THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO SOUND......

Listening to music on the move used to be a huge part of my life until a few years ago. As a naturally quiet and shy person i rarely made smalltalk with strangers, so putting in my earphones and turning up the volume was second nature to me. I grew up in the heyday of the Walkman, so from the age of about 11 i was rarely without one, although mine were always cheaper models - the ALBA brand springs immediately to mind! - and my clumsy adolescent hands meant that they often broke, so both walkman and headphones/earphones were constantly being replaced. In addition to this i was never without a stack of blank cassettes, recording from vinyl, the radio, and occasionally from friends tapes via the "magic" of high speed dubbing. Listening to music whilst walking to school or during my paper round meant i could block out the world, and bury myself in sound. My first pre-recorded tape was Schubert Dip by EMF, who i was a huge fan of at the time, and i listened to it constantly, obsessing over every note, every lyric. I don't think i listened to much else for a few months, although i still bought a single every Saturday. It wasn't until my 15th birthday that i had any other tapes to add to my collection, when i spent my birthday money on the debut albums by Seal and C +C Music Factory. Although there were a few great songs on both - mainly the singles - neither of them became regular listening, but at the time i was glad to have them.

 

Another act who had a huge impact on me at that time came not from the world of music, but comedy. The surreal humour of Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves, who along with his partner Bob Mortimer, bought some much needed fresh air to my television viewing with their Big Night Out show on Channel 4. Along with the alternative comedy of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and its huge spinoff series Newman and Baddiel In Pieces, comedy was being recast as "the new rock 'n' roll, with the latter duo selling out Wembley Arena. With the self-styled "King of light entertainment" Reeves including music as part of his characters' repertoire it came as no surprise when he launched a (short lived) musical career, with a top ten cover of "Born Free", a number one hit with a cover of sixties pop song "Dizzy" (backed by spiky indie band The Wonder Stuff), and a top 20 album entitled I Will Cure You. As a huge fan of Reeves i naturally badgered my parents into buying me the album for Christmas. A mix of cover versions and comedy songs from Big Night Out, it kept me entertained through the winter until my next tape-based musical obsession took over (they would often get played until the tape began to wear thin or, occasionally, snap, necessitating deft use of sellotape!). 

One cold November Sunday morning i was traipsing the streets of my town on my paper round when the headlines caught my eye and shook me awake. Just a day after announcing that he was suffering from AIDS, frontman of Queen and rock legend Freddie Mercury had died aged just 45. I wasn't particularly a fan of Queen nor Mercurys' solo career, although a few songs had penetrated my consciousness, but this was the first big name artist i knew to die during my lifetime (the legends, icons and pioneers are sadly dropping like flies these days). It was huge news and soon their music was everywhere again. Queen had not long released Greatest Hits II, which collected most of their singles from the eighties up to the releases from their 1990 album Innuendo. My Mum bought the video version of the album, Greatest Flix II, and as this would become regularly played at home i soon became acquainted with their more recent music - the 70's songs i was well aware of - and found myself getting into it. A couple of months later the cassette of this album would soundtrack my first visit abroad, on a school trip to Eastern Europe - namely Prague, Budapest, and Vienna, the former communist Eastern Bloc having opened up to western tourism since the fall of the USSR and the Berlin Wall. Having no friends on this trip, the songs of Queen became a companion and a background to the sights of countries discovering the opportunities of capitalism and no state interference in their daily lives. This tape even started a conversation about music with one of the popular lads from school!

 

I came back from the trip with a daft adolescent crush on a sixth form girl, and as Valentine's Day was around that time the charts were inevitably full of love songs. I've never been one for soppy, sentimental ballads, especially the overblown kind, but my teenage hormones were racing, which resulted in a (thankfully) very short lived liking of Simply Red, whose then current album Stars was a hugely popular, and i found myself buying "For Your Babies" single. Fortunately this didn't result in me trying to become a wannabe ladies man whose music collection consisted of " seduction songs " (people like that do exist, i've met them), as the single i bought alongside it would determine my future tastes.  

Madness had been one of the most popular bands of the eighties, with a following to match that of a football team and a string of hits, most of them Top 10. Their commercial peak had been back in 1982, when they held a hat trick of chart toppers with their only UK number one single "House Of Fun",  and their first best of, Complete Madness, which had topped both the album and video charts. But by 1984 their success was on the wane: the band were growing up in public and as they shed their "nutty boys" image and began to produce more thoughtful, grown-up music they began to fall out of step with the pop music of the times and some of their fans. Chart positions began to decline, keyboardist, chief songwriter and musical director Mike Barson left and by 1986 the band were no longer enjoying it. Tired after 7 years on the treadmill and with tensions between the remaining 6 members, they decided to split. Their final chart positions indicate how low their stock had fallen: their last single (Waiting For) The Ghost Train, despite being a bona fide pop classic that would have undoubtedly graced the top 5 a few years earlier managed a lowly 18; and their second best of compilation Utter Madness scraped to an appalling 27. The ever-changing tastes of a fickle record buying public moved on and within a year they were forgotten by all but their most loyal fans. Fast forward to 1992, and suddenly their name was being mentioned again, and with more respect than they got in their heyday. Why? Well, Virgin Records had the rights to Madness' back catalogue, and with both the cd and nostalgia markets entering a boom period they had put out a couple of budget compilations on their Pickwick label - the kind that usually sell in motorway service stations and budget shops - entitled It's..... Madness! and It's Madness.... Too!. These had sold well enough for Virgin to put together a proper greatest hits album, complete with a big marketing campaign. Madness' 1981 hit "It Must Be Love" was re-released in time for Valentine's Day, and went back in the top ten. A few weeks later the greatest hits album Divine Madness was at number one, with the video collection doing similarly well. 

I had seen the video for "It Must Be Love" on Top Of The Pops and been instantly taken by both song and video, so i snapped up the 7" , and was soon into the b-side "Bed And Breakfast Man" (which i later learned was from their debut album). So, armed with my walkman and some leftover spending money from the school trip, i went into Nottingham and snapped up Divine Madness. To say that it changed my life is no understatement: Madness were the first band whose music i truly fell in love with, and through them i was introduced to so much music, which altered and informed my ever growing and eclectic tastes. I was obsessed with this album: i listened to it constantly, on the move and at home, i never tired of it. When the tape finally snapped beyond repair i decided to have a cd player for Christmas and got the cd (which i taped so i could continue to listen to it on my walkman). None of my few friends at school or college understood my love of a band from the past - one lad, Neil, became a short-lived friend for no other reason than he had Complete Madness on cassette - and although i didn't completely stop listening to other music Madness prevailed above everything else. 

I also had the video a couple of months later, just one more thing to add to my obsession with the magnificent seven! 

A few years later the album was re-released under the title The Heavy Heavy Hits, with one track added - the 1986 minor hit "The Sweetest Girl" - which i once again played to death, until i finally discarded walkmans and cassettes in 2000, this time in favour of the ill-fated MiniDisc format. In the intervening years i still bought the occasion cassette, although these were largely "cassingles". I have the odd twinge of nostalgia, as do many others judging by the rise in new albums being released on cassette, and a small but growing market for walkmans, albeit modern updates with mp3 functions. But for many years, before iPods, smartphones, downloads and streaming, the humble and fragile magnetic tape with its all-familiar "hiss" and spooling issues was the only way to hear your music collection on the go.