The Monkees: snog, marry or avoid?

Kids. They think they know it all. They think they're the first to do certain things, things us old folk would never have dreamed of doing. Well no. We've been there. Done that. And judging by this inner sleeve, a variation of snog, marry & avoid has been around since the 60s.

The verdict: Snog Mickey Dolenz, marry Peter Tork, avoid both Mike Nesmith & Davy Jones.

Flying Vinyl - December 2015 issue

For those of a certain age, the mere mention of a mail-order music club will bring back memories of packages from Ilford landing on doormats nationwide as once again Britannia Music Club members neglected to cancel the latest 'album of the month'. That introductory offer, which seemed such a great deal in the Sunday supplement, felt less so with each unwanted arrival. But at least you were one more full-priced album closer to fulfilling their membership terms.

A more credible variation was that run by Rough Trade, who I was surprised to discover (just now) are not currently offering new subscriptions. This appears to be a recent, and possibly temporary, development.

I was the recipient on an appropriately-numbered birthday of a subscription to Flying Vinyl. And, having failed to notify them earlier that I didn't want it, thank you very much, I found myself spending Christmas trying to convince myself of the merits of my recently delivered CD of Take That's III.

Now I'm sure I don't need to point out that some of the above may not be true, as I did of course actually receive a nice little box housing five well-packaged 7" singles, some tasting notes and a reminder that The Revolution Will Not Be Digital. My apologies for not broadcasting this on long wave.

Flying Vinyl: The Class of December 2015

Having only limited existing knowledge of two of the five artists, and having briefly heard just one of them, the scene was set and each single was played in its entirety. Both sides. No impatient skipping during intros. No leaving the room and no checking Twitter or Facebook. This was indeed a time for analogue to come to the fore.

Ten sides of vinyl later it was felt that Sweden's Magic Potion just edged it ahead of Glasgow's Temperance Movement. A slightly younger me strongly lobbied for the latter but I think I haven't quite got over the fact that someone once recommended them to me, only for me to find that they had played less than a mile away from my home the day before. But ultimately there were no losers - all five singles will be played again and chewed over. Further recordings and gigs will be sought. And an eager eye will keep watch on the letterbox around January 18th.

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