Take your phone off the hook and don your best fluorescents because it’s time for another Retro Cassette Friday! This week we put the engine into warp speed and set phasers to stunning with a hand-plucked selection of the finest vintage audio samplings aged finely and made with the grapes of years gone by for your listening pleasure!
Kirsty MacColl
Electric Landlady
1991
We begin our sonic journey with the technicolour mellow jammings of a one Miss Kirsty MacColl with her 1991 record ‘Electric Landlady’. I chose this tape because I’m currently obsessed with Janelle Monae’s ‘Electric Lady’ and I thought this album might have a similar vibe only with more emphasis on property ownership. Turns out it’s absolutely nothing like Janelle Monae but I still like it a lot. The record opens with ‘Walking Down Madison’, which is one of MacColl’s more well-known songs and just really beautiful. An office favourite from this album is ‘My Affair’, in which MacColl flamboyantly sings about her sexual autonomy with an incredibly camp flamenco vibe. Side B got a little country for my tastes, but there’s no doubt that MacColl was a seriously skilled musician. Graeme’s Marvellous Music Knowledge of the Day: Kirsty MacColl’s life was cut short when she was run over by a jet ski. So that’s pretty awful. ‘Electric Landlady’ is the kind of album you would play if you were inside reading a book on a rainy day.
Prince
LoveSexy
1988
Next up things get as smooth as Prince’s thighs on the cover of this record for 1988’s erotic groove triumph ‘LoveSexy’. I’d just like to take this moment to point out that this is without a doubt one of the greatest album covers of all time. I love how Prince eroticizes himself by using the type of floral imagery and body language that’s typically associated with female sexuality. It warms my perverted little feminist heart. Also it’s real pretty.
Onto the music! This album is a banquet of all the funky Prince goodness you need in your life. It’s a perfect mix of wicked dance-able beats like in ‘Positivity’ and ‘Alphabet Street’ and tender sensual romance like in ‘When 2 Are in Love’ and ‘I Wish U Heaven’. And seriously, THAT BASS in ‘Alphabet Street’! This is one of Prince’s sexiest albums, which is saying a lot considering the dude has released upwards of 30 albums and can give you an orgasm using only eye contact. Thinking about it now it was probably my early exposure to Prince that turned me into the bisexual weirdo I am today. All hail His Imperial Purpleness! I couldn’t find a video of ‘Alphabet Street’ but please do enjoy this highlight real of the 1988 ‘LoveSexy’ tour.
The Go-Go’s
Beauty and Beat
1981
To cap off this week’s musical extravaganza, we have hyperactive bubblegum-pop songstresses The Go-Gos. ‘Beauty and the Beat’ was one of the biggest pop albums of the 80s, Grammy-nominated and featuring crazy-massive super hit ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’ (which Graeme says is one of the greatest songs of all time). If you run out of coffee you should listen to this album on the way to work. It’s got more pep than a Powerpuff Girl after too many skittles. It’s impossible not to feed off its super-catchy energy. There is a song called ‘Skidmarks on my Heart’ which I can’t really begin to psychologically comprehend as a serious song title, but underwear related jokes aside it’s really very good. There’s a reason these guys were massive. Every track is tightly put together to include as much melodic goodness in as compact a space as possible. The Go-Gos don’t mess around.
Sophie Joske
