Nigel's Aussie Lethal Tunes...

This Blip is dedicated to my good friend Ritchie Mathieson. The absolute master without compare, of the mix tape.

I read today that Currys or Dixons are not going to be selling blank cassettes after their current stock runs out. Now this isn't a sentimental blether about how tapes were so much better quality and nothing nowadays compares, coz lets face it, compared to today's music delivery methods, cassettes sucked. I can get more than 20 of these tapes worth of music onto that piece of plastic and silicon that is smaller than a stamp.

No, this is a "wow, blink and life just scoots past you" blether. I'm not that old, but even at 32, it so amazing how life has changed in 15 years. I still have a box of cassette originals that I had from school, college era. I had loads and loads of copied tapes and it's this sort of thing that younger people today have never even been exposed to. I've been skating longer than some of the local skaters have been alive. I don't find it frightening or anything, just really bizarre to think of computers not designed for internet, internet, HiFi's without CD players, not needing to keep 10p out of my change for the phone.

Ritchie is famous for creating the Lethal Tunes mixtapes. Pictured here is one he sent me from his emigrated home of Sydney, Australia. Nigel's Aussie Lethal Tunes 2005. A classic...