I’m not sure if even Sgt Rock would have been able to help me much, back then Jean-Luc, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
In many ways this playlist (to use the modern parlance, forty years on) was the soundtrack to that second term of mine at Keele. I refer to the making of this mix tape in my piece about that first 10 days of February 1981:
I probably didn’t record all of this mix tape one morning on 7 February 1981, although that day is the only diary mention of “taping, etc”. I suspect that I recorded some of this towards the end of the Christmas holidays and then some more of it on that February day. For sure I would have scraped the reel-to-reel tape onto cassette that day (along with a few more of my albums and stuff) to enhance the tiny collection I had so far taken up to Keele.
On reflection, this feels more a quantity selection than a quality selection. But now I was away from my recording equipment for weeks/months at a stretch, I can understand why.
Anyway, enough of my chatter, pop-pickers, here is the list and some embedded sound and video files for you to play with on those tracks you’d like to hear again.
- I Ain’t Gonna Stand For It, Stevie Wonder
- I Shot the Sheriff, Light of the World
- Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straits
- Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, David Bowie
- Woman, John Lennon
- Can You Feel It, The Jacksons
- Is Vic There, Department 5
- I Can’t Stand It, Eric Clapton
- Twighlight Café, Susan Fassbender
- Sgt Rock (Is Going To Help Me),XTC
- I’m In Love With a German Filmstar, The Passions
- Elephant’s Graveyard, Boomtown Rats
- Gangsters of the Groove, Heatwave
- It’s My Turn, Diana Ross
- A Little in Love, Cliff Richard
- That’s Entertainment, The Jam
- Return of the Los Palmos 7, Madness
- Young Parisians, Adam and the Ants
- Fade To Grey, Visage
- The Freeze, Spandau Ballet
- Rapture, Blondie
- Vienna, Ultravox
- In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins
- Flash, Queen
As usual. some excellent stuff in there, plus the odd embarrassment.