Totally Shuffled-Bill Drummond

extracted from "Totally Shuffled- A Year of Listening to Music on A Broken iPod" 

February 18th

I met Bill Drummond once.

He made me a cup of tea.

I was trying to get all of the records released on his then label, Zoo, and I had got nearly all of them, but had fallen short with the first release, Big in Japan’s “From Y-Z and Never Again” e.p. So, at 17 years old and knowing that Zoo’s office was in the middle of town and incredibly listed in the Yellow Pages under Record Labels, I plucked up the nerve one weekday afternoon to knock on an anonymous metal door on the first floor of a building in Whitechapel, Liverpool.

What possessed me to do this, I’m not really sure. I must have thought that they had boxes of records for sale.

Anyway, the door was opened by Bill Drummond himself and I stuttered what I was after. He very kindly explained that all the Big In Japan records had been sold out, but there were some sleeves left and did I want one of those?

Not only that, but did I want a cup of tea whilst I was here?

I expected to be ushered into some sophisticated thriving hive of activity, a plush suite of offices, but it was a merely a bare room. There was a big empty desk with a phone on it, a fridge, kettle and an old sofa. That was it.

I also expected that it would be full of musicians and instruments-maybe Julian Cope would be hanging around. But no, that’s all there was.

A fridge and a sofa.

Battered old carpet on the floor and Dave Balfe, co-owner of Zoo (and later to manage Blur) on the phone.

I can’t remember what exactly I talked about with Bill Drummond, but I certainly stayed long enough to have a cup of tea.  I recall that he talked about Zoo making a film and somewhere along the line Dave Balfe passed him the phone for some business deal to be discussed.

Bill Drummond apologised to me for interrupting our conversation following this and asked what were we talking about before spending another 15 minutes or so resuming our conversation. I have racked my brain but have no recall to this day what it was all about.

What I do have a memory of is that he was a very affable, friendly chap. He could have quite easily sent me away with a flea in my ear when I had had the temerity to knock on the door of his company unannounced, or just thrust the sleeve of the e.p. in my hand and told me to bugger off.

The fact that we took the time to make me (a 17 year old fan) a cup of tea and find time to chat has positively coloured my perception of the man ever since. It was clearly a small thing for him but for me, goes to show that not everyone in the music business is an arsehole.

 Bet he’s one of a select few though.  

Get "Totally Shuffled" here:

Kindle:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA   

Paperback :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X 

......and this is what "Totally Shuffled" is all about:

One track per day for 366 days on a broken iPod. 366 tracks out of a possible 9553. From the obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex). From the sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).  From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music to The Monkees. From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz, classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between. This is what I listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of critical kicking. There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops, prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that I’d completely forgotten about. But with 40 years of listening to music, I realised that I’ll never get sick of it.  I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but I’ll never fall out of love with music.