a few months ago, on a cold spring morning, i had 20 dollars burning a hole in my pocket. it was a particular day of the week in which every local music store around nashville was closed except for a place called "CD warehouse." I wasn't looking for cds, but i figured I'd check it out.
turns out, CD warehouse has a pretty large collection of cassettes from people who dont feel like listening to analog music unless its on vinyl, and an even larger collection of incredibly damaged or home-recorded cassettes for, like, 50 cents each.
naturally, i walked home with a plastic bag filled with these junk cassettes, and began listening to them at home(the only problem i had with cd warehouse was that they didn't own a hi-fi set-up, so you had to buy the music and then listen to it, which was fine, because i probably would've wasted so much of their time just listening to these weird-ass cassettes)
doug clark's work stood out to me, since it was about 90 minutes worth of content that, as far as i know, wasn't on any record labels, never aired on the radio, or anything like that. i have the only copy of Doug Clark - 1980-1984 that i can find, and that seems like a crime.
so, what's on the cassette? well, i've listened to this thing a few times, but I've never actually thrown together a track listing. the a side has some generic love songs, and the b-side is more alternative ballads and whatnot. each side has about 15-20 minutes of instrumentals at the end of the cassette, which i find very nice
doug tends to heavily use a casio drumset and keyboard, or something similarly jank, and it gives his music this odd, familiar feeling that i'm sure would've done so much better in the 2010s. it almost feels like the sort of music you would find in a youtube playlist with "WEIRDCORE/INTERNETCORE/ENACORE?" as the title and an image of like, an alternate chilling on the windows xp bliss background. i feel like doug clark is ahead of his time, and i highly encourage you to take a listen.