Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Second teenagerhood

That would be actually revolting and awful if it were true, but it's true in only one sense. A daggily-named program called 'Final Vinyl' is giving me a chance to return to the wonderful days of mix tapes which for me were halcyon around 1980-1. Man, I wish I had a copy of one of those tapes now. I could easily fabricate one because I know precisely what songs I would've put on there. It was always a tape of whatever I really liked that week (and I'd revise them every week, weirdly enough). Not in a counting down order but I guess it was in the same way that Guy Morton and I used to get a copy of the 3XY chart for that week and use little symbols to indicate which songs we owned on record, liked, or wanted to get or whatever (I don't think we had one for which songs we thought sucked, but that might have been implicit). I wish I had one of those charts now too.

Anyway, Final Vinyl, riddled though it is with problems, does ultimately allow one to make a CD of great songs off vinyl, which is of course where all the great songs exist. As I write this I am listening to my Nora Bumbiere and Viktors Lapcenoks album, waiting for the amazing 'Charon's Monologue', which I am going to final vinylise. This activity is so pathetic, but unfortunately it's also very fun, making little albums out of other people's songs, it's like indie rock without the hassles (wel, aside from the copyright hassles, whatever they might be). Hey, I've done my work for the day, it wasn't that accomplished or snazzy, but I got a right. Also, I wrote a very fine blog entry then accidentally struck the two wrong keys at once and the whole thing went into stasis so what could I do. Y'know?

In the early 80s my mix tape would have included Essential Logic, I'm So Hollow, The Models, Essendon Airport, The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, The Red Crayola, Pere Ubu, Young Marble Giants, The Birthday Party, Josef K, Orange Juice, John Foxx. All the greats. I have most of these records still.

Anyway then I got a show on RRR so I had no need to make my little mix tape, but I guess my show on RRR was pretty much the same thing. Continuing my teenagerdom I also now sometimes do a show on 3CR which lies on the same Smith St route which I used to ride my bike along to get to RRR in Fitzroy. So what goes around actually doesn't come around, or even go around actually. Everything stays the same and I just blog it infrequently.

In fact I even bought the Viktors and Nora album on Smith Street. Wayne Davidson was with me. Maybe it was when Wayne lived in Otter Street. I don't know. I can't know everything.

8 comments:

dfv said...

I remember making mixed tapes from your RRR show, and still have the Distant Violins ones, plus a stack of others from 3XY in the 70's. And they still play ok.

David Nichols said...

That's cool, very cool.
I am on 3CR this coming Sunday night, probably (as my brother pointed out to me a few years ago) playing pretty much the same kind of 'shit', but more Polish folk rock, Tull and more songs by people who weren't born in 1982.

boy moritz said...

Play sum Krokus, dude

but not the version of Ballroom Blitz because what version of that doesn't

boy moritz said...

uh...lick

David Nichols said...

The best version of Ballroom Blitz is Kicker Conspiracy by The Fall.

Wayne Davidson said...

I can't even remember where I lived then, but I think it was probably Malvern. I wish that shop was still there, it's a hair salon now. You know, we drove past Otter Street today. How spooky.

David Nichols said...

Where did you live in Malvern? I don't remember that.

Anonymous said...

i can do you a good deal on a pile of those old 3XY charts! in mint condition! there's only one problem: when i discovered punk, i threw out all the ones with daggy pop stars on the front (back?) and just kept the ones with photos of lou reed, etc.

the early 70s was all juxtaposition

October 1970, everyone had their arms out in the air, from Barbra to, um, whoever that is on the left, to Thumbelina. This is from the Sprin...