Contributed by
Helen McLean
Love is my velocity

There once was a man from Nantucket and other poems for the new Willennium

Creator: Jim Findlay
Date: January 2000

In early 2000, I was heading off to London to visit my brother, who was living in a top floor flat in Islington at the time, and to travel around a bit on my own as well. My then-boyfriend, still good friend, made me this tape the night before I left, and hastily pushed it into my hands the next day at the airport, with no tracklisting or cover. I began to listen to it as the plane was taking off, and pretty much listened to it the whole five or so weeks I was away.

From memory (cause the tape is pretty much unplayable due to a dashboard melting incident a couple of years ago - but I just couldn't throw it away) it contains mostly lo-fi 90's indie - stuff like Kicking Giant's "She's Real", Red House Painters "New Jersey", Hefner's version of the brilliant (though I didn't yet know that) New Bad Things track "Goethe's letter to Vic Chestnutt" and my favourite track, a Yo La Tengo version of Sandy Denny's "By the time it gets dark".

Most of the tape contained the sort of music that needed repeated listens and here was the perfect chance to do so. You have to get past the poor production, the sometimes tinny guitar sound, and the singers who can't really sing. I knew a few tracks on there already, but the majority of them were unfamiliar. Some songs I admittedly hated (the joke of "Pardon my French" by Fuck, eventually wore off) but some of them I came to adore.

My enduring memory of this tape occurred when my brother, his girlfriend and myself took a three day roadtrip to the south of Wales whilst I was there. My brother got most of the way through the first side, but when it got to the Molasses track 'Super powers activate' he couldn't take any more of the lo-fi indie stylings and had to 'turn that crap off'. By that time though, I really liked that track.