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Thursday, December 6, 2012

One more to go...

I'm very happy to report that I recently finally got the limited Factory boxed cassette of Happy Mondays' first album, Squirrel & G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carn't Smile (White Out)

(explanation)

Back in the late '80s, Factory Records started producing a number of special boxed cassettes of their bands' albums.  Since I was a big 'walkman' listener, I bought a number of them.  They were really cheap ($7.50), because I bought most of them directly from 'of Factory New York'.  They had a small collection of them there, in their Spring St headquarters, in Manhattan.  There were a few that I didn't have interest in because either I didn't like the band or already had the album on Vinyl.  I started making exceptions though for New Order and Joy Division albums because the cassette versions were so cool, and before I knew it I had 20 of these so-called 'boxed cassettes'.  Then, after New Order's Substance album came out, Factory pretty much stopped making them.  I found out a number of years later that they had only made 22 and it turned out that I was only missing two to make a full set:  Happy Monday's first album and a random classical album by Wim Mertins, called 'Educes Me'.  Well, I never got the Happy Monday's first album because I already had it on first vinyl pressing with the cool plastic slip cover and the original track list intact.  The Wim Mertins album, I didn't get because it was a harp player and I was more into Post Punk and New Wave.

Well, long story short, a pristine copy of the first Happy Mondays album (a masterpiece, by the way - produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground) made itself available to me recently, so I bought it.

So, only one to go to make a complete set.  Please, if you have, or know where to get that Wim Mertins album 'Educes Me', please contact me.  My other 21 boxed cassettes are lonely!