Various: The Tape with No Name
This cassette harks back to the same era of the NME as Straight No Chaser, when a Roy Carr's name on a compilation was a stamp of quality. A compilation is so much more useful and satisfying when it goes deep rather than wide, when it gives a survey of all that's new and interesting in one scene or genre, rather than taking the pick'n'mix approach of recent Uncut and Word covermounts or Later&hellip, and passing off under the banner of eclecticism.
This one performed the same function in 1987 as Sounds of the New West eleven years later. Probably the first time I had heard Steve Earle, K.D. Lang, Nanci Griffiths, Lyle Lovett — and possibly even John Prine and John Hiatt — though I guess Andy Kershaw may have been playing them on Radio 1. I never became fans of any of those people (Prine the possible exception), but over years of radio listening I've grown into them like rough denims. It's a shock to find that I've been listening to them for more than half my life.
Something about Nanci Griffith's Ford Econoline made the Boy, who's recovering from his first cold and cough, prick up his ears immediately like a fox cub who's just heard his mum's call to go to earth.
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