As I recall, I was at a concert at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh in the mid-1980s. Maybe something in the Festival or maybe a school concert, the details are all a bit hazy. The upshot was that there was a raffle or some such and I ended up with a prize, not the main prize, but a useful prize that ended up starting me on a path that I was to follow for the next 20 or so years. A pack of 3 AR60 TDK Cassette Tapes.
I must have decided that these cassettes should be used for something significant. I had shelves full of tapes but most of those were full of the bi-tone scream of encoded data for the ZX81 and Spectrum. If I’d used my prize for archiving my attempts at BASIC programming and efforts at typing in listings from old copies of Sinclair Programs those tapes would have been lying neglected in cardboard boxes in the loft for most of the time ever since. But there was something else in a 7” box on another shelf that would perfectly complement the duration of those three one-hour long tapes, and I’d just got a sleek new Matsui Hi-Fi from Dixon’s.
I started buying 7” singles in 1980. It was a good time to start. 1979 was the year that saw highest number of 7” singles ever sold in the U.K. with 79 million sales, and no real competition to the format. I’d had enough of listening to the limited selection of records available at home and my ten year old self had decided that the time had come to start my own collection.
Every so often I’d take some of my pocket money and head into town, destined for the bright lights and cash registers at Woolworths, Boots or John Menzies. The coolest of them all was “The Other Record Shop”, a new wave emporium on the High Street, with Space Invaders and a poster of The Doors above the stairs. That’s where I bought some of my first bits of vinyl.
After a few years my box was half full and I worked out that I had around 3 hours worth of music. So I sorted them out, roughly in order of release and filled up the tapes with some of my favourite songs. I optimistically named them, and carefully labelled them in HB pencil, Tape A, Tape B and Tape C, wondering if I would ever complete that alphabet.
I bought a blank 90-minute cassette to become Tape D, which gradually filled up with singles as I bought them. I put some extended mixes on a separate tape and filled another with mostly album tracks. Tapes E, F, I and J were used for recording songs off the radio, which I later decided meant they weren’t part of the official sequence, but for the most part, the Alphabet Tapes became a repository for my growing selection of singles. The set of tapes began to expand, each one representing a soundtrack for some part of a year or two, a keepsake and reminder of times and places.
At the start I bought more singles than albums; they were more affordable, they were more collectable, they represented that one song I’d heard on the radio and wanted to listen to again. Not always the big hits, I’d often go for the more obscure releases with quirky sounds and memorable hooks. Most of the songs were new releases, but they were punctuated with purchases from second hand shops and record fairs and the odd album track. A few were from the records in my parents’ and sister’s collection.
The tapes and the records fed in off each other in a symbiotic way. I probably wouldn’t have bought quite so many if I hadn’t had the tapes to fill. They were my personal radio show. Some bands became regular contributors, others were one hit wonders. For some artists, I only ever bought singles, not albums. For others, I would buy all the releases, to ensure I had all the B-sides and remixes to complement the LPs; these would sometimes end up on alternative tapes with pithy titles. Yet again, there were bands whose albums I listened to constantly but never bought a single, so they only made fleeting appearances on the alphabet tapes. Up until around 1993, all the tracks were on vinyl, then the odd CD started to creep in to the collection.
I saw most of the contemporary bands perform live, and sometimes ended up with additional singles from the support acts. As the indie dance rock crossover that started in the late 1980s coincided with my student years, I found a rich seam of music to enjoy, with all those bands from Manchester and my adopted home of Bristol becoming particular favourites. I was a festival regular at Glastonbury from 1992 to 2000, often with a ticket to perform with Rag Morris, and many of the artists featured in my record collection performed there over these years.
I finally completed Tape Z, the collection representing 18 years’ worth of songs; the continuing mission had been accomplished. I kept making tapes for another few years until one day, or so it seemed, the displays of chart singles just disappeared from most of the record shops.
The pop charts started counting digital downloads and streaming to add to the sales figures, which eventually superseded physical sales altogether. Although I’d stopped watching it regularly, the end of the weekly edition Top of the Pops in 2006 was another effect, or cause, of the decline of the single. The definition of what a single was became rather elusive. It was no longer about the purchase and possession of a physical object, with the cost supporting the retailer and the supply chain back to the performers, writers and copyright holders. The streaming model didn’t seem to benefit the producers in the same way. I was always a late adopter, and in no hurry to sign up.
Around that time, then, I made my last mix tape. Visits to record shops became less frequent, especially as many of the best ones were closing down. Other priorities took over. It was time to move on and leave the pop charts to the next generation, which is quite as it should be.
Eventually the tapes were left in various cassette boxes which then started to be neglected as the cassette players started to break or get replaced with more high-tech alternatives.
And so it was that during the lockdown we ended up with a family subscription to Spotify. Feeling a bit guilty at first about listening to music that I didn’t feel I already owned, I started a process of spotification of my alphabet tapes. I’ve found that the vast majority of the tracks were already available in one form or another, even if some of the more obscure remixes aren’t available and various artists appear to have a policy of holding back on an album or two.
The tapes have got a bit scattered and some of my favourites are currently missing in action. Some of them I hadn’t listened to for twenty years. Some of the later tapes are a bit lacking in diversity, but each tune was chosen on its own merits. I was pleased found that I still appreciated the musical tastes of my younger selves.
Given the open-plan nature of Spotify playlists I thought it would be fun to put them up on my blog and preserve them for some sort of posterity. It’s an eclectic mix, probably not all to everyone’s taste. I hope you find something you like.
preinclusion 