Aldershot Mixtape: I've got to get the record

Are you into guided heritage tours through supposedly interesting locations? No, me neither. What about podcasts? Er, again, no, except (ha ha) my own. So why would I spend an hour-and-a-half listening to something called Aldershot Mixtape (2025), a podcast themed around a walking tour in the town of Aldershot which takes in several of its music-linked locations? "This is more than just music. It's a sonic time machine", says the DJ narrator person (Al Luckett) who appears at various intervals during the mixtape. A cheery chappie, this narrator says things like "turn left at the end of the road and then you're there", acting like a tour guide for the town. As I say, it's not - at all - my kind of thing but I ventured into this (ahem) sonic time machine because of this tie-in book:

Read the book, listen to the podcast, do the walk: Aldershot Mixtape

Yep, this project also includes a modestly lavish little book, one that caught my eye in a charity shop the other week. The book's pretty nice. Quite a high-quality art book in fact. And there's some pretty interesting stuff in it. For instance, flick through to page seven and there's this: 

I was there: flyer for the Happy Mondays and others

And then on page 13 there's this: 

The Brilliant Corners, Buzz Club, 10 January 1987

Kinda nice, I reckon. So yeah, the book drew me in and then (gulp) I dived into the podcast, which appears to be the brainchild of a filmmaker-academic called Simon Aeppli. It's like a little radio play. Split into eight separate chapters about different Aldershot locations, there's eight or nine minutes on each, with a separate artist presiding over each of the chapters. So there's stuff on the long-gone Buzz Club in the West End Centre (scene of those 80s indie gigs), on a Nepali centre (the Shiva Cultural & Community Centre), on "the lost record shops of Aldershot", on the Aldershot Hippodrome Theatre (1913-1962), about a former rave venue called the Palace, about local band Mega City 4 (who apparently "captivated the world with their distinctive indie-rock sound"), and contemporary music-making at a place called Union Yard. Plus a chapter on er, the "music" made by the crowd at Aldershot Town FC ("The Shots"). Yeah, it's a mixed bag. I guess you'd have to be a bit of an Aldershot Civic Ultra to really like all of these sections, including various people saying things like, "I love this town, I love the people". It's presumably no coincidence that the project is part-funded by Rushmoor Borough Council. It's civic rock and roll, man. Not only do I not love Aldershot, I've never even been there, and - shamefully - only vaguely know where it is. Anyway, as a non-Aldershotian the parts of the mixtape that worked reasonably well for me were the Hippodrome Theatre chapter, which featured a heavily sound-engineered dreamy thing ("Shake, Rattle and Roll") by an artist collective called Enid, and the lost record shops section ("Elephant misremembered"), involving two middle-aged geezers - Stephen Cracknell and John Andrews - reminiscing about buying records as teenagers. I suppose this latter part works because it's pretty universal for people of a certain generation (mine). One of the duo recalls his extreme teenage crush on all things music-related: "that record, that band ... that's like a voice from heaven. I've got to go and see them. I had to go and see them. And I've got to get the record". Yeah, we've all been there, and, in fact, I think I'm still there these days. Like Cracknell and Andrews, I also can't properly remember which shop I bought New Order's Temptation from in those long-ago days of the early 1980s - but I do know that the song still means something to me now. Overall, I can't say I really entered into the (overly-parochial?) spirit of Aldershot Mixtape, but this first "encounter" in my entire life with the lovely town of Aldershot was still pleasant enough. Meanwhile, as Bernard Sumner liked to say back in the day, "Oh, you've got green eyes / Oh, you've got blue eyes / Oh, you've got grey eyes / Oh, you've got green eyes / Oh, you've got blue eyes / Oh, you've got grey eyes ...".