One of the coolest, smartest dudes HERC has never ever met is John Book - yet they've been friends for nearly four decades. John's sister, who probably knows him slightly better than HERC does, calls him "music's biggest fan". HERC wrote him after a letter of John's regarding Prince was printed in Goldmine magazine in 1988 or 1989. (Back then, they published your address along with your letter.) They began corresponding on a regular basis via the US Postal Service, swapping long letters and cassettes. When the Internet entered their homes, they began emailing each other. John sent HERC every issue of his fanzine in*10*c/t absolutely gratis and even encouraged him to write a couple of album reviews for the zine. When he began recording under the guise of Crut, John sent HERC each of the tapes.
Many, many tapes piled up over the years - cassette to cassette copies, album dubs, promo review cassettes, anthologies (like this one) and mixtapes. When HERC recently stuck his hand in the box of those tapes, he pulled out one labelled NIRVANA II then spent a solid 45 minutes searching for NIRVANA I and NIRVANA III. Turns out it was just a two tape set as he found the first tape and is proud to present both just as Nirvana is to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. (If Kurt was still alive, HERC hopes he'd refuse the invitation.)
As he often did, John wrote out the tracklist within the body of a letter, leaving it up to HERC to transcribe the titles and artists to the jcards. So, yes that is HERC's scrawl but the compilation was sequenced and recorded by John Book. To his credit, John always labeled the cassettes themselves, as seen in the image above of one of the tapes.
John and HERC still correspond. In addition to suggesting intro songs for The Roots to play for guests on Fallon's show, John posts several times daily on his site.
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