You know what they say about buses, well it's not usually true of record shops, but the take off of Vinyl sales kicked off possibly by the rise of Record Store Day seems to have sparked that in Newcastle.
I noticed Beyond Vinyl while wandering around the Clayton Street / West Road area where Kazbat's Den and The Star and Black Swan are located and was well impressed. They have plans similar to the excellent Pop Recs in Sunderland.
On Record Store Day I recommended Beyond Vinyl to Kirsty and Mark as Mark is into Vinyl, and she phoned me to ask where it was as they had just come out of Vinyl Guru. I asked them where that was and they told me and was shocked because I was completely unaware of it. So that's two new vinyl record shops in Newcastle and if you rope in Empire Records / Long Play Cafe which has been around for twelve months or so that is three new vinyl stores in Newcastle to sit alongside RPM, Reflex and Beatdown, though I still miss Volume and Hitsville USA.
Anyway I finally got to visit Vinyl Guru yesterday and the guy was friendly and knows his stuff. They have a growing selection of new and second hand vinyl, one piece that I am very tempted by but managed to resist. They have a complete section for Bowie stuff and lots of vinyl related artwork and accessories. This means you have two excellent vinyl record shops within two hundred yards of each other.
They are also invoved in a Punk Art Exhibition "Never Mind The Punk 45" with Gallagher and Turner at The Late Shows in Black Swan this weekend so they are not a one trick pony.
The title comes from "The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" interlude from Jethro Tull's "Passion Play" the excellent follow up to "Thick As A Brick". I was surprised to find a video for this on Youtube so thought I would include it, it is rather silly but some of the music is excellent.
Newcastle now has a healthy number of excellent Vinyl shops as well as a brilliant music scene and is one of the many reasons I stayed when I came up in the late eighties. Things have changed and a lot of those have been majorly for the better.
Was just off to bed and this question sprang to mind. Why Vinyl . Audiophiles talk about the warmth missing from digital representations and the personalisation that scratches and worn grooves bring but therein lies my argument. Vinyl is one of the most self destuctive of all media. Once the needle hits the groobve both vinyl an ddiamond / sapphire begin to destroy each other. Dust gathers on the record , heat warps the discs (remember dynaflex? The bane of my Bowie and Lou Reed collections).
Jimmy Page worked out that the optimum length for a vinyl long player was 18 minutes . Gram hold of an original pressing of Led Zeppelin I or II and check that there's no shiny spare vinyl in the label run off.
Vinnyl did enable some interesting tricks. Brian Eno's Great Pretender on Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy ran into a closed groove that effectively never ended. You don't get that on the CD version. Monty Python had a three sided album because one side consisted of two separate spirals so you never knew what track you would get when you put it on.
Then on Todd Rundgren's Inititiation , the running time of that album clocked around 69 minutes with an instruction to only play with a brand new needle. I bought mine on cassette!
However we have seen a major vinyl revival , recently The Beatles and The Who's Studio Output have been boxed at £300 and £150 respectively , very impressive they are too . Nice to see the covers in their proper size , but it's still vinyl and very expensive. Black Sabbath have also had a box out
I am happy with CD and digital , for convenience sake , but I am also glad that vinyl is here to stay as well - though I wont be part of the buying public for vinyl , well maybe the odd seven incher .....
Yesterday and today I have played a lot of vinyl on my GPO turntable, you can see a few posts on my Instagram Channel here . Music playing has sort of evolved , my own take on it is here , but while I sometimes use Youtube and did use Grooveshark , I am not a fan of streaming services. Radio stations are good because there is human intervention. Digital storage is convenient when you are on the move , but it can become background music.
Vinyl requires your attention, I have just listened to Wah Heat!'s "Seven Minutes To Midnight" and Holly Johnson's "Americanos" and now I have "The Moog Strikes Bach" by HansWurman playing . All of these records required more than the touch of a button to play , and it's a joy to see the vinyl spinning. You don't get that with CD or digital (although I am playing it through a digital soundbar and I do rip vinyl through the GPO deck to digital, but that is just for stuff that is not available digitally. It does amaze me the number of glaring omissions still not available digitally.
