Huey Lewis and The News – Fore (1986) Audio Cassette

Huey Lewis and the News were a band whose records I never would have envisaged myself buying. I practically used to vomit in the early ‘eighties when someone even mentioned middle of the road melodic rock, and in general I wouldn’t even accept products with a golf connection if I was being paid endurance money. But by the middle of the decade, the airwaves were flooded with the tones of Huey Lewis & the News. Song after song, I’d be thinking: “Oh, that’s pretty good”, and when I heard Hip To Be Square, I nearly bought the single. I probably would have done too, had I not found out that it was on this album – Fore! And once the fullness the album’s content became apparent to me, I couldn’t resist it.

Leda Cassette Head Cleaner

Here’s a rare old sight, which might bring back memories for a few of those who can recall the early 1980s. This is a Leda Cassette Head Cleaner. Pretty standard in design for a compact cassette-enclosed head cleaning tape. Ten tick-boxes on the orange paper label, indicating that the life of this unit was (at least intended to be) restricted to ten cleaning operations. It’s not apparent from the photo but you can see from impressions in the paper that the boxes have actually been ticked. It’s just that the cassette was used so long ago that the biro has faded to white!

UB40 – Present Arms Audio Cassette

Present Arms was the second album from Birmingham reggae band UB40 – released in spring 1981. In its day, I bought the album on vinyl, but years later, after the band seemed to try and deny their early history, I lost interest and gave away more than half of my UB40 vinyl as a mark of disapproval. Pretty stupid thing to do, but the guy I gave it to (a major fan of the band) was grateful beyond words, and he was clearly not going to sell it. I did, however, miss this album, so in the 1990s I ended up buying it again – this time on audio cassette – the one you see here.