LISTENING to Radio 3’s Sunday Feature last weekend I learnt more about the Sony Walkman Professional Cassette Recorder than I probably care to know.
This revolutionary lightweight machine the size of a matchbox was introduced to the market in 1984 and one of its relatively early adopters was broadcaster Andy Kershaw who picked his up in 1986 for £90, “the best 90 quid I’ve ever spent. And it still is 34 years on,” Kershaw noted.
“I’ve always regarded it as the AK47 of recording devices,” he also suggested. Hmm.
Dodgy comparisons and serious tapehead conversations apart, there was a lot to love about The Kershaw Tapes, the first of two programmes (the second one is broadcast tomorrow). A sonic scrapbook of Kershaw’s memories of exotic travels (tales of getting arrested in equatorial Guinea, and hearing La Bamba played on the balafon by Mali’s Keletigui Diabate in Bamako) and the recordings he made on the road and in his one-bedroom flat in Crouch End in the 1980s and 1990s, it was a fond reminder that Kershaw was one of the great proselytisers for world music back then.
The result was very winning. This was Kershaw at his most enthusiastic and (thankfully) least judgemental, because he is playing the music he still loves.
And the music is what you take away with you; the ringing joy of African music or the wheezing pleasures of Eddie Lejeune and DL Menard’s Cajun tunes, all recorded on Kershaw’s Sony Walkman Pro. There’s some life left in cassette tapes after all, it seems.
Listen Out For: Radcliffe and Maconie, tomorrow, 6 Music, 7am. Stuart and Mark are the default Sunday morning listening around our house. And given that their guest tomorrow is none other than Dexys frontman Kevin Rowland, we will definitely be tuning in.
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