In 1983 Hugh got smart and produced a solo limited edition cassette album. Easier and cheaper to produce, mail out and carry to concerts than LPs, cassettes tapes were all the rage before CD became king.

By the early 1980s more people were listening to cassette players than record players. The sales of walkmans (walkmen? walkpersons?), ghetto blasters and car cassette players were booming. (Read more about the rise and fall of the cassette below.) Portable was more potable. Music was becoming a movable feast, and Hugh was moving right along with the buffet.

The package was plain and simple: just a black and white photo and tracklist on the insert of the cassette case, and his name on the label of the eponymous tape itself. The musical production was also pretty barebones, with Hugh on six and twelve string guitars, a bit of electric gituar, and the occasional bit of accompaniment, notably Roxanne Paul's harmony singing on If you feel the same, and Hugh overdubbing his own voice (e.g. on Someone else's child).

This apparent simplicity is belied by the sense of space and depth as well as the intimate warmth of the recording. You can bet that Hugh was using some incredible microphones and paid minute attention to the mixing. I had to dig an old cassette player out of mothballs to listen to this tape again (December 2008), and was amazed at the clarity and dynamic of the sound, for example, on Blue machine.

Hugh's musical performance and vocal delivery are also much more relaxed on this recording, and he seems to be having a lot of fun. The experience he gained recording his first three albums really pays off here, and you can sense that he is more at home and in control in the studio. For instance on Raindance, which hurtles along at breakneck speed with some nifty guitar work and a death-defying lead break, he really lets rip. On King of the ocean, a totally insane post-rock romp featuring a finger-snapping effect and sparingly used bass and drums, the musical colour is so intense throughout that you don't even notice that it's nearly all produced by Hugh's voice and electric guitar alone.

The sense of confidence, exuberance and freedom which comes over in this solo album may be partly due to the fact Hugh at this point was not beholding to a publisher or record company and that he was not obliged to make concessions and compromises with a whole bunch of musicians. Though his confidence on stage and in the studio continued to grow immensely over the next two decades, it is not until Live at the Chapel (2005) and Friendly skies (2008) that we again hear Hugh really let loose with such verve and audacity.

Through the 1980s Hugh stood steadfast in his decision to stay outside the mainstream of the music business. As he had written in the song Carry on the song (on the LP Announcer), "the music business digs your grave". Having moved out of London - then the epicentre of popular music - some years before, he was about to move out of Darmstadt - just a plectrum's throw from the moneyed movers-and-shakers of Germany's financial centre Frankfurt - to a small town in eastern Belgium. Had he stuck around in either city, he could have doubtless cemented the connections needed to make a commercial impact with his talents. But he had already seen how other musicians had traded their principles and artistic integrity for a designer suit and three minutes on Top of the Pops. Hugh wasn't about to be dragged down that slippery slope.

Moving country meant starting from scratch, finding new concert venues and other musical collaborators, and it was not until 1993 that he felt ready to release another collection of his songs (the CD West of Eden with the band Red Shift). Meanwhile, he was honing his songwriting and performing skills and penning songs and poetry dealing a wide variety of themes. At the same time he and his wife Martine were bringing up their three children, two of whom - Philip and Kim - were later to join Hugh's musical oddysey. Philip (a.k.a. Philby) spent much of his childhood practising drums in the family attic and played African bush drum on West of Eden before joining the original line-up of Hugh Featherstone and a Panel of Experts (see Live at the Chapel) as well as designing the covers for Hugh's last three CDs. Kim (a.k.a. Kimbastian) grew up to be an accomplished singer and dancer, and features regularly at Hugh's recording sessions and gigs all over Europe. Not to be left out, Hugh and Martine's oldest, Sara also sang as part of the "Favourite Girl's Choir" on the song "my favourite planet" on Negotiations and lovesongs.

The black tape represents a watershed in hugh's life and career. Not only was he about to relocate geographically, he was also leaving behind the life as a folksy solo singer-songwriter to arrive once again in a more upbeat, rock-oriented groove, as in the days of his bands Foreign Bodies, Pierre Le Suit and Best Foot (early to mid 1970s). And this is where we came in.

The very fact that this compilation was released on a cassette tape made it at the time a much more accessible medium, though these days anybody lucky enough to own a copy probably no longer has the retro-technology necessary to actually play the damn thing. So it goes.

David John, 2003

If you've got nothing better to do, here is a bit of blather about cassettes to pass the time.

During the 1970s the cassette tape became ubiquitous. Originally called the Compact Cassette (CC), it was also known as the audio cassette, and since its demise the few retailers who still sell them stock them as "MCs". Duh? Its compact format made it eminently portable - it even fitted into a pocket, a handbag or a car glove compartment. Advertisers compared its dimensions to those of a cigarette pack. How politically uncorrect can you get? Cough, cough. Cassette players were also cheap and portable so that everybody could sonically pollute their environment with music anywhere, anytime. Instant aural gratification. With your ghetto blaster you could blast your ghetto, rock the casbah (Sharif don't like it), pow the picnic, bitch the beach or noise-up the neighbours. Ah, isn't choice choice?

Most cars had a cassette player, which meant that drivers could listen to their favourite music and not have to depend on the vagaries of radio programming or uncertain reception. Radio stations were forced to reappraise their playlists to compete with this new phenomenon. "Drivetime radio" was about to be born.

What was especially revolutionary about cassette machines is that they came with a record button and microphone (earlier models had external mikes, while most later machines had one built into the body). Not only could everyman record noise from the radio or stereo (with the right plugs), he could also record himself warbling in the shower, or his child's first ga ga. Oh bliss! Who could have guessed that such innocent doings could lead to the dreaded age of karaoke?

