june 6th extract.. and the closure of record shops

I wouldn't normally post anything from the new book that's directly related to the news but I've just heard that One Up Records in Aberdeen is closing the same week that HMV has gone. I'm not arsed about HMV but One Up going is really bad news. Anyway here's the extract from "Totally Shuffled..." 

Day 158

June 6th

Foetus Interruptus-Thaw

Record shops are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Sadly. They’ll become stuff of legend and myth within the next couple of decades. I’ll be sitting my grandchildren on my knee and telling them tales of hours spent browsing for strange fat, round 12” artefacts just in order to listen to music. They’ll listen wide-eyed and incredulously about the hours wasted in vain attempts to get hold of “rare” songs imported across the ocean from America in numbers of less than the fingers of one hand. They’ll be staggered at the exorbitant prices that used to be paid for just one record and that generally music was so difficult to obtain. Maybe they’ll see recorded music as a bit odd in itself.(Recorded music ,after all, is  just a blip that’s only been around for a 100 years or so. By the end of the 21^st century it may be looked upon as a technological and cultural dead-end. Like a harpsichord.) 

(Let me tell you a story.)

Anyway, I’ve spent many, many happy hours in record shops up and down the U.K. (And many costly hours as well.)  I can’t actually remember the last time that I spent any significant period browsing but I have a feeling that those days are gone forever. I’ll start from the North and work my way down South in respect of the most memorable record shops that played such a large part in my life.

1.One Up Records, Aberdeen.

This would have been in the early 1980’s when I worked for a while in the Granite City. There was a Virgin store in Aberdeen which was ok but One Up was a small indie store just off Union Street in the city centre. It was slightly similar to Probe Records in Liverpool (more of that soon) but staffed by dour-as-fuck Scots and therefore a much jollier retail experience than Probe. One Up was, I think, next door to a café-which was useful. It must have previously operated as a different sort of shop as all the wall were at weird angles which wasn’t conducive for housing racks of vinyl records. Having said that, they had a great selection of really indie stuff-lots of records from the USA and post punk singles from around the world. If you’d heard, say a 7” single played on Peel’s show by an unpronounceable Polish hardcore band on a Wednesday night, the One Up would have it ( or know of it and be able to get it for you) via some circuitous route from Gdansk across the North Sea by the following week. There were plenty of singles I got from there purely on the basis that they seemed obscure and therefore hoped they would be the next-big-thing.(Never worked out like that). Two other facts; their record bags were cool and if you hung around long enough they’d always make you a cup of tea.)

2 .Probe Records, Liverpool.

I’ve already gone on at length about Probe so I won’t reiterate things too much. However, it was a little wonderful trove of records in Mathew Street, Liverpool and staffed by the most fucking miserable condescending bunch of know-alls in the whole retail sector. There is an apocryphal story (which rings so true) about a hapless punter who wandered in off the street one day and asked in all innocence, “Do you have Phil Collins’ new album?” “Yes”, came the reply. “Can I have it please then?” “Er, no.”  That just about sums it up.

But, for their selection of records, it couldn’t be beaten and that’s why I spent many hours in their browsing away and many pounds that I couldn’t really spare crossed the counter into their coffers. (Unlike in Aberdeen, you’d never get a brew from them.)

3. Penny Lane Records, Liverpool.

Although they must have had a shop in the actual Penny Lane this one was in the city centre. It’s now an opticians I think. Penny Lane was up a flight of stairs on the first floor above, an opticians. Maybe bad sight has increased at the same rate as record shops have declined. Penny Lane was a bit like Probe (indie shop but not so much indie (music)) but it did have a really good selection of reggae albums including loads of dub and what seemed to be the whole ECM catalogue on vinyl. When New Order played the State Ballroom in Liverpool, the only place you could get tickets from was Penny Lane. The shop suddenly closed down-it must have gone bust- one day it was there and the next it was gone. I wonder what happened to all those unsold ECM records.

4. Virgin Records, Oxford Street, London

Not the megastore Virgin but a strange little Virgin store that co-existed at the same time as the megastore was growing. It was halfway down Oxford Street in a sort of arcade of shops and must have been forgotten about by Branson as it seemed to be a bit of throwback. It only appeared to have in stock weird rock albums from Germany and Japan and obscure old hippy albums though there was a section of industrial oddness which is where I got hold of the first Foetus album, “Deaf” (which is now worth a fortune and which I sold for buttons ages ago. Grr.) I could never have imagined of being able to go into any of the Virgin megastores and being able to buy a Foetus record.

I wonder what they were thinking of.


Totally Shuffled:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA

august 3rd extract-the gang of four

Gang Of Four- At Home He’s A Tourist

I’ve only ever owned one Gang of Four record, their first E.P. on Fast Records that had the tracks “Damaged Goods”, “Love Like Anthrax” and “Armalite Rifle”. I toyed for a long time with the idea of buying their first album. On more than one occasion I got as far as taking it from the racks in the record shop and walking up to the till but every time I thought better of it. On one occasion, when I had a spare tenner in my pocket, I had “Entertainment!” (the said Gang of Four album)in one hand and Madonna’s “True Blue” in the other as I approached the counter. What a dilemma and what a cultural divide. Needless to say- because I’ve just mentioned that I’ve only ever had the one Gang of Four record- that La Ciccone won out over the battle of the albums with the agit-poppers. One of my better decisions in retrospect.       

