I kept all the mixtapes, even those where the sound bleeds through a little if you can find a cassette player to listen to them on. My boyfriend Phil made the best covers, collages of magazine photos and his own photos and xeroxes colored over with markers because color xeroxing was too expensive to do very often.
Typewritten words combined with border tape (remember that fun stuff?) made the titles for each one, usually a song on the tape that summed up the mood of both the music and the artwork. “Poptones” had a “Danger” sight on the front, with “Shock and Dance” on the back: a sign that inside you could expect PIL, Generation X and Elvis Costello, among others.
“Industrial Girl” featured a cut-out picture of me looking bland and expressionless though not very industrial, superimposed on a black and white photo of a power plant. On the back, cut-outs of boobs and lovers kissing humanize the industrial theme. It’s marked Throbbing Gristle, but I’m mystified to hear snatches of Joan Armatrading when I try to play it.
One is called “LACACA” -- if I ever knew what that meant, I’ve forgotten, but it does include some pretty interesting sounds like a forgotten band called Spoiler Project, Baby Buddha, Negativland, Voice Farm, Leisure Process and Delta 5 mixed up with the Beach Boys, Yves Montand, Nino Rota and Donovan.
“Funky Human Race/Noise” was the first he made I think - “Recorded 3/13/81 - Music for Oasis,” it says, so maybe Phil sent it to me when I was living in Palm Springs, stranded with no stereo, cut off from Rodney on the Roq by the San Jacinto mountains, with just an early Walkman to keep my company on the long desert nights. “America is Waiting” by Eno & Byrne, Young Marble Giants, Cabaret Voltaire, the Jam, the Sleepers -- this was pretty heady stuff and even “I Will Follow” by U2 makes an appearance. Sorry, it sounded pretty fresh at the time, and if we had any idea what would happen to them after that, it’s doubtful it would have made the cut.
Here’s one of the nearly forgotten tracks from “Funky Human Race” -- thankfully, not so forgotten that it’s not available on Youtube.
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