Back to Back to Vinyl

Incredible to see I've gone almost ten months without posting. There are a few reasons for this.

For one, the odds seem far more stacked against any good finds these days. Vinyl has become a 'thing' again and demand is high - even if some people never listen to what they buy. And when The Works start selling a turntable that your records really won't thank you for being played on (as part of their 'Making Music Cool' tie-in with Intempo) it's clear that it's gone beyond the mainstream and into a completely different commercial zone.

There are now three independent record shops in Cambridge, all of which stock second-hand vinyl. So supply is arguably up but two are based near the primary locations of the city's charity shops - could well be that collections that would have been given away are being sold instead. I've also noted before (and I'm not alone in this) that some charity shops are adopting crazy prices for vinyl. In some of the national charity shops vinyl seems to have vanished altogether locally which makes me think it's being sent to a central location to evaluate. CDs on the other hand are turning up in bigger numbers and smaller prices.

But although my gut, and the lack of entries here, says I'm having much less success, a quick look back at some of what I've picked up this year suggests otherwise. Only I've posted them on Twitter instead - it's a quick fix, and at weekends my timeline is awash with impressive finds from other users around the country. And a lot of pictures of No Parlez, but that's another story.

So it's still possible to pick up some genuine bargains with a fair bit of persistence and rather more luck. Here are some of my favourites from 2016.

Prince's death in April drove me to do something that I've never been compelled to do before - I immediately bought a couple of his LPs that I was missing. I was also reminded of the Hindu Love Gods album with its cover of Raspberry Beret - which I picked up a month later during a rare car boot visit (I'm not really a Sunday morning person) for £2.50, part of a four-for-£10 deal along with New Order's Technique, The Beach Boys Love You and a budget Otis Redding compilation.

No, it doesn't have a plum Atlantic label. Misty Mountain Hop is correct on the label. Indeed, it's definitely a relatively late pressing but I think no later than early 80s as there's no barcode (assuming one was placed on copies from the mid-80s onwards).

But I'm absolutely certain that this is the only time I've ever seen a Led Zeppelin LP in a charity shop. And it was very prominent, catching my eye immediately. A mere £1.

This wasn't a sleeve I was familiar with but it looked interesting enough in amongst a pretty uninspiring batch of LPs in a charity shop that very rarely put any out. I'm glad I flipped it over, revealing it to be Anymore For Anymore by Ronnie Lane. I didn't mind running to a whopping £3.99 for this.

It's not always charity shops and car boot sales that throw up decent finds. I had the good fortune to pass a house on my street where the owner had been putting various things outside in advance of moving out - and one Saturday morning there was a batch of records. Curiously they owned 3 copies of Rumours (the sleeve on mine was a bit damaged so I took one) but even more curiously they were discarding a recent re-issue of Big Star's 3rd LP. I can't really mock them for having three copies of Rumours though - my wife went down to have a look at what else they were giving away and brought back the other two copies, so we now have four ...

There are only two charity shops remotely close to where I work. One of them is often piled high with bags of donations they've been unable to sort. They were using what passes as a changing room to store several of these bags, and underneath them was a plastic box full of records. Mostly junk of course. Until I reached a Moody Blues LP, with a gatefold sleeve. So far, so whatever. But there was another LP in the gatefold - and it was only a first pressing (I think) of Pink Floyd's second LP. In rather good nick too. And for £2 I rather did nick it.

I felt almost guilty over this one. It was in the window of a local charity bookshop that rarely has any records so I don't tend to go in. Presumably they'd had a large collection donated and put them out at 50p each or 3 for £1. As I went to to remove this from the window someone else came in right behind me; they were going to do the same. Knowing that I, umm, already owned this (albeit a copy with a lot of sticky residue that I've yet to remove) I did offer them first look through everything else, which they declined (and rightly so - it was all tat).

Other honourable mentions for Self Destruction Blues and Two Steps From The Move (with comic) by Hanoi Rocks at £2 each; a battered but still playable With The Beatles in the same box as the Floyd LP, also £2; assorted new wave singles bought for an appropriate 45p each on Record Store Day (and I didn't have to queue overnight); Soft Boys & Robyn Hitchcock LPs for a pound each; and Lou Reed's Perfect Day / Walk On The Wild Side single for 50p - an A- and B-side combination that's hard to top.

My head is going round in circles ...

It's been easy for me to avoid getting caught up in Record Store Day. Without a dedicated independent record shop in Cambridge it's not really been on my radar. Heffers, predominantly a bookshop, has maintained a small offering but for 2015 they have been joined by two vinyl-only retailers in the city - Relevant and Lost In Vinyl. I can cycle (this is Cambridge after all) to the former in under 5 minutes and so I took more interest in this year's releases than ever before.

