Robbie Williams entering my head this morning was unexpected; it also reminded me of my silly musical meanderings - he was one of the first faves to claim of, and there is a surviving photograph somewhere of a school picnic with me listening to an album of his (in cassette form) on my walkman. The music I bootstrapped my musical existence with makes for a curious narrative.
Childhood was in a void of international artists. We only had Doordarshan, you see, and on it there was Chitrahaar (and later Sueprhit Muqabala) to look forward to - no Billboard Top 100 until much later when cable television made entry into the household. A friend of mine did have Cable TV, but I would be more keen on scheming a plot that will have his old gnarly aging uncle leave me with half his inheritance, or ended in a peek of her sister Jessica's tits, or sourcing the latest scraps of pornographic paper of human forms I'd never imagined before - oh, the wankers that we were back then. But I still managed to know about
Stereo Nation (if you count that as international; they still maintain
annoying site) and
Shaggy (garbled enough to be hip).
At this time, my cousin sis - who is a year younger to me, btw - could claim to be my leading authority on music. She had cable, yes. She had a VCR, yes. She had a coterie of uptown friends (who, behind locked doors, cried their teenage hearts out thinking of a sinking
Leo while listening to
My Heart Will Go On). And the most influential of all, a trio of wannabe hipsters in the form of her cousins (from her dad's side) in varying age brackets. It was through her influence that I heard of names like Spice Girls and Whigfield.
In 'those' days, this 'modern' music wasn't available, or if it was then it would cost thrice my pocket-money, so visiting a music shop was more like visiting a museum - can only see and not buy. The way over this obstacle was to record your compilations. The way for that was to either have a dual-cassette-deck tape recorder at home and a sea of cassettes to record from, or asking the music shop owner to do it for a
negligible feasible charge.
Since Pa had, ages ago, brought home a behemoth Panasonic dual-deck player/recorder, I tried my hand at making my own compilations, with albums (cassettes) sourced from rich and hip friends. I didn't do too well. So, going for the alternative, I approached a trusted music shop in Kamla Nagar near Delhi University.
The modus operandi was: to buy blank cassettes/tapes - preferably Sony or Panasonic (and understandably 90-min tapes over the 60-min ones) - then prepare a list of songs to record which would total upto the recording time on the tape, then hand it over to the music store guy, alongwith half the nett charges for the recording (for the charge of Rs5 per song), then come back a couple of days later to get your bliss. [Yes, I've always been a pirate, but the lengths we'd go to back then, compared to today, is an amusing reflection]
Here's some contents of my first compilation (I eventually didn't include Shaggy, as it was too scandalous to be listening in front of parents):
- Whigfield - Sexy Eyes
- Whigfield - Saturday Night
- Spice Girls - Wannabe
- Stereo Nation - Baby Don't Break My Heart
- No Mercy - Where Do You Go
- Los del Rio - Macarena
- ...
I would probably vomit if I come across such a compilation in the future. Back then, it was the coolest audio recording I had in my possession. Leider Geil.
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