I used to love nothing more than getting on the bus on a Monday afternoon after school, and heading to town to spend all the money I'd earned from my weekend job on CDs. Or going up to London on the weekend with my buddies, brother or by myself and hitting the music shops. There would often be something I was hoping to find with no guarantee that I'd find it, and occasionally an album that I would excitedly and unexpectedly stumble across. One of my local towns was Croydon, which was great for music shopping. It had an HMV, an Ourprice and some great second hand music shops: Beano's which was the best and had 4 floors, 101 records where my brother once found Metallica's Mettalican, and a few others I can't remember the names of. There was also a market which had a cool music stall selling band T-Shirts and pin badges.
Long before the Internet I took many a punt on albums by bands I'd never heard of, purely from the cover. An early example was Cinderella's Long Cold Winter, which I kept seeing in Woolworths on Penge High Street, on my way home from school. I had no idea who they were, or what their music was like, but something about the cover intrigued me. So much so that one day I finally bought it. What I got was an excellent bluesy rock album, with a sprinkling of 80's hair metal, and a singer that reminded me of the AC/DC guy. I still love that album today. When I got into death metal, I'd scan the cassette (and later the CD) racks in HMV and Ourprice in search of the right looking albums covers, and go for one. A bit risky I suppose, but through this method I bought Carcass' Necrotism, and Dismember's Like An Ever Flowing Stream: two of the best death metal albums ever! I clearly remember rushing to get home as quickly as possible to have a listen, totally unsure of what I was going to hear - and then being completely blown away! I also remember scanning the metal racks in Beano's and pulling out Autopsy's Mental Funeral, after noticing that insane contorted monster mash up on the cover and the murky picture of the band on the back, in front of some derelict industrial piping overgrown with dead grass. It looked grim, and I had to buy it. And what an album. The most grim sounding death metal I'd yet heard.
When I started buying music magazines, I would go through the reviews and pick out albums to buy. At first there was no one else I knew who was into the same stuff as me, so it was all about going for albums I liked the sound of, purely from the review. I remember buying the first Brutal Truth and Fear Factory albums, Deicide's Legion, and many others this way, without having heard their stuff before. My weekend job at the garden centre helped a lot: almost all of my wages went on music. But even before I had my job, I'd walk 45 minutes to school and back, saving my bus fare so I'd have a tenner to buy an album with on the weekend. This was a great time of musical discovery. I listened to albums every day: on my way to and from school, lunch times and at home in the evening - whenever I could basically! And everything I bought I'd copy on tape for my best mate. With a 90 minute blank tape, you could usually get an album on each side, but occasionally the ending of the last song (or the song itself) wouldn't fit. Or if the album was a short one (Reign In Blood; Legion), I'd fill the remaining time with a mini compilation. I'd also have a go at drawing the band logos on the inlays - failing badly most of the time! Rarely did I go to school or come home without a cassette in my front blazer pocket.
Then there were mix tapes! How great were they to put together?! Me and my best mate would sit in my room with CDs and tapes splattered about, carefully putting our compilation tape together. We'd have great debates as to why this song should go on instead of another, and which order the tracks should go in. A whole afternoon, or day would go by very quickly and happily: just listening to and discussing the music we loved. I then remember listening back to our creations, and having to adjust the volume on my Walkman for every track, because each song was quieter or louder than the one before - there was no function to even out the volume on my Walkman like there is on itunes today!
I saw Carcass early in 2013 at the Underworld in Camden, with a bunch of friends. We were all sat around a table in the World's End pub, drinking beer and talking about the days of buying albums before the Internet came about: going into town with your mates with only enough cash for a CD and a McDonald's, and the occasional buzz of finding a hidden gem. For us an album is one piece of work, to be listened to in its entirety, if time allows. It is also a special thing to hold and look at, with cool artwork, cool band photo's, song-writing credits and often the lyrics. I loved to study the Thanks lists, as they often contained bands I'd not heard of. I read an interview with Lee Dorian in Terrorizer who said that Cathedral used to list their favourite bands in the Thanks lists so that their fans might check them out for themselves. I loved the fact that a lot of the death metal bands from the late 80's and early 90's would all list each other: it created a great sense of an extreme metal community.
