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Music for wimps: listening to four-fifths of the Scared To Get Happy compilation

"Indiepop ain't noise pollution", sing Pooh Sticks on their 1988 classic , and of course they're right. The other day I picked up four of the five CDs in the Cherry Red Scared To Get Happy mega-compilation , A Story of Indie Pop 1980-1989 (2013). Why four? Er, the charity shop only had four (50p each). Seems some indiepop spoilsport had snapped up volume one, leaving me with vols 2-5.  So for the past few days I've been pumping out the several hours worth of music packed into these four volumes (each runs to about 78 minutes), immersing myself in one-off tracks I either already knew and even had copies of (the Razorcuts' Big Pink Cake, That Petrol Emotion's It's A Good Thing, Mighty Mighty's Is There Anyone Out There?, the Primitive's Thru The Flowers, Microdisney's Dolly, Pop Will Eat Itself's Sick Little Girl etc etc), or in some cases was hearing for the first time (Gol Gappas' Albert Parker, Rodney Allen's Circle Line, the S...

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