All throughout this year-more than once anyway-I think that I may have mentioned that my listening habits during the 1980’s comprised largely in part of the likes of The Fall, Scritti Politti and the Gang of Four. Actually, I should have said that it was bands like the Gang of Four as I only had heard the three tracks of the E.P. and a handful of others recorded off the radio and “At Home He’s A Tourist” was one of them. (I’ve only being using the Gang of Four throughout this year as a sort of metaphor for the type of post-punk music I was listening to).

Why had I struggled so much with buying the Gang of Four album? Why did Madonna win out in the end? It was quite simple really. The Gang of Four were known for their decidedly political stance, a highly developed and well-thought out post-structuralist Marxist critique of capitalist consumerism blah blah blah. They weren’t afraid of sticking it to “the man” and questioning all and every structure of power and authority. They positively relished challenging accepted social constructs and were an all male band well noted for their strident feminist stance. Now all of what they stood up for I agreed with and I still strongly believe in but you can see where this is heading.

They (and this isn’t intended as a pun) pulled out of appearing on TOTP with the “At Home..” single because the BBC didn’t want them to sing the word “rubbers” i.e condoms, as on the released version of the song. They weren’t prepared to compromise their art in the face of the pressure exerted by them  for a programme that was broadcast on BBC1 at 7.30  p.m.on a Thursday night-Noel Edmonds, bad jumpers and the axis of evil. This was all very understandable and commendable in a Crass-stick-to-your-principles sort of way. 

Which is why it all was just a little bit surprising that considering when they signed for a major label straight after their first and only indie release they plumped for EMI.  EMI, well known for their high ethical stance on everything under the sun, seemed the perfect fit for these chaps from Leeds. Without knowing too much about EMI, it was well known at the time that they were in part heavily into the manufacture of armaments and missle guided systems. It made the release of the anti-militaristic single by the boys, “I Love a Man In a Uniform” a tad ironic.

However good the music may have been within the “Entertainment!” album, at least I always knew where I stood with Madonna.     

december 30th extract

The Birthday Party- Big Jesus Trash Can

I was quite prepared when this track just came up this morning to spend 500 words and a bit of time slating The Birthday Party. I listened to it while brewing a pot of coffee, having a smoke and mulling it all over. I could follow a route of seeing the Birthday Party as responsible (in part) for the emergence of goth; all that Old Testament imagery, wailing and gnashing of teeth, big back-combed matted hair, tales of depravation, disgust, murder; black clothes and black imagery. On the other hand I could look at the intrinsic dark humour of The Birthday Party; how the fact that it is so very much over-the-top; that it’s really impossible to take it all with any level of seriousness that it’s actually a comedy record (not in a Barron Knights-style but you know what I mean)-it’s so self-consciously dark and bleak that it’s as if they thought so hard to make it grim and then added (trowled and heaped) another layer and more on top because it wasn’t at that level of grimness that they wanted. It’s basically so much darkness that you can’t help but laugh at the sheer, unremitting and relentless nature of it all. 

I was also thinking about how my British mis-conceptions of Australia have them down as a lager-drinking, sports-loving nation of people and how that seems at odds with the personae of The Birthday Party. Did they break off recording this album at any time for a can of Fosters and to sit down to watch some Aussie Rules? Did their tour schedules have five day breaks so they could make sure they’d see the Ashes? (It would be quite a good image to see Nick Cave and the lads wandering around Sydney Cricket Ground, looking suitably dishevelled.) I’ll bet they’re not openly into sports but that a little bit of them cheers inside if England loses the Ashes. I suppose that my mis-conceptions of Australia could in some ironic way, mirror their views of U.S. as Australians in their mid-twenties when this album was recorded. All Southern Gothic-ness. There certainly doesn’t seem to me anything specifically Autralian about The Birthday Party and if I didn’t know that they were from the other side of the world I’m sure I would think that they were from America (or, bearing in mind their goth-ness, Leeds or Bradford.)

december 3rd extract-electric light orchestra

December 3rd extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken  iPod"

Electric Light Orchestra-Mr Blue Sky  

  

ELO existed within a weird sort of other type music. Post-Glam. Pre-punk. Post punk. Prog. But not prog. Pop. But not really pop. Overblown album sleeves and mad art concepts from a bunch of old rockers from Birmingham. Birmingham, U.K., not Birmingham, Alabama. If any band was never hip or cool then ELO was that band. Some prog bands (such as ELP and Yes) and old hippies (such as Fleetwood Mac were) rightly ridiculed and dismissed as old irrelevant dinosaurs by the advent of punk but ELO remained unscathed. I don’t think that it was because there was an affinity between ELO and the new guard (not so new as it turns out but that’s another question altogether). It was because that ELO were irrelevant in that good way. They were as relevant to the issue as say, a record by James Last. It’s not as if they were beneath contempt but they didn’t seem to register as a worthwhile target.

