Tagged: vinyl

I wish there was a record shop in town.

It is like the good old days. A musician plays his heart out at a gig  and after had your socks knocked off by the live performance you wait in anticipation for the next album to come out. Then when you find out this record is to made in collaboration with  another favourite combo then it is time to get really excited!

Time to buzz down to  Raynors/Rival/Revolver and get your hands on a copy of the LP.

Well Elvis Costello has teamed up with The Roots to make his latest album.

He did his best to shake up the dullards who were stood waiting in their chosen spots to see The Stones be wheeled out later. It was said that Freddie Flintoff used to bowl a lot of ‘effort’ balls in his Test career. Well Glastonbury 2013 was one of Elvis Costello’s ‘effort’ gigs.

So he has now gone onto work with Philadelphia’s finest. It just is a download away to see how they got on.

Record Box – the ultimate

John Peel died nearly 7 years ago. It seems such a long time that has passed very quickly. I have a box of vinyl records that I have referred to a few times on this blog, but the ultimate record box has to be the one that belonged to John Peel.

I found this documentary about this ultimate record collection on youtube and it comes in 4 parts. The first part is here and if you are a music fan I think you will enjoy the programme.

Box of vinyl………(6)

Got the old box of 45’s out for a flick through.

A bold purple cover stood out; I had rediscovered a GothRock classic. The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary. In fact it gets a brief mention in a previous blog, but I think that it deserves more than an honourable mention.

The-Cult-She-Sells-Sanctuary

The video was not that great, but I do remember it being on the video jukebox in the “Volley” on King Street. Video jukeboxes were all the rage back then after the dust had settled in the Betamax/VHS format war.

Goths were pseudo punks in the mid 80’s.   The sort of mainstream Gothic rock singles that were out then on the video screens were things like this Cult track, Killing Joke – A Love like Blood and Billy Idol’s – White Wedding.

I did like a lot of that style of music. Robert Smith of the Cure was a clever bloke in my opinion who wrote some unique songs. Siouxsie and the Banshees were another band that I thought were pretty sound. I never bought a Cult album though, but the single here was good to bop about to.

So this landed in my singles collection.

Coming back to King Street, pubs and music videos a couple of personal favourites of mine back then that were also on the jukebox were The Ramones – Teenage Lobotomy and Van Halen’s – Hot for Teacher. They stick in the mind. I somehow still remember staring through the smokey fug at the tv screens to watch those two videos, whilst I nursed a beer in the upstairs bar  The Ramones promo video was not as slickly produced as Michael Jackson’s Thriller,  but was a load more scarier from memory. I cannot find the actual video from then on-line today. Maybe it got banned by the Health and Safety people.

The Van Halen video just appealed for base reasons I suppose. Watching it now makes everything seem so dated. I will not post it as it is degrading to women, all warm blooded males can Google it.

More on music

More on music.

It was interesting to read today in The Independent on Sunday about the comeback of vinyl.

Peter Hook echoes my sentiments about buying an LP as opposed to downloading an mp3 file in the article.

Also of note is that it seems that youngsters are raiding lofts for their parents’ old rock albums and not knowing how to play them on a turntable, or even how to get hold of one! Bless!

Box of vinyl ……………………………(5)

The Selecter – Three Minute Hero

Rummaging around in that singles box again. There are a few 2 Tone singles in there and I forgot that the Beat were actually on Go Feet! Towards the back I found this little tune.

Singles always used to have the song time length stamped on the label.

Guess what the digits are on this disc?

Yep

(3.00)

Box of vinyl…………….. (4)

THE SID PRESLEY EXPERIENCE

Saw these at a “Give Ireland back to the Irish Gig” (Red Wedge Tour) at the Bristol Mecca Studio 17th March 1985. I think they all wore suits with shamrocks on their lapels and were the warm up act for Billy Bragg. The band had a punk/nihilist following who all fought amongst themselves and spat a lot at the front of the crowd. Billy Bragg was his usual passionate self – whilst stopping short of being a true angry young man. I remember Billy kept on breaking strings on his guitar as he was playing so hard and also thinking back the other support act was Porky the Poet aka Phil Jupitus.

As for the venue The Studio was a big disco/nightclub which was one of many dives around the City Centre. It was one of the sort of places that just do not exist anymore.

Nightclubs and the old boozers of my youth in Bristol are described in Mark’s fantastic Blog at twiglet.com

Box of vinyl…………..(2)

There are a few bad ‘uns in this box of 45’s, yet there are a few classics.

Probably my all time number 1 is this one. The video to this is pretty cheesey – click on the image below to view it.

The Naval Volunteer in King Street was one of the first pubs in Bristol to have a video jukebox and good old Marvin was on there along with the Ramones – Teenage Lobotomy and Billy Idol – White Wedding.

Box of vinyl………….(1)

The youngsters amongst you – ie those sub 35 year olds may not have a vinyl collection. I think my albums went West when I went and spent time out of the country for a while. The box of 33 rpms got raped and pillaged by my sister I think.

However I found a box of 45’s in my new home that were in fact my own discs – they have stuck to me like glue it seems. A collection of about 50 singles that must have been in storage and somehow stayed in my possession.

So here are a few examples that I will air digitally over the next few weeks and months.

Click on the picture to hear the song.