One aspect of all this music was that the quest to discover it was part of the thrill, there being no internet and no mainstream press coverage I used to subscribe to mail lists, import USA underground magazines like Whole Earth Catalog (and things I found in there), Mondo 2000, Boing Boing, Robert Anton Wilson writings, a lot of countercultural zines from places like Mushroom bookshop.   Does anyone remember the lists you could subscribe to of music by type from record shops?   Or write to shady sounding lists at those weird 'ECM' addresses in London.  I'd wait for them to arrive then mark off anything vaguely interesting and buy it up over time.  Often with no idea what it was.  I constantly have memory triggers of music I'd forgotten I ever had.  My wife and I found boxes of these zines (and hundreds of postcards highlighting music, books, zines etc that used to just arrive once on the lists) in the loft about ten years ago when the thrill of the internet meant it looked quaint and obselete.  It's all gone, I probably binned it, I regret it now.     

It felt incredibly exciting at the time, even finding or buying an album could be intimidating or dangerous.,  I would go into the dark basement of Selectadisc where nobody dared go where they played music so loud your ears would ring for hours afterwards and buy DC Ruts / SST music releases, tapes of dub reggae, Ozric Tentacles and spinoffs, Spiral Tribe mixes, festival trance sessions with didgeridoo and drumming, Bad Brains, industrial soundscapes with no names on them, mutant electronic dance music you couldn't dance to (Z'ev, Skinny Puppy, that Australian band with heavy drumming), This Heat, Earache local thrash releases, Mark Stewart & The Mafia, Coventry Eclipse Hardcore Jungle, On-U sound , early Creation label electronica, instrumental early hip hop (Dynamix II, Maggatron, Steinski), very early Subpop.   It was sort of a test to even be able to stand in this basement never mind buy something.   They had sneering and feigned (maybe actual given the volume) deafness down to a tee.  'You want what?   Naaa mate, not for you'   Can't sell you that'.   They would refuse to sell you something unless you had adequate knowledge or prior credibility.   It was like applying for a mortgage 'What makes you think you're qualified to come in here and have the audacity to think you can just ask for Jello Biafra?   I have a three part test for you, what band is he from, what part of USA and what of his was banned.  No conferring'    'You come in here having he cheek not to wear black and think I'm going to tell you the various incarnations of Justin Broderick's Godflesh / Belgian Electronic Body Music / Italo post-disco dance music?'  (delete as appropriate)

Of course once you were inside, you were elevated to the peerage.  The day when someone new would come in terrified and ask shakily for what they heard was  Shedhunter by Front 244 and the counter staff would look at you co-conspiratorially, raise their eyebrows and say 'shall we let him have it?' and in a moment of pure triumph you would agree then help them was its own Freemason handshake.   You were accepted.  One of us, One of us.  Then they'd foist the new experimental stuff on you and you felt obliged to buy it.   

Thinking about it now..... maybe it was all a subtle pyramid selling scheme 'Lesson 1, tell them they can't have it, Lesson 2, gradually build up their self-worth, Lesson 3 - Acceptance and landing the sucker, Lesson 4 - Sell all the obscure crap nobody else buys to them then retire to your flat and smoke dope while claiming to write your great novel for twenty years'.  BTW What happened to all those sneery, rude counter staff?   They couldn't work anywhere else.

Oh the intoxicating alure of 'I've been keeping this for a select few friends under the counter'.   Talking of intoxicating, I realise now most of the time the basement was full of dope smoke.  No wonder I could happily spend an afternoon in a haze there checking music.  I had about 10 places in Nottingham I'd go to Selectadisc, Rob's Records (still there somehow), Pendulum, Arcade Records, Revolver, HMV, Our Price, Monkey Spanner and other obscure dance music places that would come and go.  Selectadisc (underground), Arcade (dance music) & Rob's (vinyl soul, still is) were the leaders.  Your credibility extended to which of the original shops for Selectadisc you had gone too before they combined into three on one street with the main one across three floors.  That's five shops for them in one city, for one underground company, with no internet and no mail order.   Quite incredible to think now.