But this is the limit I mentioned in the title, after three minutes I may have to change the record, put it back in it's sleeve , get another one out and put it on the turntable. This is while I am typing this out. You have to give the vinyl your attention.
So I have to get on today, and as Prince Buster left us I am leaving you with his rendition of Judge Dread on vinyl on Blue Beat.
Time to go and do my stuff now, but playing vinyl is therapeutic and enjoyable.
My friend Royston posted a link to this blog post from KFMX (Lubbock's Rock Station) about the legacy of illegal downloading. It sums it up in a nutshell. Although I'm in two minds about the grammar , sould it be Metallica Was Right or Metallica Were Right. Anyway this post isn't about grammatical correctness it's about the whole music stealing thing , and where we are at today and why we are here today musically/ It's probably best to do it roughly in temporal order so I'll do it by decades:
Vinyl became established, first in 78 format with seven inch 45's becoming the single record content delivery device of preference. 12" 33rpm Albums named because sheet music was collected in albums was the modus operandii for Classical Music because of the length of the pieces , although spoken word albums came out that played at 16 rpm . If you look at a full featured vinyl record player that's what the 16 option is for. If you do want an classic record player take a look at RPM in Newcastle.
The thing is unless you had your own recording facilities in the 1950's the only way of stealing music was to actually shoplift or resort to burglary. Music theft was limited to plagiarism and blantant exploitation like Alan Freed's co composer credit on Chuck Berry's Motorvatin' because there had to be a white presence.
Music took of in this decade, and you had a proliferation of transistor radios and portable vinyl disc players, and affordable reel to reel tape recorders were available. These allowed you to record either from the record player, radio or television. However this was not widespread so artists and record companies just saw it as another marketing opportunity, however the BBC threatened prosecution of anyone who recorded TV programs , although they then later asked for recorded copies when trying to replace lost shows . Albums became more popular especially with bands like the Beatles and Beach Boys shifting industrial quantities and incidentally albums were commercially available on tape reels. Really record companies were seeding the ground without looking to the future.
This is when supposedly the shit hit the fan for record companies. Music was becoming more portable. The introduction of the 8-Track tape and more importantly the compact cassette tape. These were introduced by record companies again to sell product, but when cheap portable recorders were put on the market you would have thought that someone would have realised that customers would not just record their own voice or birdsong.
Lots of companies produced tapes and recorders and customers started recording music from TV and radio and records and sharing it with their friends. This was countered by the "Home Taping Is Killing Music" campaign. What actually was happening was that record companies saw a threat and adopted a terrible attitude that their market was comprised of thieves. Home taping went through the roof with the introduction of the Sony Walkman , because this meant that you could take music that you had paid for with you by copying to a C90 tape. Record companies didn't like this either because they saw it as a potential loss of revenue.
Companies started marketing pre recorded cassette tapes which sold well , but in a completely odd ploy Island started the 1+1 series with the album recorded on one side and the second side blank for you to record whatever you want on. The only image I could find was for the John Martyn album Grace and Danger, although these was a normal delivery method for Island completely encouraging people to tape music. I don't know if there is a caveat or disclaimer on the tape somewhere.
The portability of recording apparatus meant that bootlegs now became more prevalent, so as well as official releases , you could , if, ironically, you were prepared to pay way over the odds for usually substandard recordings.
The record industry tried introducing a high frequency signal on the vinyl record to combat taping, and finally introduced a 5% PRS levy on all tapes.
Home taping didn't kill music, if anything it helped spread the word. Although you could only record in real time, so you knew what you were doing. Though for the first time you could put together tapes for parties , driving , bus journeys, running but you still knew that you should really buy the records. However often you would get a tape from a friend, listen to it and then go out buy the album. The record companies didn't acknowledge this.
1980s:
This was the decade that changed everything. The record industry introduced the new cure all, the perfect indestructible medium of CD. This was a cold planning campaign by the music industry, they introduced very cheap CD players, CD players were part of the all in one music centres replacing the cumbersome vinyl turntable. People bought music centres not realising that this made their vinyl records obsolete. So they needed to buy CDs to replace the vinyl , except CDs were expensive £12
compared with around a fiver for the vinyl equivalent. Mid price albums were a bargain at a tenner. Now you weren't offered a trade in for your vinyl so you were paying for the medium. Did this mean that the music had no actual value?
