Monday, October 31, 2011

Last one for the day..

The original singing 'hat check girl' from the Cavern club...
This tape has got to be from 1970 at the very latest too... but I don't know how to date the old Parlophone cassettes.. Unlike vinyl.. there's no ready reference documentation.. personal experience is the only teacher..


Rare Rare Earth ....

Never seen these anywhere else...



And another...

Adding a new one here, instead of as a new post.. Eventually I'll have it sorted so that each post comprises one artist  per...


(Neil) Diamonds are For.. Ever?

Well, this tape sure is..
Another of the few companies in CAnada that made cassettes was General Recorded Tapes, or GRT..

More often than not, the label was on the *outside* of the box, in a 'clam shell' style case.
This didn't help with wear and tear , so *any*  in as good shape as this 40 years later is a find.
Otherwise i'd have passed on this one maybe.. although it fits the bill regarding historical significance, as  Deep Purple covered at *least* one of his songs.. and it looks to me, according to the tracklist , that they may have covered more than one..


Lovin Spoonful 1970

Heres a 1970 issue on 'Quality Records'..
Back in the late '60s and early '70s there was only two or three main tape companies in Canada .
Mostly there was Ampex, who had the contracts to make most of them.. by at least Decca, Reprise, Warner, and and more  i don't recall ATM..
Then there was Quality, who pressed for  the smaller labels, and mostly 'Canadian'  artists or canadiuan releases of US albums..
Quality was basically a small pressing company with no weight behind it.,. mainly in existence to sub for labels that wanted product in Canada..
Like The Loving Spoonful..
In the US this came out on Buddah..
But here in 1970.. on Birchmount ..
Because Canada had less than a tenth of the population of America at the time, and had NO music industry at the time.. there's way less of these than say, UK or US copies..
This one still had that 'new' rough feel to the ink also!


Sundown...

Don't Care for Gordon Lightfoot at all, but bought these two 'cuz they were still (and still are) sealed (incidentally, the earlier 1970 black album is the later issue  - probably 80's!.. the green one is likely a 1973-75 issue)

An early Capitol sampler

I mentioned early cassette issues in the last post.. well, heres one.
It's a 1971 sampler from Capitol Special Markets..
Unusual for that time,, there's no paper label, although I have seen others from then also, with the print directly on the plastic, on the  Capitol label only...
It lists the 'New' musio for the time .. including Joe South,Glen Campbell, and Quicksilver Messenger service.. plus upstarts such as Helen Reddy  and the Joy Of Cooking.. both had just new albums at the time. I think both were first releases also....


And here's another one from 1970, same type of series, except it was 'special products' division


They both had this type of back on the sleeves:


The very first Heart cassette..

Before they had a distribution deal with a major label.. a very few albums came out on Mushroom records.. (Hi Nan!)
Just Mushroom.. no 'Manufactured or Distributed by Capitol Records ' ..
I don't know how many were printed before they got picked up..
I do know that it wasn't very many.. and even fewer cassettes.. cassettes had only been around for 8 years in 1976  as far as I know the first albums i ever saw on cassette were the Beatles Capitol ones, in 1968.
I know they were quickly popular, but the quality of those first ones varied enormously..so most did not survive.
I don't know how collectible this excellent and rare copy is however..
I don't really have any interest in collecting mid '70s rock cassettes so I wouldn't know..
PS.. just a footnote.. back in the day, when I used to hang around a place called the "soft rock cafe" i heard some amazing things come out of these two sisters, when working as a duet.. you shoulda heard them do "the battle of evermore"!