Sleeve Notes

Welcome to my literary mixtape. The Soundtrack to my Life.

The following songs have made me into who I am.

They explain to me and to some extent the people that have grown to know me, love me or hate me how I have become to be. How I think. How I feel. Why I react a certain way to good or bad situations. How I make Love. Why I am in Love. Why I am sad. Why I have a tendency to bounce around the room playing air guitar, air saxophone, air drums on a regular basis.

The following is not a music obsessive enthusing about his favourite music, although I am and always have been a music obsessive. Not at all. In fact, I cannot bear to hear a few of these songs. There are songs on this list, like Hot Chocolate and Aswad for example, that fall into this category and make me either cringe or invoke painful memories, remind me of bruises or emotional scars I have collected over the years or bring me to tears but they more than deserve to be on this list, just as much as The Clash or The Red Hot Chili Peppers and as an obsessive, it pains me to write such a thing.

Whereas some of the following songs make me feel on top of the world, remind me of the first time in fell in love or even the last, some of these songs also remind me of the countless broken hearts I have either had or caused. This is great to hear and then sometimes not. It’s a matter of mood. But the one thing they all have in common is that they have shaped me into who I am now by the significance and effect they have had on my life. It’s all about the music and the soundtrack that has been my life.

Music is important. It elates us, comforts us, heals us, excites us, makes us reminisce, makes us fall in love but most of all is always there when there is nobody else. Sure, bands we love split up but the documentation that we as human beings can leave behind is through the power of melody that has such a lasting effect on others is the one and only true art form that has influence that is unparalleled and human nature can do without. What I wanted to awknowledge with this project is what I believe to be great songwriting and musicianship. Sure, some of the following songs have not won awards or sold thousands of copies, but like books, that is unfortunately not a sign of quality. Just good marketing.

The beauty of the melody, the art of the lyric and how a simple three verse song can affect a young person’s life. There are plenty of songs that I love but all of the following stories are just that, songs that have had some sort of significance and stories behind why and how they have gained such a place in my life despite, in some cases my resentment for them.

Sometimes, I believe that I was born about 15 years too late. Kinda like that Sandi Thorn song,

I wish I was a punk rock girl with flowers in my hair.... but obviously not a girl and not necessarily flowers in my hair either, but you get my drift.

Essentially, I should have emerged around 1960 and in West London. I’d love to say that I had always been punk and chanced upon the 101ers at The Chippenham or the Pistols at The Union or one of the less than a hundred people at the 100 Club, but away from the mainlining Nick Kent and chain weilding Sid Vicious of course and away from all that spitting too. Actually, I’m not so sure on the ripped clothes either. Not after I was sixteen anyway.

Yes on reflection, I probably would have made a crap punk. Although, it would have been interesting to be on the Kings Road in the late 70’s with all that bizarre sexual energy and the anticipation of something that they didn’t quite know was simmering under the surface. To think, to be on nodding terms with the likes of those folks who ran Sex or Seditionaries or really any of the movers and shakers of the highly influential upcoming fashion and music scene of the future. The tortured, middle class souls who shocked an appaled the passing collective of High Society loafers. Pete Burns, Adam Ant, Mick Jones, Tony James, Boy George, John Lydon.

But like a lot of people in the seventies, it was more about the music for me. Ok, so let’s say that I should have been born in 1965 and hit the first series of music that I loved around 1979-81 full on, while I was bursting with hormones and energy and the spit, of course.

Well, again not the spit, but the style of New Wave was a lot easier to handle than the odd shades of punk fashion. It is a style and fashion that I have always loved and often beaten up in the street for adopting. Years before those same people adopted the same , of course. The skinny ties, the shirts and drainpipes and the glamorous world of dress up. But all of this was still fun when you are five years old, while everyone else was taking it a whole lot seriously.

Being the eldest of three, I had no older siblings to look to for my musical crushes and inspirations. I always wished I had a cooler, older brother that I could turn to for musical admiration and even though I found myself surrogates for this position in years to come, I didnt so I took a huge prompt from my parents, mostly my mother.

She was a total Marc Bolan devotee (hence my name) and had all of the T.Rex albums and singles, carefully catalogued and in chronological order in a black vinyl box that smelled like it was made from the records housed inside. She even had the ones from the late sixties, when it was just him, a guitar and a bongo player.

Back then, they were known as Tyrannosaurus Rex. She didn’t seem to have anything she loved, just this record collection that was lovingly stored next to the record player. She went to see him live amongst the screaming throng of girls and was a member of his fanclub and everything. We weren’t allowed to play the records, but we were able to look through them, but to be very careful of the order that they were in. I had to beg my mother to play them for me and she would make me promise to be good each day and let me pick one that she would play before I went to bed. I fell for it everytime.

It was the titles that intrigued me more than anything else. Metal Guru, Children of the Revoluton, Solid Gold Easy Action. As titles went, they did not invoke a great deal to me. I could tell (even at that early age) that there were some hippy drugtaking involved in the making of these records and I have to admit, he had a thing for album titles: Prophets, Seers and Sages The Angels of the Ages, Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tommorrow and not forgetting the early classic, My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows.

Yes, whatever he was taking, must have been good shit.

