Forumusic
Update: September 2012
Welcome back, it's been a while.
Regular readers will be aware we're gradually wading through 90s boots to gain insight into the way the focus of crate digging gradually shifted from 1990 to 2000.
The full time period we're really interested in runs a little longer than that from the birth of the internet in 1990 up to the year 2010; a period which included a massive incremental rise in internet use, the shift from mailing lists to message boards and the dawn MP3s and file sharing technology such as Divshare and YouTube.
Given that 1990 > 2010 is our Forumusic arc it will come as a slight surprise that in this update only one of the new articles falls within that timeframe.
As we're in this website lark for the long haul we dont complain at all when members of the Forumusic forum offer us quality musical journalism and we're delighted this update to finally present Julian-Leigh Smith's musings, photographs and track selections on UK Prog alongside Paul Bareham's pithy and pointed recommendations in Girl Group Sounds.
As regular charity shop and car booting enthusiasts ourselves we're more than happy to feature articles that provide a heads-up to worthwhile 45s or lps that may otherwise escape our attention.
It's highly unlkely of course that anyone who either likes interesting looking sleeves or reads music
magazines would ever flick past a Gracious, Locomotive or Quintessence lp but it's always good to gain some insight into origins and context. It's also good to see a few that are under the radar and still well below the price of some big hitters.
Julian was nearly there for prog the first time around but as an old head on young shoulders he played catch-up with rock and prog at a time when many of his peers were flattening cardboard boxes and spinning on their heads.
Paul had a similarly anachronistic existence in the 1980s when he fell in love with the Girl Group Sounds of the late 50s and early 60s. Now all grown up and geographically removed from Essex he's very happy to share favourite known and lesser known girl group odes of love lost, gained or wanted with all of us.
A long way from the 90s and 00s are features on yet another 70s compilation series put out by a record company to cash in on older recordings.
The Decca Sounds... series appeared around 1978 replete with girls in bikinis plastered over many of their covers. The notion of starting each title with Sounds and finishing it with a word such as Relaxed, Bouncy or Paraguayan was a no-brainer.
Beneath our customary wall of the sleeves in the Art section you'll find a cautionary tale about collecting lps in a series which will be a more than familiar tale to many of you.
God only knows why but we've listened to all the lps as well and written a review in the Music section. Use it as a heads-up to ignore lots of them when you next see them in a charity shop near you.
In the 70s and 80s love was often expressed between romantic couples via a mixtape.
Cd burners updated the format and when internet forums appeared in the late 90s Cd swaps between members across continents quickly turned into eagerly anticipated annual events. Mixtape exchanges between consenting couples have now evolved into mass orgies between strangers all burning and swapping at once. From love to a love-In, on-line and through the post.
Google reveals Cd swapping on forums has existed for over a decade and not just on music forums. Forumusic has been in contact with a variety of different communities about their swap scenes and will present a series of articles about them next year
Cd swappers could of course make life a lot easier
for themselves by utilizing any number of programs to share their compilations and Cd cover artwork but there's obviously something satisfying about putting together a physical artefact and sharing it.
Click to Scenes to see artwork from the Waxidermy Cd Swap 2012 and some thoughts on how forums and swaps are contributing to a surge in interest for excavating and appreciating the work of artists who were under-promoted in their day and have been overlooked for decades.
It's like Northern Soul all over again.
We'll try not to leave it too long before the next update.
Ian Townsend, Andy Cann, Col Wolfe
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