INKEY$ Issue No. 1
Essex: Inkey$, 1982.
Black C90 audio cassette in small soft case with folded booklet. Issue No. 1. Very Good. Staining from glue to both sides' labels on cassette, booklet lightly worn and creased, slight soiling to case.
The inaugural issue of a long-running audio magazine generally focusing on electronic music; this issue features Turkish-French prog rockers Asia Minor, blind French composer Jean-Phillipe Rykiel, ambient techno from Rolf Trostel, and Canadian space rock from Melodic Energy Commission. Co-editor Dennis Elmsley writes of the making of this issue:
Stickers for the cassettes were supplied at a good rate by a local printer but we could not afford the cost of printing the inserts so we settled for cheap photocopies. This was a decision we regretted and all future editions of the tape were to have properly printed inserts, laid out by my good friend Martin Reed. Our one extravagance was the use of soft cases for the cassettes which cost almost twice as much as conventional ones. The latter are less robust than the cassette itself and nearly always break in transit unless specially protected by Jiffy bags or the like. As the vast majority of our business is mail order, the soft cases allow us to use ordinary envelopes, saving on postage and packing.
[..] Just a word about our name which should be written with a dollar sign at the end. It is the name of a function in the BASIC computer language and is most commonly used within a program to make the computer respond directly to a given key without using ENTER. It seemed relevant to us as the concept of INKEY$ is direct response: no reviewers and very little comment. Our listeners have their own tastes in music and they have a pair of ears.
Price: $150.00