This is the CD that came with Issue 7 (Spring 2001) of the Comes With a Smile fanzine, which apparently ceased publication last year. I might have bought it in Record Collector in Sheffield, but I also have a memory of buying a fanzine like this with a CD and a Robyn Hitchcock feature when I was in Seattle. But that could have been another fanzine — they probably all have Robyn Hitchcock features. I made a bet with myself just now that there would be an article by Everett True in Issue 7, because the other thing that most fanzines seem to share is his writing. But I lost the bet.
This compilation makes quite a coherent album, perhaps more so than yesterday's Merge collection. It's also got more tracks by artists I'm familiar with — Nina Nastasia, Howe Gelb, Cowboy Junkies, David Grubbs. It's fun to speculate about how the fanzine came to license these tracks. For example, L.D. Beghtol interviews oRSo in the fanzine, but there's no oRSo on the CD. There is, however, a track by one of L.D.'s bands, Flare. Similarly, James Hindle interviews Low: no Low on the CD, but a song by James.
This Hindle guy keeps cropping up. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that his CD was played on the radio (see the end of this entry). Then I looked in my diary and found out that, sure enough, he was actually on the bill of a Track and Field gig that Lucy went to at the Water Rats Theatre in 2004. Though he was first on, and I can't remember whether or not we saw him. But I have a feeling I may end up becoming a fan.
Reading old fanzines is like that: seeing that you probably read about names that you later came to know and love, but when you first came across them, they meant nothing to you. Like the review of an M. Ward album here — M. Ward didn't really register with me until I saw him play two years later.
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