Taped crusader: my cluttered collection of cassettes

I’ve had a pile of cassette tapes gathering dust for maybe 15 years. I figured it was time to go through them. Sorting through some old belongings, I discovered an old walkman that still worked. Bingo! What would be on these dusty old tanglers? I was mostly hoping to find a phone interview I did with Nivek Ogre, or a face-to-face with Fear Factory, neither of which saw the light of day thanks to a mishap in a house move. They must have been in the other pile of tapes, which got damaged. Nope. On this one, I found …

TAPE 1

It’s in a Smashing Pumpkins sleeve, but is actually a bootleg of Ministry in 1994. I went through a brief phase of picking up dodgy tapes – cassettes and videos – from the Camden Market. The bloke on the stall claimed to be mates with Killing Joke, and said they let him onto the stage to stand at the side to get the best footage. I never bought one of his Killing Joke tapes, but I did walk away with Skinny Puppy’s 1986 Ain’t It Dead Yet and NIN in Dallas, 1990. I’m guessing this is from that market stall.

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The Hit Parade

I would describe my current state – physical and emotional – as extremely fragile. There’s a good reason for this*, but what’s tipping me over the edge at this particular moment is the image of Pig and Sow looking coyly adoring in a promo pic for the most saccharine pop group since Wham.

Rediscovered: SCHAFT – The Hero Inside

Come here a moment, and watch this:

1994 live footage of Schaft, a Japanese musical side project of Soft Ballet’s Fujii Maki, Imai Hisashi of Buck-Tick, and Raymond Watts (KMFDM, Pig). It sounds approximately like Johnny Rotten snarling over How Soon Is Now, interrupted by Corey Taylor and a Japanese movie soundtrack that wandered onto the wrong stage by mistake. Although that description might be slightly off. Ah, just click ‘play’.

To hear Raymond’s explanation of his work in Japan, here’s an interview with another international project, Schwein, also featuring Imai. The clips with Imai and Atsushi Sakurai are in Japanese, but Sacha Konietzko and Raymond speak English. Raymond’s just so OTT, you gotta love him (his bit starts at 6’29”). “Bake a new cake”, indeed!

The Hero Inside was the best Schaft track I heard because it was catchy and that bit different. Other tracks like Cold Light and Thirsty Fly rocked in their own mid-90s way, but weren’t majorly innovative, which is why I never really got into them, but Hero Inside was a song that stayed with me since I heard it.