Thankfully there wasn't too much on the list that appealed and so I wasn't tempted to join the queues that reportedly started forming outside Relevant at 4.15am. Sure, I could see some good titles on there - some that I already had (Otis Blue; L.A.M.F; Roger The Engineer; Don't Stand Me Down), some that I could see the appeal of should you be so inclined (the Creation Artifact boxed set; and the album that went on to top that week's vinyl-only chart, The Holy Bible) but there was only one title on the list of 550 exclusive products that truly caught my eye: Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by the Small Faces, predominantly due to the fact that it came with the circular sleeve.

Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake - Record Store Day 2015

This is something I've kept half-an-eye out for a while and I wasn't going to get an original copy on the cheap. Buoyed by the fact that I'd just picked up some bargains in local charity shops (amongst them Bowie's Young Americans; Madonna's Immaculate Collection; a few Nancy Sinatra singles and a selection of new wave 7-inches such as Jilted John and Rock Lobster) I felt I could justify picking it up.

In doing so I was reminded that my brother had this, and if I recall correctly had bought it at Tower Records somewhere around 1985. Which in itself surprised me - that far after its release they were still producing the, presumably expensive, circular sleeve? Checking on Discogs I can see a 1980 reissue and expect it was that, but bear in mind this isn't something that was solely released as a tie-in to a one-day event. It was released in that sleeve as someone presumably decided it should be available again rather than just re-issuing the rather unsatisfactory square sleeve with the circular image.

On further reflection and again in the mid-80s, I bought The White Album in my local Our Price and it came with the inserts. A few years later I was on the other side of the counter in that exact same shop in my first full-time job; vinyl sales were tailing off and we had a gradually dwindling range but I can confirm that The White Album still came with the inserts as late as 1990. Maybe EMI over-printed back in 1968. I can't say the same for Sgt Pepper, and although we did still stock New Order's Blue Monday 12" it was no longer being produced with the die-cut sleeve. I don't recall Their Satanic Majesties Request being stocked but if it was I'm certain it would have been in a similar sleeve to the copy I picked up cheaply around four years ago.

John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy

John Lennon & Yoko Ono
Double Fantasy
Geffen K99131
£1
Filed between John Lennon 'Shaved Fish' and John Lennon 'The John Lennon Collection'



Despite not having heard of John Lennon at the time, I have some very clear memories from December 9th 1980 as the news of his death the night before came through from New York. I was 10 at the time and the only member of the Beatles I knew of was Paul McCartney – perhaps not surprising given that in the preceding years he had been the only one in the public eye, not least with 1977’s ‘Mull Of Kintyre’, with Lennon having only just emerged from his self-imposed five year hiatus and the solo careers of George Harrison and Ringo Starr peaking back in the early 70s (the latter had yet to take the narrator’s role on Thomas The Tank Engine, otherwise I may have known who he was).

Music was not that prevalent in our household and the impact on me cannot be understated, as a whole new world seemed to open up. That evening the BBC broadcasted the 1965 film ‘Help!’ and something was almost immediately triggered throughout our home. My dad bought Double Fantasy and my older brother invested in the Red and Blue albums. It was shortly after this that I also started to buy records, pocket money permitting (my earliest purchases incidentally were ELO's Greatest Hits and viral video star Kim Wilde's debut album). Music for me became an obsession and rather than waste my teenage money on cigarettes I spent more and more on records. In 1985 I bought my first guitar and by 1988 I had a vague idea of how how to play it. I stumbled onto a stage for the first time the following year.

This can all be traced back to that day thirty-two years ago - my musical epiphany if you must. Hardly a replacement for the world when compared to the loss of someone of Lennon's status, but hugely important to me on a personal level.

Mention of this LP on Twitter recently also led to a suggestion that the lyrics towards the end of 'Watching The Wheels' echoed the final pasages of 'Catcher In The Rye'. I knew this was the book Mark Chapman was carrying on that fateful day but was unaware of this other potential link - more can be read at http://www.dpdotcom.com/freebie/TTMGRexcerpt.pdf.

John Lennon – The John Lennon Collection

John Lennon

The John Lennon Collection

EMI EMTV 37

50p

Filed between John Lennon ‘Shaved Fish’ and John Lennon and Yoko Ono ‘Milk And Honey’

A popular game in our house is to hold up certain pictures of John Lennon and ask our two year old daughter who it is. More often than not she will say 'daddy'. This worked with the inner sleeve photo. 50p well spent for that reason alone.

The Beatles - A Collection Of Oldies

The Beatles
A Collection Of Oldies
Fame FA 41 3081 1
£1
Filed between The Beatles 'Help!' and The Beatles 'White Album'.

Not sinking quite as low as Marc Bolan's K-Tel release, a handful of Beatles LPs were re-issued on EMI’s budget-price Fame and MFP labels – none of the key albums, but certainly the two ‘Rock & Roll Music’ compilations, ‘Live at the Hollywood Bowl’ and this collection, first issued in 1966. In each of the three preceding years the Beatles had managed to release two albums; with only ‘Revolver’ in 1966 EMI must have been feeling the pinch.