But anyway this was a McDonaldisation moment for music, suddenly you had remote controls , you could program the way a CD was played , you could skip and repeat tracks, it was convenience for the ears. And you could program a CD and record it to cassette to make your mixtape.
The new medium had no clicks or background vinyl noise, and the first song I played on my new CD player was The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", played loud. A mistake I never made again. Previously the song was introduced as the needle hit the groove, this time the opening power chord just hit with no warning at all. That was my first impression of CD.
But again the music industry just saw a huge cash cow, but they were selling discs containing music converted to digital signals and guess what happened then......
1990s:
CD replaced floppy discs as a medium for computers. They could also be written to. Home computers were taking off, the internet was connecting people and at this time the music industry decided it was time for another change. CDs would deteriorate and were not as indestructible as we thought. They needed replacing. Incidentally I've had CDs for thiry years that are still fine.
The music industry told us we now had to but DAT . It's tape! Tapes break , get tangled , and you cant easily change the order, and a blank tape cost as much as a CD. DAT did have it's place but just became a specialist niche and never threatened CD's dominance. However......
The CD data was copied into a digital file stored on computer , this was MP3. It was not created by the industry so there was no regulation. People could copy albums to there computer and duplicate them to CD, but more importantly could use the internet to share music using peer to peer networks such as Napster.
People were ripping , sharing and downloading music and not paying for it. The music industry had given everything to the public on a plate. Like with cassette they tried legal downloads but included DRM which limited what devices you could play YOUR music one. It didn't work. Elton John and Metallica were the biggest voices behind the movement that eventually shut down the peer to peer network Napster citing the amounts of money they had lost. The thing is most of the people who downloaded stuff were actually doing it because they could, they would never have bought the music if they couldn't download it so the figures were irrelevant , and these artists didn't give a fig about their fans when the issued old product on CD , then brought out a new version with an extra track, ten brought out a remastered version , expecting fans to cough up money each time.
However in the days of pay per minute internet connection a friend of mine spent £30 to download a Basement Jaxx album he could have bought over the counter for a tenner.
The nineties were the decade where certain people began to expect music to be free, not realising how this affects the people who produce it. This was a direct result of the music industries pushing of CD uptake in the 80s without any thoughts of impact analysis.
The New Millennium:
The turn or the century digital music became the norm. The internet has become very fast , and they perception that music is free has driven down the price of CDs. These days a new Cd will set you back around a tenner, a new vinyl album will cost you twice that. If the cost of albums had kept pace since say, 1975, you would be paying £80 for a new album today. I've used Job Seekers Allowance as a guide for this , in 1975 I bought the new Pink Floyd album "Wish You Were Here", it cost me £3.25 , now JSA stands around £70.
People can listen to music of their choice free on Youtube , Spotify and any number of streaming services. The problem with these for the artist, is that royalties are paid on a pay per play basis. So if a track is streamed on Spotify an artist will get paid a very small fraction of a penny, if their record is played on the radio they'll be paid £50 (that is completely made up but it is a reasonable amount). I don't know what the answer is to this.
But this leaves us in a world where to make money bands have to charge a lot for gigs and merchandise and kids think that stuff (music and video) should be free.
However music is still vibrant and alive, record shops are still going strong especially with National Record Store Day . New music is still being produced and I still buy a CD a week of usually new music the latest being the Wooden Shjips album "Back To Land".
The music industry is continually bleating about lost profits and stealing , but in digitizing everything they have created something that can be stolen over and over again, although as recent trends have shown , sensible pricing and convenience will actually result in sales and income, otherwise iTunes would have died a death long ago, and they still cause havoc and inconvenience with their licensing and terms and conditions.
So that's it , possibly my longest ever blog post. Hope it didn't send you to sleep.
I don't know if that's a real word , but just refers to the fact that I prefer these days to buy vinyl as opposed to CD or digital. I will probably still buy certain boxed sets but now very seldom look at normal CDs.
