Arctic Monkeys Display & Promote

All those years working In a record shop collection Vinyl, CDs, Cassettes, Special Editions & Promos. You name it and if it made a sound I collected it.
But the one thing I didn’t bother to keep was the display material !. All those posters that were stapled to the walls. The Counter box that held a stack of CD singles. The Dangler mobile for the Eurythmics single. The pre-release Ad for the forthcoming U2 Single, the leaflets for a forthcoming release, the special bag to sell it in….
And the huge window display for the Beatles album.

If you look on eBay you can find practically any record you want, but most of this promotional display material just got dumped in the bin.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to do this. If you worked in a record shop you will know how much of it you got.
But it sends shivers down my spine when I think of some of the things I’ve tore up and stuffed in a black bin bag.
All I have left to show for it are a few leftovers.

It's still worth looking at though so lets start with the Arctic Monkeys.

Cassette Singles

They were the same price as a 7" single but if you were lucky the 12" version and the 7" versions were included on the same piece of tape no more than 15 minutes long.
On the down side, like all tape, a few plays in and the sound quality started to go all weird and if you kept them in the car during cold weather it sounded like they were singing underwater.

The Cassette single, or the "Cassingle" as no one i know ever called them, was born in 1980 as far as i am concerned, although i read somewhere that the first was Howard Hughes by the Tights in 1978 (who ???...exactly!).
The first cassette single i ever owned was by Bow Wow Wow called Your Cassette Pet. Bought in 1980. It reached No 58 (UK) in December of that year and if i'm being honest i only bought it because it was sold as the first of it's kind.

Not that i didn't like the single, i just preferred Vinyl to Cassette and after trawling through a pile of old tapes tonight i can understand why. (they take forever to rewind and fast forward).
I don't think they ever really started to take off big style until the early 90s but It was of no surprise to me that they never replaced the vinyl version. However, when i worked in a record shop i was always surprised how many we did sell sometimes.

It all depended on the music though. Big Cassette single sellers were Boybands and Kids stuff (Take That, Mr Blobby) Crap sellers always seemed to be heavy rock and Indie music. In fact in the end a lot of rock bands didn't seem to bother with a cassingle version of a release. The reason was simple. Kids had little Sony Walkmans or cassette players, grown ups had record players and eventually CD Players.

But dance and rap fell somewhere in between the two. Credible dance music only sold on 12" Vinyl, mainly for budding DJs to bedroom mix with. Pop/Dance on the other hand sold by the bucket load in tape form to the masses. Probably the biggest selling Cassette single i remember from my shop days was Snap Rhythm is a Dancer. Outselling in quantity the 7" & 12" put together for us.

But then again, Vinyl singles were just starting to show signs of a huge decline in 1992. Who was to know that record shops themselves would go the same way ?. Like cassette singles, record shops are a remnant of the past that the next generation of kids will soon be asking, "What's a record shop ?". Before you can answer the question, you might first need to explain what a record was. I wonder what they will think of Car Compilation TDK C-90 tape ?.

Star of tomorrow

The Big Pink Dominos

Buy it here
Website Here

What a performance

We are being pestered at work by the performing rights society to get a licence for playing Radio One over an old fashioned Radiogram to 4 staff.
Two Letters, two phone calls, and a threat that they could turn up to check at any time and if we are caught playing music that is heard by members of the public as well the charge will be even more.

Music licences for playing in staff only areas start at £ 44.00 a year (plus vat) for 4 employees or less, so even if there are only two of you that's still £44.00(plus vat), although we are covered for live bands should U2 drop by.
To me radio is just one mass commercial for their music anyway and they charge radio stations for the privilege of playing these little commercials. But fairs fair, these radio stations are making money out of it as well, commercial radio from commercials, BBC from a licence fee, so why not ?.
But to then charge the listener for the privilege of listening to it at work as well ?.

I'm not sure whether they are trying to corner the market in sound itself or are just getting greedy, but all the boss will do it turn the radio off. And they wonder why they are hated so much.

Singing live

It can't be easy standing in front of thousands of people and singing live. Especially if you are dancing at the same time. But it should sound better than i do if play loud music on my headphones and sing along.
This video uses the live audio from Britney Spears' mic, minus the music.

Ouch !. At least it proves the mic is on and she does actually sing live. It just sounds a bit different to the record that's all.

Personal favourite, song 2, Lucky.

Blobbies Back

Well what so you think then ?. He's been gone for a while and now he's back with a new single & album in October.
I'm not sure what to think myself to be honest. Trevor Horn (Frankie Goes to Hollywood/Buggles) is supposedly twiddling the nobs on this album, hence the title 'Reality killed the video star', but i don't hear much of him in this track.
I'm sitting on the fence wondering which side to fall on.
I'll give it till October and then decide.

http://www.robbiewilliams.com/

Cover Version

Cover version of a track from the Lily Allen album It's not me it's you. Thank god they're not singing one of the others

And the original

A Video Favourite