That tape you did me

Bring on the confetti, it’s my Wedding Anniversary this week. Sitting in my bedroom some 21 years ago, in a slightly bizarre pre-marital musical brainwashing courtship ritual I produced a ‘I think you’ll like this’ style cassette compilation for the future Mrs Forté (I remember her being slightly less impressed with volume 2 by the way, The Cardiacs were on it, not one for the ladies). No mean feat on the Panasonic Tape to Tape stereo monster.

It became part of the fabric of our new life – ‘that tape you did me’ as it was named. It encapsulated a moment in time, a transitional period in my musical (d)evolution, that awkward ‘goodbye heavy metal, hello brave new world’ phase, maybe as much to impress my soon to be bride and her friends with my new found open mind as anything deeper. Look I have a soft side too, it’s not all James Hetfield curls and bullet belts you know. It became the soundtrack to a year of parties in friends garages and still sparks big smiles.

It had a hand crafted metallic green cover with type set in Pagemaker (horizontally stretched helvetica as was the vogue), overprinted on orange card. BASF C90, slightly underrun. A late night labour of love, of some painful consideration. I angonised over the song choice, a mix of new horizons, safe bets and a few fast forwards. In fact I re-recorded the entire thing because the running order felt wrong and I’d also prematurely shared The Cardiacs and Ozric Tentacles a little early in our relationship. Not good for the long game.

Young love does amazing things to your acceptance of new things, there’s no way this tape would have existed even a year prior as my third ear had yet to be opened to the wonderful delights of ‘lady’ music… celtic soul, acid jazz, faux folk, cheesey vocal house and shoegaze. It’s incredible what can happen in such a short period of time, some kind of sonic epiphany, music of the heart maybe. No looking back.

Some tunes were classics of the era, pure John Peel baggy belters, some less memorable and some slightly perplexing in hindsight, but it’s the overall immersive experience that counts. It has a one for they boys, one for the girls kind of flow… The Pogues, Edie Brickell, The Wedding Present, The Sugarcubes, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Sundays, The Wonder Stuff, All About Eve (our first dance at our Wedding) you get the drift.

In isolation these tunes rarely make it out of the stable these days but I love hearing it start to finish at this time of year. I remade it digitally last year to celebrate 20 years and here it is, in its full techicolour splendour. If Mrs Forté hasn’t destroyed volume 2, maybe I’ll remake that too.

Enjoy, Happy Anniversary Mrs Forté.

Posted by: Forte