I am still working on the double Patrick Gibson post, but before that we will have a special guest programmer who is kindly providing us 2 podcasts...the special guest's efforts should be online in the next few days.
Today I was looking for some cassette only material for the Patrick Gibson "special" and going through the many many boxes of cassettes I have ( a great deal of them unlabelled ). I discovered two little curios which I'll get to further down this post, but I also unearthed some editions of a cassette magazine that was released in Australia called Fast Forward.
Fast Forward came out a time that the cassette was seen as an easily accessible form of DIY, more so than pressing a record, and many bands saw it as a means of releasing material. It was also quite new and exciting back then to put stuff out in this fashion, as well as a political statement and a snub to the machinery of the mainstream music business.
Fast Forward was based in Melbourne and focused on Australian independent and alternative music. It seemed to come out on an irregular basis, or to put it another way, I've forgotten exactly how often it came out. But hey that's the ravages of time for you :)
Today we have issue 005 which features music from Dorian Gray ( who were from Melbourne, later to release a single on the Au Go Go records label ), Scattered Order ( at that time made up of the M Squared trio of Patrick Gibson, Michael Tee and Mitch Jones, based in Sydney ), Informatics ( Melbourne ), a US band called Impatient Youth, Equal Local and Dance Set ( more Melbournians ) and Xero ( from Brisbane ).
It also contained a lengthy interview with Neil Spencer, the then editor of NME, but on listening to today he was such a boorish tadger and the interview so tedious I edited it out of today's post. This goes too for a naff comedy spot spoofing the British Royals, not that there's anything wrong with that just it wasn't funny and not worth your time !! Same goes for an ongoing segment called "The Case of The Missing Leave It To Beaver", again "life is too short". I have of course left in all the pertinent music and interviews, even if the Xero interview is the shoddiest recording I have ever heard.
Fast Forward cassette mag 005 - side A
Fast Forward cassette mag 005 - side B
The other two items of interest I came across are both off air radio recordings from 1981 from 2JJJ, in the "pre-national" days, then broadcasting ( mostly to ) Sydney only. The first one I pulled out was an unlabelled green G-Tape, so I immediately knew it must have been from when I was at school and hadn't yet learnt about "tape quality". I hit play and it was an interview with Pel Mel - woohoo !! An interview featuring Tim, Graeme and of course Judy speaking to Virginia Moncrieff. The end seems to be chopped but I'm suspecting back in the day I figured there would be plenty more Pel Mel interviews in my life to record, so, hell why not chop the end off. Pure folly now of course. Featured songs are a small bit of Marked Man by the Limp ( edited severly by me as I recorded on the day...again..why ?? ), No Word From China and Ipaneema Mon Amour ( the song title which I thought I was naming this blog after until I realised I spelt it wrong ). Hardly the world's most indepth chat, but they do explain how they got the name Pel Mel.
The second item sees another appearance by Monkers/Virginia Moncrieff, this team teaming up with Clive Miller to do what was then a regular Fri afternoon short segment called 'Music News". An interesting little snapshot of information about the Australian indie scene of the time. 2 songs are featured in full, one by Belle Du Soir ( 'experimental' offshoot of Sydney band Surfside 6 ) from their ep on M Squared and a demo tape from Melbourne band AEIOU called "Design For Living". I religiously listened to this segment every Fri afternoon and I got a chuckle today hearing that they used as their theme "A Brick Short" by Prod, another M Squared release. I roughly date the broadcast to approximately Sept-Oct 1981.
pel mel interview 1981
"music news with monkers and clive" 1981
5 comments:
Thanks Sideroom - these cassette magazines are the stuff of legend...Does that mean you've posted the holy grail oor the lost arc, or just some really good music???
Man, you've got a lot of blogs - how do you find the time??
Thanks again
well funny you mention it...I've bitten on more than I can chew I think !!
Bruce/Sideroom, thank you for posting the Fast Forward cassette. I've been looking that (demo, it turns out) version of IY's "This is the Front Line" for a long time. The only version I had was incomplete. They were from San Francisco and have in the last few years become rediscovered by old punk afficionados.
Although you haven't posted in over a year now, is there any way to get you or your special guest programmer to post the other issues of this cassette magazine (preferably in their entirety)?
Thanks, Tom from So California
Cheers Bruce,Stuart(the theme music),ex Little Murders,is a mate of mine,he'll get a kick out of this as I did.
Keep up the good work.
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