But ELO were massively popular. Incredibly popular. They’ve sold over 50 million records worldwide but I’ll bet you’ll never find anyone admitting to being a big fan of ELO. ELO were not just solely listened to by sales reps who drove Ford Granadas and who only possessed albums on 8 track tapes. You may get a few people letting on that they’ve had a few ELO records but no-one will ever say that they’re their favourite band. What’s more you’d never get any “serious” music afficiando giving ELO the time of day. There never seems to have been a retrospective of their work in any of the monthly music magazines: Mojo, Q, or even that odd one that deals with “Rock” with a capital R  ELO are still somewhere “out there” to this day,existing an stange sort of parallel universe and not fitting neatly into any sort of category.

I’d guess though that more than a few of those 50 million records were bought by lank- haired, great coat, flare-wearing fans of Yes and Led Zeppelin. And the same goes for fans of The Clash, The Pistols and rest of the scorched-earth safety pin brigade. Likewise with everyone else. All those deep and intense music critics such as Paul Morley, Julian Cope, everyone who writes for The Wire magazine and The Quietus will have a ELO record or two.  I’ll wager that nestled close to Crass’ “Penis Envy” and The Fall’s “Perverted by Language” on someone’s shelves that there’s an ELO compliation. Mine.

I’ve got to be honest here. ELO aren’t one of my favourite bands either. Not even close. But I do love their singles. This one, “Evil Woman”, “Telephone Line”, “Wild West Hero”, “Don’t Bring Me Down”-how can anyone not fail to love these songs? If any band was ever destined to deserve a “Best of” album then ELO are that band.

A final thought. The Beatles were praised for being one of the first British bands to sing with a non-American accent. (I can’t really hear it myself). Listen to this track though. ELO sung with a Brimingham accent! How brilliant is that! And on the break in “Hold on Tight” they sang in French with a Brummie accent. Now that can’t be bettered.  

Get/see/read the rest of "Totally Shuffled... " here... 366 other tracks by 366 different artists. 592 opinionated pages about 30-odd years of buying and listening to music. Wasted hours in record shops and everything from the wildly obscure to the highly commercial. Every single genre of music really. Just whatever the first track that shuffled up on the (broken) iPod every day for a year turned out to be.

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

 

         

November 26 extract-Harry Pussy

(extracted from my book "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod")

Harry Pussy-Stop-Live

This is quite possibly one of the most badly recorded tracks there is on the iPod and probably one of the worst quality recordings that I’ve got amongst all my 1000’s of CDs, tapes and vinyl. This isn’t because, like a fair few others, that it’s been transferred and copied over and over again from old C90’s to pc’s and then converted to mp3’s and then burned to cheap CDrs from Asda or Tesco and then finally ripped back onto another PC, converted to an m4a and plonked onto the iPod, but it’s just genuinely a poor, poor quality recording.

It’s from a live 10" album by Harry Pussy, recorded at their final ever show at Churchill’s (I guess that was a club of some sorts), Miami, Florida in 1997. 

I think that the concept of a mixing desk was quite alien to them-everything is overloaded to fuck; the needles must have been continually boucing in the red. The only production credits on the album sleeve state that it was mixed in L.A. by some chap called Tom Smith from live tapes recorded at Churchill’s by the lovely-named Rat Bastard.

Now, I do have the distinct impression that Mr. Bastard just happen to be some pisshead who had just collapsed in a corner of the club, had some sort of recording device thrust in his hands and told to press the red button when the band came on stage. He must have fiddled with some dials as well-probably from the sound of it, totally at random. Things keep dropping out and then suddenly distorting beyond belief. At one point all that can be heard is the sound of a bass played by someone who sound as if they are either wearing oven gloves or if they have never picked up the bass (or any instrument before).

I get the feeling that old Rat Bastard spent a lot of time wandering around the venue with the microphone stuck in his pocket and it does sound as if, for a couple of songs at least, he decamped to an adjacent underground car park where the happy tunes of Harry Pussy seeped through the concrete like some primeval sludge. Between each song there isn’t even what you could describe as a faint smattering of applause. There’s odd bits of clapping and a bit of murmering and, unlike many gigs in America, there is certainly no whooping, whistling or hollering.  

At the end of each song the drummer and singer, Adris Hoyos, mutters something along the lines of “we’re Negative Atomic Dust and this next song is called Drop the Bomb”.. Each time she refers to themselves as a different band and the song titles bear no resemblance to what they actually play. Every song seems to just start half way through something and judders to a halt for no apparent reason. Maybe it was because it was their last ever gig, but a general air of boredom and indifference emmanate from the band and and it all seems to be reciprocated by the audience who, from the sound of the record appear to consist of about three or four hardy souls, wandering around in a drug- enchanced haze.

White noise seems to be the prevalent sound on the record and even when it’s not, there’s a contant undercurrent of just distortion.

“Harry Pussy Live” is a brilliant record and is what rock music is all about.


Get/see/read "Totally Shuffled" here:
Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA
Paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X