Description

Polish pressed music cassette. Clear Euro Star Music cassette without band or title logo.

Poland is probably the country that had the most record labels in the world that only released cassettes. But even though there were lots of labels the market was still small as they only printed these for their own market inside of Poland. And a label in one town maybe lacked the distribution for another town and so on. A Warzaw or Krakow label might print more copies of a tape then labels from a smaller town. So even if there are thousands of releases you will notice how rare some are if you start to try to list the catalogue number of one particular label. Some cassettes just rarely shows up. Euro Star was a label that was based in Legionowo in Poland and it was one of the few that managed to survive after the 1994 copyright law change by starting to produce tapes for external recording companies. So the Euro Star name and logo shows up on many releases from Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia after 1994.

In a sense, Pump Up The Volume was the second in Allan Moyle’s Disillusioned American Youths trilogy, released ten years after the new wave runaway drama Times Square and five years prior to the truly horrid record shop angstfest Empire Records. Like Times Square, and to a somewhat lesser extent Empire Records, Pump Up The Volume’s major players are music obsessives who immerse themselves in rock groups that float away from the mainstream radar. In this case, the protagonist is pirate radio DJ Hard Harry (Christian Slater), a hyper-hormonal high-school student who takes great delight in playing the likes of Leonard Cohen and Sonic Youth for his audience of confused, angst-ridden schoolmates. The soundtrack reflects much of what is played during the movie, including Soundgarden’s pre-fame Heretic, Concrete Blonde’s version of Cohen’s Everybody Knows, the Pixies Wave Of Mutilation (U.K. Surf), and two songs that deal with the movie’s theme of censorship, Above The Law’s Freedom Of Speech and Bad Brains (with Henry Rollins) cover of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams. Unfortunately, Was (Not Was) delightfully perverse Dad I’m In Jail is excluded, as is Nora Diniro’s lusty ode to Hard Harry (Jam me, jack me, push me, pull me etc.). At any rate, the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack works well for those who want a decent snapshot of early-90s alternative music. And if you’re feeling nostalgic for that frustrating period of your life when you looked like Christian Slater but couldn’t get any girls to pay attention to you, it works equally well.

Track list:
1. Concrete Blonde –Everybody Knows-Leonard Cohen cover
2. Ivan Neville –Why Can’t I Fall In Love
3. Liquid Jesus –Stand
4. The Pixies –Wave Of Mutilation
5. Peter Murphy –I’ve Got A Secret Miniature Camera
6. Bad Brains With Henry Rollins –Kick Out The Jams
7. Above The Law –Freedom Of Speech
8. Soundgarden –Heretic
9. Sonic Youth –Titanium Expose
10. Cowboy Junkies –Me And The Devil Blues
11. Chagall Guevara –Tale O The Twister