It was the earlier singles that were on Fly Records that intrigued me and I especially wanted to play. They were black with a white fly on them. I liked it when my mother played them best because I liked watching the Fly spin around on the turntable. Because of this, I really got to like the songs on them and watch the turning fly. Ride a White Swan, Jeepster, Hot Love and my favourite from that early era, Debora.




The song Debora perfectly sums up the sixties. It’s spacy, repetitive and folky and has very simple lyrics. It conjours up dancing barefoot in a field of daisies and free love in the forest.

My father had terrible taste in music, favouring Mowtown and disco. He loved Gladys Knight and Tina Turner and listen to Alan Freeman religiously on the radio. My mother was a full on glam rock fan. How these two met is anybody’s guess.

At times, he was loving and caring and others, he was not a nice man.

He bled our family dry, emotionally and financially but one thing that survived the fights, the arguements, the violence, out of all the things of ours he pawned or sold or lent and never to reappear again was that record collection. My mother left in the end, but she left kicking and screaming with her records. When I saw the fight she put up for that prized collection she kept close to her, I knew then that I would be as passionate, that I would grow up with that much passion and heart for a song, an artist, an album, a label and maybe one day I could keep my children quiet just by pulling out the right seven inch.

I knew that music would keep me going also through hard times, sad times, happy times. That no matter what, if I fell out with a partner, found myself hard up, homeless, without hope that I would always have my music and I would always leave with my records.

My best friend Rolf or The Big Man, will crop up once or twice in the following pages, has the tapes (and more recently CDs) I have ever done for him in a large box in his living room. There are a lot. Last count, about fifteen years worth and at one point I had a knack at one point at sending like four or five a week. This was when I was very bored though. His ex-girlfriend gave him unending grief in the past about the quantity of my small, plastic audio gifts and continued to every time the postman delivered yet another package from the other end of the country.
The Big Man (which I call him for reasons that will become evident), has kept every single one. I have to commend his resiliance. I am terrible at keeping things.

Through desperation to get a copy of something from someone or happening upon a live set on the radio, I have recorded over so many great things but you can always count on Rolf to have it still. I have even, through moving around a lot with life, found myself rummaging through his box on my annual or bi-annual visits home for some obscure live or demo version of something, often taking the majority of my visit away from my mother and instead upto my elbows in dust at his place. Compilations that have contained albums I have newly discovered with a backlist of other tracks, b-sides, out-takes and demos, carefully handpicked selections from different artists that I have come across that I too want him to discover and share my joy in finding because I knew he wouldn’t (with two newborns and no job) be able to afford them.

Through my friend’s equal passion for music and love for receiving the postal tresures, I grew with my love for him in my abscence and also a confidence with friendships I had sadly lacked when I had grew up. I treasured the rare similar tapes I got from him as I have done from others. It doesn’t happen very often but when an friend or partner has laid down their heartfelt passions for me on C-90, I think its the greatest gift in the world and fashioning a compilation to someones taste and which is tailored to perfection for someone’s personality is no easy task. It takes skill and patience and is not something that should be taken lightly.

My last girlfriend documented her whole Soundtrack to her Life for me on a matter of three tapes a few years ago. Documenting her childhood, college years and present day influences, she carefully picked out the tracks from her amazing and eclectic library of alternative and indie treasures and poured out her heart into the little explanations scribbled on the tape cover. That means the world to me and I’m not sure whether I told her that enough before our time came to (sadly for me) an end.

My other friend, a singer songwriter recorded me a tape a few years before that started with a song she wrote to a some song lyrics that had been lying around my flat. The tape contained her earliest stuff which I had never heard before and was filled up with songs by obscure female fronted bands, which my penchant for was and always has been a private joke between us. That effort, that gift, that nerdy quirk in people that are willing to share their musical desires with me means more to me than any materialistic offer or expensive keepsake.

I will keep that safe until I die. That’s the sort of thing you always make sure you have with you wherever you lay your hat and call your home and you don’t tape over just because there’s a Rancid gig you went to on the radio.

One thing I know is that until the day I die, I will be earnestly agonising over my Top 10 albums, where to place Troublegum and does Ritual del lo Habitual deserve to be Number One in my heart for this long. For the time being it still does.

Where do the new bands that I have discovered and I listen to more than any recently fit in there? Bands like Boston natives, The Dresden Dolls and The Dropkick Murphys or equally awe-inspiring homegrown talent like Lightyear and Mikabomb. Then there are the classics. Which Metallica album goes in there? Do the Guns N’Roses Illusion albums go in as one entry or seperately? Which Nirvana album? Is Nevermind too obvious a choice? You know you liked In Utero better? Then The Big Man is always there behind me nagging about how Bleach was their finest moment (something we will always argue about) or reminding me about how my favourite tracks are actually on Incesticide, their underrated B-Sides collection.

These things are important, even if you are trying to make important life decisions like, where to live, shall we have a child, shall we break up, shall we get engaged etc at the same time. One thing that I do know is that I will always continue to find excuses for making compilation CDs for new and existing friends, colleagues, lovers and past girlfriends because who or what you know or what political affiliation you take is not important, it’s what you like that defines you and what you appreciate collectively and can spark debate and conversation whlie respecting others interests, bonding through the power of music and all that. The passion you put out there through the power of a CD burner or in the past, CD’s to tapes can bind together friendships that last forever and in my case, have and I will always be safe in the knowledge that for as long as I live there will be music in my heart and a never ending soundtrack to my life that will always need adjusting.