NME used to be one of three music weeklies, if you can believe that, and there were also loads of music magazines knocking about. People were thirsty for music writing back then, and were happy to pay for it. Or, prepared to, anyway. The Internet has pretty much killed that way of thinking, particularly with news exclusives – even a daily paper couldn’t compete with social media’s unbelievable pace of scrolling new info. But back then we didn’t have broadband so there were no pics or music coming down the pipes.
NME and its ilk served as news aggregator, gatekeeper, trusted reviewer, and general touchstone for the current music scene. Because there was also Melody Maker, Record Mirror, and loads of mags to be had, you could find most of your bands across the various publications.
More than that, the only way to hear this new music was either by catching a song on the radio or by someone taping it for you. Someone with more money, or someone who knew someone who’d bought the original. You’d go ahead and buy the LP if you liked what you heard, most of the time. Originals were always better. You could double-check by going into a listening booth in the record shop and spinning the record to make sure. People with headphones, bopping away behind glass, every day of the week.
But you couldn’t do that with every band in the mag – you’d be there for days on end.
So NME and the rest would from time to time have cover-mounted compilations on cassette tape, then later on CD (and sometimes flexidisc, but that’s another matter for collectors to worry about). No extra charge: the paper, and a cassette of the music they were talking about – absolutely brilliant.
One week me and DD knocked up a load of cassette copies of our Dogshit on Toast EP Yamaha Potatoe, which had as its A-side a song called ‘Poppers Blues’, which was my mate on drums backing me on guitar doing a fairly dunderheaded 12-bar riff. DD’s job was to sing the lyrics and do a guitar solo.
Both takes – vocals, then the guitar - done whilst sniffing amyl nitrate constantly. DD can’t play the guitar at all anyway so it hardly made that much of a difference, although he was groaning for respite in the background. I think it’s got an authenticity to it that really does make the music quite extraordinary as a result.
We did the inlay cards, put stickers on the tapes, and whilst the Saturday staff were all busy in WH Smiths we stuck as many as we could to copies of that week’s NME.
So if you were wondering what the fuck that weirdo no-fi tape that you got free with the paper was that week, now you know.
Way before Banksy did that thing with Paris Hilton’s album. Way before. She might not even have been born yet.
Gloriously futile; but then, life is isn’t it?