A lot of music information came not from record stores but comic book shops that carried the import zines.  The Forbidden Planet store here was over four floors I recall (all windy stairs) and had sections for just random USA weird stuff, underground books, extreme manga and the like.  Also a lot of the cultural edge was written about by the USA underground press or had pulp cyberpunk novels stuffed into crates as packing between Dungeons & Dragons games (so Games Workshop said).  Comic book shops then were diverse alt-culture meeting and exchange places.   I never touched any of the games but avidly I used to buy all the books that the early Games Workshop received and didn't have an audience for, they would have piles of books by Sterling, Jeter, Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Marc Laidlaw, Quick and even more obscure authors.  Getting these felt like being on the inside of the future accidentally.    Rudy Rucker and Robert Anton Wilson blew my mind open and made me laugh too.   When this stuff arrived in UK with the Mirrorshades anthology I was already about five years into it and about to exit when it when into the mild-tea steampunk area.   I wanted shunts in brains and cyberspace not brass gears and hot air balloons.   I really do wish I knew where all those Cyberpunk books went.

I don't want to be an old git about music, I'm sure it's not really worse now but that sense of quest, exclusivity and thrill of discovery added a lot to what I envisage was often just quite annoying music.  In this era there isn't the same need to define yourself through music/subculture as there seemed to need to be before. 

I would go through intense phases too - a year of dub reggae, a year of Italian musique concrete, modern USA underground classical, splattercore breakbeat horror themed low-fi electronics, Saul J, Kane kung fu film related dub-dance, USA hardcore, electronic post-shoegaze (Seefeel etc) and squall guitar music.   Often never to go back once I moved on.   Did I need hundreds of albums of glacial Scandinavian jazz, Russian Orthodox liturgical, German Anarchist Techno or Japanese experimental meditation music?  (all real things I collected)   No, but then I suspect I'd have looked pityingly at the person asking the question and mockingly said 'but that's not the point, I'm not sure you really get it, do you?'.   Looking back at myself now, I don't recall what it was I wanted people to get - the quest, the individual choices, the defining myself as somehow other, the sense that music could be more than fun. 

I've asked my wife many times who said I was never cynical just enthusiastic, it was exciting to see my mind constantly racing and trying to stay ahead, to see me find one record amongst a hundred that would be a crossover later on.   She also says that I listened to much pop too (Blue Nile, Tindersticks etc counted as pop) and never lost my enthusiasm for both synth music and my life long love of uptempo black origins dance music (soul, funk, jazz, R&B, disco etc).   It's the latter that's stayed with me all the way through but what a ride it was and is.

Last edited by An Unseen Scene (2015-09-12 08:35:36)

I wish I could listen to them now (no Google or affiliated sites here until I get home end of week).   The Velvets - just so, so out there and yet melodic, ironic, fun and often beautiful (Ocean).  I must go and relisten to Loaded again too.  A lot of the best VU was the stuff on VU, Another VU, overlooked third album, Loaded off takes.

Lou Reed's Berlin album - oh god, people refused to listen to it with me ever a second time.   I almost broke a friend for good with 'The Kids' by accident playing it to them.   Why did he do that with the kids in the cupboard?   

Insane R&R - all the Cramps related stuff, freakbeat tracks like 'Spazz.   Rocket From The Crypt.   Loop, Spacemen 3, A.R .Kane, Band of Susans.   drone-rock!     We're flying now.

Last edited by An Unseen Scene (2015-09-12 08:36:21)

Last edited by Acton_Baby (2015-09-12 11:25:16)

What?  No Merzbow yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enR1NeCjnxU

Mobile Fidelity Records - Steam Railroading Under Thundering Skies (1961)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKEs2ruAyc

Re Bulgarian choral music, yes I bought that.  4AD were the source of so much great music.  I was delighted to work with members of Dead Can Dance later.

23 Skidoo... wow, I'll have to dig out my 12" of that one, I'd completely forgotten about it.

Ciccone Youth - Needle-Gun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VqWP620JGA&list=PLBgBu5mlSgzhq2rUKWGohDWdAIWaNJaYY&index=2

Brian Eno · David Byrne - America Is Waiting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ9gao_OtQk&list=PLbNmm56WuZl_tekRnQfj00FdvlhypaiqM

Basil Kirchin - Suite of Unused Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8OoR5VkU4Q

On the Post Punk tip...
Glenn Branca - Lesson No. 1 For Electric Guitar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsb0m9smUwE

Theoretical Girls - You Got Me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFHqOWjK8Po&list=PLmxjHIszfHyAl86k6Dl7nX_YQa4pvRyjk

THE DANCE -"Do-DaDa"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDMc_vP5fo

^^^He he, thanks. Now that is one compilation I've meaning to get for a while Acton...