Siouxsie and the Banshees – Once Upon a Time (1981)

The classic red paper label of Polydor Records, complete with Made in England denotation printed below the brand logo, adorns 1981’s Once Upon a Time – The Singles, by Siouxsie and the Banshees. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the back of the case is not black – it’s very dark brown, and marked with the PolyGram branding. The album title is self-explanatory. This is a compilation of the band’s singles, released between 1978 and 1981. For the record, the tracks are set in chronological order.

Realistic Radio Shack Low Noise Audio Cassette

This photo serves as quite a stark warning message: the characteristics an audio cassette has today are not necessarily representative of the characteristics it had when new!

John Lee Hooker – Boom Boom (1992)

It’s now getting on for a hundred years since John Lee Hooker was born. Regrettably, he died in 2001, but he surely must remain as one of the most memorable genuine and fully authentic blues artists of all time.

It’s widely felt that in the business of popular music, once an artist hits his/her forties (if not before), his/her appeal to the main sector of the commercial market will diminish to a critical low. There are exceptions, but very few artists aged well over 70(!) could have reached out to the mass market, from college kids right through to pensioners, the way John Lee Hooker did in the early 1990s.