'Nine of Swords' 1990

Nine of Swords 1990

This was loathed by everyone, me included. There are actually tracks on this that I like, or liked, until they appeared on this tape, now I hate them.

Side A
Kings X - Over My Head
Kings X - King Is Coming
Neneh Cherry - Buffalo Stance
David Bowie - Fame 90
The Stranglers - 96 Tears
The B-52s - Roam
Neneh Cherry - Manchilde
The Damned - Billy Bad Breaks
Living Color - Open Letter to a Landlord

Side B
Bryan Adams - Run to You
Then Jericho - The Motive (Living Without You)
Public Enemy ft. Ice Cube & Big Daddy Kane - Burn Hollywood Burn
The Damned - Video Nasty
Billy Idol - Endless Sleep
Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane
Georgia Sattelites - Nights of Mystery
The Stranglers - Golden Brown
Aerosmith - She's On Fire
Zodiac Mindwarp - Whore of Babylon
(on other side of inlay card)
Blondie - Rapture
Faith No More - RnR

I'd just walked out of a dream first job because of mental and emotional exhaustion, and this compilation was created in the first flush of freedom and apparent maturity.
For much of the content here I blame the job I thought I'd escaped to - the mainstream record store in St Albans at the time, which seemed to think it was a luxury car showroom when it was actually a market stall shoving homogenized overpriced crap out as fast as it could. Within six months I'd be working the night warehouse shift at Tescos - which wasn't a dream job.
Our Price went bust years before amazon and music downloads affected the rest of the industry. In retrospect Our Price wouldn’t have survived 6 months competition from Tesco, never mind Amazon. Our Price operated in an era when the music industry would happily charge you £16.99 for a plastic cassette tape which could disintegrate on the way home from the store. Consider this next time someone is giving you a guilt trip about downloading.

The empowered 'grown-up' in St Albans who had was in the process of removing me from her life was a big Neneh Cherry fan and much of the rest of the selection reaks of approval seeking and self pity. First two songs by forgotten rock band Kings X included I think because they were on on the only vinyl single I ever bought. I never went on to listen to the album, probably too expensive to buy! Listening to the guitar sound on 'Over My Head' I can kind of see why I liked the single (though it sounded better in the record shop). I was in the process of graduating toward a more raw sound as seen by the last track. Faith No More is still my favourite band - and I was introduced to them (and Public Enemy, & Living Color) by the great workmates who I'd just left in London to work in the mainstream record shop.

Looking back I wasn't fitting in with the urban working class crowd, and I wasn't really fitting in with the suburban proto-Yuppies either.
I'm my own thing now :-)