TDK D90/60 or Sony HF90/60 or Philips or Maxwell or rarer Memorex blank cassettes

Ever wonder how a mid-twenties Indian kid ever got into reggae despite origins well rooted in the campus and college rock band scene and preference. Well, my own first bit of awareness came from friends of my elder brothers who were mostly in the merchant navy and would come back with copies of the ever-perennial Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Before that, my only exposure to western music was the same as scores of Indians who grew up in the 1970-80s and was severely limited to family crooners such as Jim Reeves and Cliff Richard, which I took my dad to the local market because I was supposed to sing Summer Holiday in a group for my school assembly. And besides that, mom had taught me the words to How Much Is The Doggie In The Window.


Interminable disco compilations would filter down to us in India, along with some major perspectives into interesting genres released on LP record. The masses liked bumping bottoms to the tune of Abba or worse, Boney M, but there always was a dedicated band of followers of rock. Then in the 1980s, a few music companies opened up and started releasing titles from a much larger distribution network than ever before. We had EMI so far, but the new players brought in the considerable Warner music catalog. Incidentally, Dire Straits was only released in India as a result of a loophole in licensing that existed between EMI and the Vertigo label. In the eighties, we suddenly had access to cassette tapes of led zeppelin, Billy idol, and the global phenomenon that was to become MJ.

In the small town of Daman, I went down to the local shops to buy some music, accompanied with a classmate and his Uncle. The uncle was an interesting sort; Anglo Indian in descent and up to date on anecdotes of how Robert Plant and Jimmy Page dropped in at a seedy disco in Mumbai called the Slipped Disc and played on the house band’s equipment. It was only later that I managed to learn that this story originated in a misadventure that the Zep men had while trying to explore possibilities of recording with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra (whom they reported, were too found of their hooch to do any serious music together).

So there I was in my 14-year old state of ignorance telling the friend’s uncle about how I liked my recent purchase of Led Zep 1V, only to be told that he did not like all that ‘noise’ too much. So my friend and I asked him what the preferred. The list included Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Which my earworm misinterpreted to sound like ‘Crossed-pistols-in-the-night.’ This incidentally is an okay name for a band actually. That was my foundation being laid of ‘soft rock.’ A genre that I later defined to include folk, song poetry like Dylan and Baez, southern influences such as the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers Band and America.

On another occasion, I was buying greatest hits compilation of Rainbow and the same friend’s uncle simply placed it back on the shelf and put a copy of Kansas’ Greatest Hits into my hands. That indicative enough of good taste? Later, I understood that I would have always bumped into Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow but stumbling across prog rockers Kansas was a little rarer.

At the age of 16, I was in the capitol city of New Delhi with the full knowledge that I had left a small town for a big city and would be able to really get into collecting music seriously. Though still in school, my tape trading soon had me hanging around with college boys and trading tapes like lords. Double decks ruled and high speed dubbing a cassette was usually of lesser quality than recording it at normal speed. There were places in Delhi where you could record an LP or CD album onto cassette tape for about twenty bucks a side. Obviously, this meant that a little more money got spent on quality blank tapes of the TDK D90/60 or Sony HF90/60 or the odd Philips or Maxwell or even rarer, Memorex blank cassettes.

When I hit college, colleges itself had a tradition of hosting a college festival every year and as the highlight, they usually had a rock band or two playing. The cost of hiring bands soon made colleges realize that they could invest a few thousands in some lousy drum kit and cheap guitars and the students would form their own in-house bands. For the next two decades, I hung around bands, practice rooms and concerts a lot. In the time it took to finish college, I was on top of a small pile of 600 odd cassettes.