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Whilst walking home I was listening to the radio on my ‘phone and I heard an item on a BBC consumer programme about the high number of albums on cassette that were sold last year – growing by 90% over the first six months of the year. The conversation ranged over the various formats in which music is available these days, and their attractiveness to collectors and the $64,000 question; whether the humble cassette will ever make a comeback. Serendipity (or something) strikes again – last week I dug out two music compilations I made in the year 2000. They are simply called ‘Music and Songs’ and contain tracks taped from the radio and from my own collection – everything from ‘Jump, Jive and Wail’ by Louis Prima to the Senegalese musician Wasis Diop, Henry Thomas’ Bulldozer Blues (accompanied by his ‘quills’ or panpipes!), Gilad Atzmon’s ‘Orient House’ project (with Frank Harrison’s luminous piano) and random African and Central European choirs and percussion, and, as they say ‘many others’.
These music compilations were made for two very good reasons; one being my voracious musical taste and second, the way that individual tracks often stick out from the other material on any given album – the energy and drive of the Louis Prima track jumps out of the speakers and the Henry Thomas track has that deep weirdness that is conjured up by old American country blues. Both compilations are also full of tracks that make me wonder ‘why did I tape that’ – Brian Eno’s ambient electronics and a weird thing called ‘Metals’ by someone called Paul Schultz which sounds just like its title? But then even the most unpromising music can yield unexpected riches and take you back to another time. I have a lot of cherished tapes; music and drama and spoken word programmes that I have returned to with pleasure through the years. These include classic drama and also other gems like the poet Seamus Heaney reading his ‘Station Island’ sequence and, rare gems, the writer China Mieville in conversation with the late, great Ursula Le Guin and Rowan Williams reflecting on the importance of silence (if that is not too great a contradiction!).
I am just waiting for the cassette tape revival, after all everyone has, in their turn, said that CD’s and vinyl are dead but they have returned. As Mark Twain famously said “the rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. It seems that even in these sometimes dark days, writing something off as finished is only the prelude to its return. What was that about serendipity?
(This is the second post to carry the title of a song by Larry Norman – purely accidental – I think!)
The sound of surprise 