I definitely like listening to vinyl and often think I would like to buy certain music on vinyl, an example being after watching the film "Nico 1988" although the cost of Nico on vinyl is prohibitive although I do have her performances on the fisrt Velvet Underground album so it's not as though I have no Nico on vinyl.
I particularly like her take on "The End" by The Doors which then tempted me to purchase the first Doors album but I have that digitally along with a live Nico take from the live Ayers, Cale, Nico , Eno album at the Rainbow. That would be also a nice album to have on Vinyl but again I have a digital copy so I should be satisfied with that.
I really do have enough vinyl but, as with Oscar Wilde, "I can resist anything but temptation" , although that temptation does have to be something special.
So what music should we go with, maybe Nico live in Tokyo performing "The End" would be fitting
Today is Good Friday and it was a pleasantly good Friday (apart from Preston getting trashed 4-1 by Sheffield Wednesday) but wandering around the Clayton Street / West Road Intersection I noticed what looked like a Vinyl display in what was Blue Moon. I wasn't mistaken, and it turnes out there is a new vinyl emporium in town called Beyond Vinyl.
Essentially it's a Vinyl shop which will do coffee , cake and paninis and will have a performance space as well, plud of course a lot of class vinyl.
I spoke with the guys in there and touched on the laser etched holograms on the Star Wars soundtrack (which you can see here) and they told me the first laser etched hologram was on a White Stripes album.
Actually it was Jack White's "Lazaretto" and you can see the Angel hologram here but it still bends my mind to think how you could possibly even think about putting that into play let alone actually doing it. Added to that the vinyl album has some weird hidden tracks built in that play at 33rpm , 45 rpm and 78 rpm, but even though I have ordered a copy it's just for the hologram as I alread have the CD of the album. You can see the effect here.
Beyond Vinyl is a new brilliant space for music in Newcastle as well as meeting up . It is similar in concept to the absolutely excellent Long Play Cafe in The Grainger Market (and Quayside) and Pop Recs in Sunderland and I am looking forward to dropping in quite a lot as it is round the corned from where I work and close to Kazbat's Den if you fancy extending your wardrobe.
I've found an excellent live take of "Just One Drink" from "Lazaretto" to share with you as you read. Sleep well.
Today I will start the #AnimalAugust sequence , which is basically every post will feature animal related music in band name, song , record label or something else.
Apropos of nothing I was looking at album covers on the internet last night and there are various lists of album covers. Like many things because we are no probably into the seventieth year of album cover design , there are lot of examples good and bad, and was shocked to see glaring omissions and seemingly bland inclusions.
Some of my favourite album covers are a lot more that the front cover (I'm thinking Barney Bubbles and Storm Thorgerson / Hipgnosis ) and sometimes you do get a single striking image but a lot seem to be covers that are just there because the artist is very successful and famous.
I do buy vinyl albums mainly for the covers, or some uniqueness about them, but my preferred vinyl listen is probably reggae , although I also like electro disco , and finally got a copy of "En-Tact" by The Shamen which can be picked up very reasonably on Discogs .
Some of the iconic covers that stand out for me are the first Elvis Presley album which influenced "London Calling" by The Clash , Andy Warhol usually gets two mentions for "The Velvet Underground and Nico" the front cover of which only features Warhol's name, and "Sticky Fingers" by The Rolling Stones , both quite complex designs although deserving of their place in any list.
At the bottom this post will be twelve of my favourite album covers which you can click through to Amazon to check out although it may go through to the digital copy, there should be links to the vinyl copy.
Sometimes Picture discs can look good , I'm thinking the mandala effect on "Air Conditioning" by Curved Air, and there are some with zoetropic designs which look impressive under the right conditions , plus the laser etched 3D holograms which are often impressive, first seen on Jack White's "Lazaretto" I believe.
Then you have the Vertigo Swirl which is simple and hypnotic and worth buying any piece of vinyl so you can sit and watch it.
Vinyl , because it is bigger gives more options for creativity.
