09 July 2021

THE TAPE



I'm not gonna lie - with a title like The Tape, you had better not be fucking around. And this compilation from the folks at New Music Seminar from 1986? Well, it fucks around a little bit, but ultimately it works. This is basically what you wish you had heard on the radio in the 1980s (if you were a small town teenager who didn't really have the whole punk thing dialed in yet) instead of what you actually heard on the radio. A full hour of should-have-been-more-popular-than-they-were bands like CRANKCALL LOVEAFFAIR, NEW PARTS FROM OLD, ALGEBRA SUICIDE, M-1 ALTERNATIVE and several others walking that line between commercial pre-alt and post punk (as in "after they were punk," not like the sub genre) college rock hooks. The ALTER BOYS right into the almost twee-pop THREE HITS on the second side is where this comp really completes the sale for me, enough to make me revisit the whole damn thing when I was done. Fans of bands like FOR AGAINST and the Independent Records mid-decade catalog will easily find something here...and the rest of you? Well, it's definitely work a look. 









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