I had only one of these tapes, it was 90 minutes rather than the 60 minute version shown above. On one side it had Totale’s Turn, on the other The Infotainment Scan, both copied from CDs rented from Wilmslow library who ever was in charge of selecting the fairly limited range of CDs they got into that library between 1994 and 1996 is one of the major influences on my music taste. Other CDs I rented from Wilmslow library include :

• Julian Cope’s classic Jehovahkill (lying on my bed in the sun listening to this and reading Good Omens whilst pretending to revise for GCSEs is a powerful memory)
• Captain Beefheart’s somewhat less than classic but still quit enjoyable in places Shiny Beast/Batchain Puller which I later bought from them for 60p when they were clearing out stock.
• Sugar’s Beaster, haven’t heard this for years, I used to have a 6ft x 4ft poster of the cover on the wall.
• Mercury Rev, Yerself Is Steam which is probably their best album by virtue of having decent songs, being awesomely psychedelic and not at all saccharine, 3 features which they’d never get together on the same record again. Also ended up buying this off them for 60p.
• Sonic Youth, Screaming Fields of Sonic Love compilation, I already had the promo version of this picked up from Vinyl Exchange in Manchester as well as pretty much every album from which the songs on it were drawn but this had a slightly different (and in my opinion worse) track listing so I got it out anyway because i was a total Sonic Youth completist in those days. I think I bought it for 60p and then gave it to Neil in our third year at uni. Wait a minute… Neil’s a librarian, and this CD came from a library. Spooky!
• Inspiral Carpets Greatest Hits. Because it had a track on it which featured Mark E Smith, the rest of the CD confirmed that I didn’t much care for Madchester/etc. I seem to remember there were about 18 track on the record and they all sounded pretty much identical.
• Stone Roses, the first one. Everyone kept going on about how great they were at school. I thought they were rubbish. Do people still maintain these guys are good? I predict a revival of interest in 2008 followed by a reunion tour in 2009.
• Throwing Muses, Red Heaven. Since first renting it I’ve bought this album no fewer than 4 times in 3 different formats.
• Breeders, Last Splash. Since renting it I never bought this record even though The Breeders were for a time my favourite band.
• Some others