But I started thinking about how this has all changed with the Internet. Were we talking like a bunch of oldies with matching rose tinted specs on, or has that special feeling that my mates and I experienced really been lost? One thing I love about the Internet as a CD buyer is that there is a high chance of finding any album you are after. Whether it's on eBay, Amazon or Play, the likelihood is that there will be a copy for sale somewhere. I began buying CDs this way when I started replacing my favourite cassettes, and I discovered that I could often get the CD for around a fiver. But then I started reading a lot more about metal on the Internet and I realised that there were loads of gaps in my collection. With CDs costing a lot more when I was a kid, and with less information available, many great bands passed me by. So having been educated by the vast number of cool websites: eBay, Amazon and Play have helped me fill in the gaps. Now it's much easier to get information about the music I love, and so much easier and cheaper to get hold of the albums. Result!
As I said, when I was replacing my cassettes, I'd often spend around a fiver for each CD, occasionally going up to a tenner. When I first got into music, if the album wasn't in the charts (death metal wasn't) then the normal price would be around £16. And now even new releases can be bought for roughly a tenner from Amazon, or a little more for the special editions. Occasionally I'll seek out the first edition of an early CD, particularly for my favourite bands, and I'll be prepared to pay a bit more. I'm not really a fan of re-mastered albums: for me the original sound of an album is part of the history and story of how, when and where the album was made. A slightly muddy or quiet recording tells me more about the band at the time than a re-mastered version does. But the point is I can still find a copy of the original, even though it was discontinued years ago! Earlier last year, when I got hold of Decibel magazine's 100 Greatest Death Metal Albums issue, and realised I only had 43 of them, me and my mate went straight to the Internet to find the others. And now between us we have most of them - how much more difficult and expensive would that have been if all we had were our local music shops?
What's missing for me now though, is the the thrill and magic of discovering a great band or genre by chance, whether it's taking a punt on an album simply from the album cover, receiving a cassette from a mate ( I got into Faith No More and Alice In Chains this way, thanks to a friend in 6th form!), reading a piece in a magazine, or seeing someone wearing a T-shirt you like the look of. I miss the days when me and my brother would take a bus into town on the weekend with some money we'd saved up, so that we could hit the music shops and pick up a CD or a cool picture disc and maybe a T-shirt. Obtaining music is so immediate now - whether it's ploughing through Youtube to check out a tonne of bands, receiving music in file form from your buddies, or downloading music - the days I remember with fondness really do feel like the old days. The appreciation of the album form also seems (tragically) to be on the decline. A friend of mine said that his slightly younger girlfriend wouldn't even think of listening to an entire album, preferring just to listen to individual songs instead, and I have seen a Tweet from Ginger Wildheart that read "Telling me ""the album is dead, just write one song"" is like telling a bird not to fly just jump up and down a bit". I couldn't agree more! Every song on Earth Vs The Wildhearts is incredible, but what an album! The term "greater than the sum of it's parts" may be clichéd, but it is so true for this great album, and many, many others: Master of Puppets, The Downward Spiral, Leviathan, Reign In Blood, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, In the Nightside Eclipse...etc etc etc.
But there are things I prefer now, and conflictingly they seem to be things that I appear not to like (definitely not including the importance of the song over the album!): quick access to information, the ease of hearing a band before buying a CD (I remember years ago, going into Ourprice in Croydon and asking them to play Napalm Death's Utopia Banished through the headphones for me, as I'd read the review in Metal Hammer - that's how I got into Napalm Death!), and receiving music in file form from my mates. For me there are pros and cons, and I have tried to reach a compromise so as to get the best of both worlds. I still love buying CDs, visit HMV and seek out second hand music shops, but most of my knowledge now comes from the Internet and social media (although I do subscribe to my favourite mag Terrorizer) and I will often check out bands on Youtube and exchange albums with a few mates via Dropbox. But I will always prefer the feel and look of an actual CD rather than an MP3 file, and I still get a massive buzz from finding the first edition of a classic. Also, the thrill of buying an album over the counter (although I still do) has been replaced, or joined by the anxious journey home from work, hoping that the CD I've ordered has arrived, and the excitement of finding it waiting for me under the letter box!
So was it just a case of rose tinted specs, as my friends and I sat around the table in the Worlds End pub in Camden, reminiscing? I don't think so: that magical feeling I had as a kid does seem to be of it's time. But is that because I was discovering this great music for the first time? Maybe. But I do think that the ease of accessing music and information has replaced the thrill of the hunt and the chance of discovery. So I do feel justified in looking back with fondness and reminiscing about the "good old days" with my mates. And we will, I am sure, continue to do so.
