The Art of Noise

When I was in grade nine and just starting to build a collection of music, stuff was on cassette then. I didn't score a CD player until the summer before my senior year, when the Ames department store I worked at was going out of business. But that freshman year, I scored this tape from The Art of Noise called, The Best of The Art of Noise. It had a bad ass mix of Tom Jones covering Prince's Kiss. I listened to it a lot. It was weird and electronic and wonderful.

Something made me think of it, and how I'd love to have it on CD or MP3, even though I have the original cassette somewhere. Today I learned that what I had must have been an import, because looking around on Amazon, there are two versions of it, one with a red cover, the other blue. I had the blue. Listening to the previews, the red version sucks and has the wrong songs. The blue version has all the good stuff, and it appears to be mostly the 12" mixes of prior stuff. Looks like I can get it for a couple bucks used if I'm willing to take that chance, about $18 as a "collectible" and $30 if I want it new. I don't think I'm attached enough to want a new copy, but if a CD is good enough to get it into MP3 form, that might be good enough.

I have zero idea where my old cassettes are, but they're likely in a box. The funny thing is that my trusty Sony tape deck that I bought in college is two feet from where I'm sitting. By the end of my freshman year of college, I had replaced most tapes with CD's (thanks, Columbia House!), but there were a few that never made it, including this one. And as it turns out, it sounds like it would have been hard if I didn't go to a record shop that did imports. One way or another, I'll get it.