I’ve been wondering about this over the past few days. Spurred on by my daughter now owning a Nirvana tee-shirt (because she’s a teenager) I was reminded of a time back in October 1993. Along with a couple of friends I was travelling through India, backpacking for a few months as a means to escape getting a proper job. My music format of choice at the time were cassettes and so my rucksack was filled with all manner of stuff I’d taped off of friends especially for this trip. I suspect it was mainly indie stuff from the late 80’s/early 90’s, perish the thought I’d have been listening to anything from the subcontinent itself.

Anyway, whilst in the city of Shimla up in the Himalayas we found a shop that had a collection of cassettes of western bands, amongst other things. They appeared to be official releases (unlike bootlegs we found in bigger cities) and so I came into possession of a copy of the Indian release of Nirvana’s third album In Utero (because I was a teenager). It cost the princely sum of 45 Rupees (about a quid » Continue Reading.

Smells Like Teen Spirit x 1,200

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There’s so much to like about this. Personal highlights: grey-haired accountant man guitarist giving it some welly in amongst the headbangers; little boy on drums going for the big finish; the Conductor Of Rock; and, last but not least, the hairy dude shredding the shit out of his air guitar, because, duh! you know – not enough guitars! Here we are now, entertain us…

The Dad Album

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Another first world problem – but this one IS music related. The shops are busy pushing an album for Father’s Day which in a wild display of imagination is called How it Works: The Dad: The Album. With a wittily ironic fake Ladybird book cover.

What irks me is the content: Foreigner, Meat Loaf, Journey, Rainbow, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Jefferson Airplane… its all the 1970s/80s soft rock classics. I think the newest song is Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus (2000).

It’s all ok, and pretty good value if by some amazing chance you want some of these songs and don’t have them.

BUT, and you knew there was a but, the average father in the UK is 33, meaning he was born in 1983 and came of musical age in 1996. Post Nirvana, Post Grunge, post post-grunge, post Acid house.

So shouldn’t The Dad album be called the Grandad album? And more to the point, what tracks SHOULD the album have for fathers for whom the most significant era is 1990 to 2005? Oasis obviously. And Blur. What else?

(and yes I have teenagers, but lots of my contemporaries have grandkids so I’m not being ageist).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Works-Album-Various-Artists/dp/B01ERZIL6I

Velvet CD swap

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So last year one of the Afterworders introduced me to the Velvet CD swap programme. Like all of us (I imagine) I am desperate to find new suckers on whom to inflict my mix tapes. This swap programme allows you to bombard three totally random strangers with your musical tastes and whimsies. It allowed me to promote the joys of Juliana Hatfield’s Nirvana (“makes me wanna go fuck shit up” – was ever truer musical criticism set to music?) – see rather dodgy new video below All it costs is your time, some postage, 3 recorded CDs and of course, willingness to receive 3 tapes in return. I mean CDs. It was quite a laugh – if surprisingly time consuming. Still with a shed load of work to write and incredibly tight deadlines, what better use of my time could there be? http://velvetcdswap.com/sign-up/

http://velvetcdswap.com/sign-up/