Before there was an internet

Executive Steve

Some of you kids could do with reading this.

1993. The lucky few were on Bulletin Boards, a couple of diehards still clung onto their Prestel access. For the rest of us, procedures went something like this:

a) John Peel plays four tracks from a 'new Finnish label', which happen to blow you away enough that you record the lot onto a battered C90 in one go. One group's called Circle - yeah, whatever. But it's the two first groups that, in one fell swoop, seem to make the measly few records you've accumulated so far in your young life sound completely redundant.

b) Peel reads out the address of the label, which happens to be called Bad Vugum. It's based in some Finnish outpost called Oulu. After rewinding and replaying the details a few times, you suss out that the really great tracks were by a band called Coica (?) and The Vacuum Cleaners. So you scribble down the Bad Vugum PO Box address.

c) Sorry, no Googling for 'Bad Vugum'! Websites haven't been invented yet (and, when they have, you have to use some pile of **** search engine called 'Dogpile', that works on the premise that if you type in "Martha and the Vandellas" it'll return 18,024 results solely based on the words "and the"). Instead, it's a trip to the post office and a 10-minute queue for an International Reply Coupon.

(article continues here - excellent read http://seagullscreamingkillherkillher.blogspot.com/)

old gregg

o man, I was that soldier

francois

old gregg wrote: »

o man, I was that soldier

Sounds familiar-there were only a couple of independant record outlets as well in Dublin which stocked non-chart stuff. I used to shop in Advance, they had all the punk/new wave stuff mind you at a hefty mark-up)-though i used to occasionally buy via mail order from ads you'd see in the back of NME.
Thank feck for the likes of Gemm

old gregg

it was early 80s and I was in hospital recovering from surgery, listening to John Peel on headphones, completely out of it on morph and he started to play a session from a band I'd never heard of. It was suddenly ... grab a pen, try to remember the name ... 'Pink Military' ... and then spent years trying to track down their one and only album 'Do Animals Believe In God' ... only got a copy around 5 years ago ... then found low quality mp3s on an obscure web site dedicated to the band.

... I'm just waiting for a 'and you think you had it tough' response

francois

old gregg wrote: »

... I'm just waiting for a 'and you think you had it tough' response

when i were a lad i made records out of Plasticine