but I parted with folding stuff to get my "Smile Jamaica" cassette.

As far as I can recall, I never found anything worth keeping sellotaped free to the cover of the NME except a very occasional couple of 7 inch vinyl gems.

The cassette series were pretty fine, but definitely not free. I also have "The Tape With No Name", which was a compilation of what has now become known as "Americana". Shame the NME has since become total pants.

Speaking of those freebie vinyl 7 inchers, I wonder where the feck I put them, they're around here somewhere....

whooops

I had a few gems - Sounds gave away 4 tracks from "The Guitar Album" which changed my world - Rory doing "Bullfrog Blues", The Who doing "The Ox", Clapton doing "Let it rain" and BB King doing "Sweet 16". All fantastic. Any there was the "Exile on Main St" free flexi with a Jagger piano blues linking the tracks from the NME. Excellent. The NME ones weren't cover mounted though - you collected tokens - Pocket Jukebox etc all good.

The Tape With No Name - is it the one with Emmylou doing "Feelin single seeing double", "Family Tradition", "Victim of Life's Circumstances" etc? "You put the blue in me" etc? I have the artwork... (snickers quietly).

Anyone got the NME Faces flexi that contained that tune?
As I remember, the track contained a recorded fart and subsequent apology from Rod.
They don't make them, etc, etc.

Usually pretty representative of what's new and decent. Presumably there are limits on what can be obtained - I guess it's bound not to be the big names and will tend toward the less known and up and coming. I feel it's the other way round re MH's presence - like an unwanted guest at a party. 'The Herbalizer' is doing it for me so far.

I think the Word CDs are usually excellent, each one typically having three or four tracks (by artists new to me) which make me want to explore further. They are currently my main route to hearing new music and I really appreciate them. Thanks guys.

...the question of whether a particular "Now Hear This" CD appeals to you depends on taste. However the important thing is that it's a collection of new material, either by new or established artists, and the record companies let us use the tracks because they want them to be heard. We pay the mechanical royalties but the recording is lent to us at no charge. Obviously if we went back and asked for back catalogue material they would be, understandably enough, looking for significant payment and therefore the whole equation would change.

There are times when I feel the same and think that the free CD is a waste of trees and money but as Dave says, it's a question of taste. A lot of the stuff may not appeal to me or my monkey but thats not to say that it wont apeal to someone else and make them feel the way I did when I first heard Calexico or Edgar Jones or Skyphone or Sharon Jones or...........

Imelda May ad p45, John Hiatt ad p81, Hucknall ad p94, Congregation ad p71, five reviews on p106-107; can't hurt, can it?

The new issue only arrived this morning so I haven't had a chance to hear the cd yet but I did notice that when I loaded it into itunes the HMHB track came up as "Blue Badger Abuser".
Have Nigel and the boys come up with a new offence for the youth of today to be charged with?
As for previous cd's I have to add that due to hearing one song from Willie Nile, I bought Streets Of New York and it is now one of my all time favourite records.

..the odd themed CD, you know, Americana, Soul, Blues, Songs about drink, much like what Dylan does on his radio show.

Its also good to be able to listen to some of the artists being reviewed so don't have a problem with that. I guess the number of ads that correlate with the artists is to be expected and lets us not forget a magazone is a commercial enterprise that needs to survive and if it gets me an interesting cd and knocks a quid off the purchase price then its a good thing.

Off hand I can't think of any big acts I'd want to see on the CD - I either like them and have their latest, or know perfectly well what they're like and don't want to hear them. The more obscure stuff is more interesting to me - either because I might find things I really like (and there have been loads of them) or alternatively people I've heard of and not actually heard where I don't like 'em in the event, but I still appreciate having heard them. And sometimes they grow on you....

As I've posted before, there's also the Word curse where the only decent track is on the Word CD, you buy the full jobbie and the rest is disposable. St. Etienne springs immediately to mind - standout track on Word, rest totally forgettable.

I'd like to put in a word of support for Cathy Davey: marvellous! I've been following her since her debut album Something Ilk came out a couple of years ago, and the new one is better still. Although I'm a laughing stock among some of my friends for my predeliction for obscure female singer-songwriters, I can live with that; there are some terrific ones about, and the Word CDs do a pretty good job of bringing some of them to wider attention.

Any chance of getting a Christine Collister song at some point in the future?

that thought has actually gone into the ordering of the tracklisting, to make it feel like a kind of mixtape and actually make sense, as opposed to just throwing a load of random songs together. Whose job is it? Mr Hepworth's?

members monikers on the podcast, I wonder if Mr Wonderful will get a mention....I doubt it!