The cassette recorder proved a boon to wannabe popstars, as musicians could buy, beg, borrow or steal a cheap machine and record rehearsals, gigs and demos for pennies.

Sales of pre-recorded cassettes began to outstrip those of vinyl discs. But the vast majority of tapes in circulation were homemade copies of records, with commercial bootlegs being more common in eastern Europe and third world countries. The recording industry started the scare campaign "home taping is killing music" and considered various ways of trying to prevent what seemed to most people an innocent pastime. The ensuing "debate", which is characteristically not a dialogue between interested parties but rather a frenzy of media headlines and legislation provoked by industry lobbyists and publicists, continues today around home CD recording and unofficial music downloading from the internet. Criminalize the opposition! Great idea, comrade billionaire.

This continual hand-wringing by megarich multinational music corporations has been lampooned by T-shirts and stickers with slogans such as "home fucking is killing prostitution". Says it all, really.

Meanwhile music is still alive and kicking and few people sympathize with any financial discomfort the big music labels claim to be suffering. Poor wee things, you've only yourselves to blame.

The irresistible rise of the Walkman (aka personal stereo) in the early 1980s made it seem to many that the days of records were numbered, which indeed they were, but for other reasons. What became known as the Walkman was originally launched by Sony as "the Stowaway". They changed the name after realizing what were perceived at the time as negative implications: there had been a spate of people so desperate to flee their home countries that they had hidden in the cargo holds and even undercarriage compartments of jets, often with fatal consequences. Lax airport security was making headlines for reasons other than terrorism, and suddenly any romantic associations the word stowaway conjured up seemed to have evaporated.

Cassettes were meanwhile proving themselves indispensible in other fields. They drove the programmes of early micro computers, and the Sony Professional walkman became a must-have for journalists.

One of the perceived disadvantages of the cassette was sound quality. Its designers had managed to fit four tracks onto a tape only 4 millimetres wide and a fraction of a millimetre thick - at the time an astounding technical achievement. But the space available on the tape's surface for recording and playing back complex information at high quality at such low speed was problematic. Tape hiss and other distortions, despite electronic filters developed by Dr Dolby and others, drove discerning listeners to distraction. True hi fi buffs despised cassettes. Heat and prolonged use also caused the plastic base of the tape to distort. The magnetic information itself was continually eroded by friction caused by contact with the play and record heads and guide capstains which had to be cleaned and demagnetized regularly. All this, added to by the cheap build of most cassette players (the motor was often connected to the tape drive by nothing more than an elastic band!) led to the particularly unpeasant distortions such as "wow and flutter". If you haven't experienced it, you are better off not knowing more. Just don't ask.

The cassette had competition from other formats as a popular carrier of audio information. Apart from the vinyl disc itself, which by now could reproduce upto an hour of high quality audio on micro-groove technology, and the new compact reel-to-reel tape recorders, there was also the 8-track cartridge tape (cartridge / cassettte - only marketing mindset semantics?). As its name implies, its wider, more robust tape could fit 8 tracks of high quality electromagnetic information. Inside the lightweight plastic casing the tape was an endless loop which could be played again and again without having to rewind or turn the thing over (the bane of cassette listeners). Not only that, but 8-track players allowed you to play a specific track number at the push of a button - no tedious fast-forwarding or rewinding (very energy intensive for battery powered appliances).

8-track proved very popular with car and truck drivers, particularly in the USA (most 8-track tapes were produced by country and western artists). But its downfall lay in its large size and the unavailability of 8-track recorders. The 8-track went the way of the Betamax video format (claimed by afficianados to be superior to VHS), their demise now blamed by pundits on poor market research. More compact versions of tape-loop cartridges were developed for specialist use, e.g. for computer applications and radio station jingles and ads, but they were never successfully marketed for more general use.

The research departments of manufacturers were constantly producing technical improvements to both cassette tapes and players. Tiny advances in the mixes of ferric and chrome particles on the recording layers were emblazoned on cassette packaging. NEW! IMPROVED! LISTENING ENHANCEMENT! etc. Developments in players and recorders were swift and significant, especially the ability to play/record both sides of the cassette continuously. But the weight of sales pitches was always on new gizmos and gimmicks. One of the weaknesses of cassette technology was the ability to find and cue specific music tracks (unlike records, 8 track tapes or later digital media). Various systems were developed, but never satisfactorily - one reason why cassettes never became popular with DJs. Other developments included the "L Cassette", L presumably for larger, which promised significant quality improvements. NCO (Never Caught On). There were even suggestions that the VHS video cassette format would provide far superior quality for audio recordings, but that was a non starter. Walkmans the size of house bricks? No way.

If the CD and the flash card had not come along, perhaps the compact cassette could have become an almost perfect medium by now. RIP compact cassettes. And pretty soon it'll be RIP compact discs. As with the pianorole, wax cylinder, shellac and vinyl discs, the days of the CD, its successors DVD, Blue Ray, etc. and even ever smaller faster hard disks must be numbered. Despite their sophistication, speed, digital fidelity and impressive capacity, they still depend on the principle of a damage-prone medium spinning beneath a reading apparatus (horn needle, diamond or ceramic stylus, laser head, etc.) which itself can damage the disc.

The digital flash card, in all its bewildering formats, is tiny (more comparable with an After Eight mint than a cigarette pack), virtually indestructible, and there are absolutley no moving parts involved. I recently saw a TV show in which a flash card was cooked in boiling water for several minutes. The plastic casing looked a bit warped (like a melting Dali watch) but the chip itself was fine and its data could be downloaded without problem.

David John, 2003

- Well, that passed the time, didn't it?
- It would have passed anyway.

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot