I was given this CD from Gridcity records of Newark in 1995 or 1996. We were starting an ill-fated, European-funded (how those adjectives go together like Rizlas and Drum shag) project with no fewer than 17 partners. Newark and Sherwood College were one of the partners working on the part of the project that was to develop online learning courses for the music industry, and they gave me one of these CDs. I always feel it's something of a betrayal when I get given a promotional CD. Someone somewhere has put time and money into pressing these discs in the hope that this will be a step on their journey to 'making it'. So don't give the bloody things to me, because that's a complete waste: I won't be able to help anyone.
As if to prove this point, I never listened to this CD. For the first few years, I used to see it on my shelf and feel a little guilty about that. But soon it was joined by other promotional or covermounted CDs that I hadn't listened to, and the guilt got diluted.
When I say I never listened to it, I mean I really never listened to it once, never opened the jewel case. Until today, when I listened to it nearly two times through, to see if I could find anything else to say about it. God, I wouldn't want to be an A&R man, sifting through material like this. When I was thirteen, my dad used to say, "You don't want to get into being a musician, because the difference between being a famous star and being a penniless nobody is only a hair's breadth". Listening to this CD, I wouldn't have much of a clue which bands were worth offering a record deal to. (Well, probably none of them, and I suspect nobody much did, and probably few if any of the bands still exist; certainly Gridcity Records seems to have disappeared.)
Which is not to say that there aren't some OK songs here. There's a band called Submariner that sound vaguely like the Wedding Present at times. There's a band called Involuntary Movements of the Head who have a little of the Jesus and the Mary Chain about them. And The Web (great mid-90s name, guys) have a hillbilly sound that stands out amid the rest of the jangly indie-rock. Oh, I hope no-one linked to this CD or those bands ever reads this.
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