It's true you have to stick at it with the Word CDs; but the best things in life come to those who wait.
Alongside 6Music, Radcliffe and Maconie, there're my route to discovering new (and sometimes old sounds). Only up to track five on this month's CD, but it looks like it's going to be a beauty for summer plays in the car. Fleet Foxes's "White Winter Hymnal" and Shetland lassie Jenna Reid may sound like cold miserable artists, but there's a comforting warmth going on here;both lovely golden moments.
You know, I've never heard of The Herbaliser, but "Amores Bongo" will make a great pre gig warm up track next month for a gig in Scarborough town.
Thank you WORD, for the music and the variety on these CDS and I'll give you a B+ for this months efforts.

I've been buying Word for a long time so I have a lot of Word CDs. About 18 months ago I ripped them all onto my laptop with a view to doing a 'best of' and getting shut of the CDs, which take up a lot of rack space in my CD collection. But in the end, I kept them all. I even bought a couple more in my local charity shop! [Aside: ethics of selling originally free stuff in a charity shop? Discuss.]

The fact is that I do think some it's average, and I also think some of it's ace. But without the Word CDs my music collection would've stagnated. I easily get bored of most of the several hundred CDs I already have, and occasionally I put a Word CD on, log on to Amazon and shop 'til I drop. Particularly rewarding purchases have been Jim White, Sharon Jones and Slow Club (they're from Sheffield, by the way!). Oh and Ukelele Orchestra.

While I've got you, could I make a plug for Thomas Truax? I haven't seen him crop up on a Word CD and I promise you he is most excellent. And no, I get no financial or sexual reward for making that plug.

Au revoir.

... are great for discovering new music and are an integral part of The WORD experience.

I normally play each new one in my car for a few days and mark the tracks that appeal to me; then rip those onto my Creative Vision:M.

Tops!

Oddly though, they work really well for me, in a strange roundabout way. I don't like listening to a mixture of tracks by lots of different artists one after the other, I like to hear a whole album's worth. I like an extended listening experience. It's just how I've learned to listen.

I buy music after hearing it or reading about it; this month I've invested in a selection of John Lee Hooker titles after reading Steve Miller's comments about the richness in simplicity that John Lee achieved. I've also just bought the "Sun Giant" EP by Fleet Foxes as a way in to their stuff - I didn't listen to the track on the cover mount, I read the review and was intrigued. I'm very glad I did buy it, too, and I now have the full album on order from Amazon as well.

The cover CD will come into its own about 6 months from now. The artists that were on there because they were of the moment will have settled into the landscape. They may have done some shows which will have been reviewed, more material may have appeared, and more will have been written about them in all sorts of places. The tracks that were the only gems from their parent albums will have been revealed as such by a general indifference or a surfeit of scathing reviews. Most importantly, the tracks that are the tips of iceberg sized lumps of goodness will still be there, lurking.

When I listen to a cover CD from months back, which I will eventually do, probably in the car, those little wonders will leap out of the loudspeakers at me; either I'll think, "Ah, yes, I'm glad I bought that album." or "Wow. Who. Is. That?" Great fun, and all the better for having waited a while.

By the way, how do people recycle their free CDs? Are they plastic or metal? Please don't say you hang them in the garden to scare the birds.

I tend to find the Word CDs vary in quality ( or rather, in what appeals to me ) from month to month - sometimes months will go by with very little of interest on, then there'll be one loaded with interesting stuff. I've stumbled across some brilliant stuff via the discs on the cover, long may they continue!

Surely if you are buying a music magazine it's a good idea to have some music arrive with the same package?

Not because I have OCD, but because it once took me over six months to find “Farmer in the City” by Scott Walker on a covermount cd among my 3000+ albums, I’ve now got a database of track listings. So. Computer says: 25 Word discs, 380 tracks. Of those, 158 (42%) are tracks that I like enough that I ripped them to mp3 music library and listen to them semiregularly. Of those, 59 (15%) are tracks I absolutely love and are indispensable to me. Also, I purchased 29 albums as a direct result of tracks I first heard on Word cd’s.

By contrast, I rarely find more than one or two tracks worth listening to on a Mojo or Uncut disc, unless it’s a theme disc in a genre I like. Nowhere near the ‘hit rate’ of Word, by about a factor of 10.

Sure, there have been (rare) months where there was nothing on the Word cd that did a thing for me. But then there are those months that the discs are almost universally great, beginning to end.

Regardless, for me, it’s such a breath of fresh air to find a group of people (Word scribes as well as the posters on this site) whose aesthetics I share for the most part, and whose conversations, recommendations and debates help me find new opportunities to spend myself into the poorhouse.

I'd happily pay the cover price for the mag - I have to go down to London a lot and it's definitely the best for filling the journey back to Sheffield (extensive research reveals that Uncut lasts until Kettering, Mojo lasts until Leicester and the Word lasts for the whole journey, including the bus home from the station AND I get to save the feature article just before the review section for reading on the bog at the weekend.)

Er back on track, so the CD's something of a bonus - really good for the odd track (in every sense). I'd never have heard Pluto by Clare and the Reasons in a million years if it hadn't been on the CD.

I've got a couple of fantastic suggestions of recent stuff for a future CD that I'm desperate to make, but that way lies Spam City so I'll spare you.