If you would prefer to support your local record shop check out these in Newcastle from this post here:
Three years back I wrote a history of music media in a post here, and at the weekend I nipped into Vinyl Guru and got talking with the lady in there about how when you buy vinyl you feel you have actually got something. You have sleeves, booklets and picture discs. I'm sure I did a post that said CDs were the McDonaldisation of music, all of a sudden you could skip songs , program the order , and the CD jewel cases are not something that look good, though they are very functional.
MP3 became even more dismissive of musical content, and a lot of the iPod generation can't even listen to a full song. When you wanted to record a tape for someone it had to be done in real time, even from CD, but now it's all Spotify and Deezer playlists which, lets face it can be done in thirty seconds, although a well done one can take time to put together.
These days I see a lot more people browsing the vinyl sections of shops and Newcastle now has a lot of shops where you can buy vinyl and this post has a list of them. One thing is there don't seem to be that many impressive covers such as Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" newspaper cover, or Hawkwind's "In Search Of Space", although "Space Ritual" is a available in it's full six square foot fold out. I was in Reflex and noticed "Faust Tapes" was £25, when I bought the original release it was 49p !
Vinyl provides more than just music, and the shops often provide coffee and food while you browse. People still complain about the cost of music, but remember if albums had kept pace with inflation you would be paying £80 for an album.
When I was in Vinyl Guru I spotted a 12" copy of Biko by Peter Gabriel, which I mainly wanted for the "B" side "Shosholoza" which I don't think is officially available digitally, but I found this lovely rendition of it for you to enjoy.
I've probably written about this before, but was talking with my son-in-law Mark , and daughters Juliet and Kirsty yesterday at an early Father's Day pizza meal at the excellent Dat Bar and Mark and Kirsty were talking about the clarity they got from listening to certain records (the "Blade Runner" soundtrack was an example), hearing things they hadn't noticed before. This is on probably a near perfect set up.
My own set up is a GPO turntable with a Samsung Soundbar with subwoofer which I also use for DVD Audio which also can sound incredible. A particular incredible recording is KirngCrimson's "In The Court of The Crimson King" that sounds incredidle on DVD Audio through a DTS system.
But back to the vinyl premise.andI have witten about it before including a post about the evolution of Music Media here and all of my vinyl posts are here. and there are a few.
When you play something on vinyl you don't tend to skip songs , especially on albums. This is why I preferred singles when I DJ'd as that meant you knew exactly where you were and didn't risk getting the end of an album track or missing the start of another one , although that did happen more than I'd like. This meant I did have a fair collection of rock and roll and also introduced people to a lot of "B" sides and it was remarkable how many pepleonly listened to the "A" sides often missing some absolute corkers, Bowie's "Queen Bitch" and "Holy Holy" spring to mine and The Rolling Stones "Let It Rock" and "Bitch" which backed "Brown Sugar".
These day I buy vinyl for the whole package and was surprised to see that Velvet Underground's eponymous debut had the "Peel Slowly and See" yellow banana skin that was missing from by CD box of the same name.
While enjoying the often excellent artwork and covers, I put an album on and it always plays through to the end. It is also great to enjoy the beautiful picture discs with the mandala effect on Curved Air's "Air Conditioning" or the hypnotic Vertigo Swirl which I am still amazed at. It's like you are about to fall in to a three dimensional time tunnel.
Sometimes these albums contain books and incredible fold outs which often don't translate well into CD (Although I do have some excellent CD packages that are beautifully put together).
However a vinyl album seems lest disposable that digital media and makes you feel you have something. The size also gives designers space to work, and the laser etchings and holograms are more amazing enhancements that couldn't be done on CD and I am still amazed that they have been done on vinyl.
For Father's Day I was given "Exile on Main Street" by The Stones and "Strange Days" by The Doors.
There will be no remote skipping when I listen to these albums and I will enjoy every minute. I thought I would treat you to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" to show you the Vertigo Swirl.
Some days things just hit me and make me want to to write about it and my friend,an avid Moody Blues fan, on Instagram shared a picture of a clear vinyl copy of "Moanin' At Midnight" by Hownlin' Wolf. Earlier this year I had linked Howlin' Wolf with The Moody Blues which was a coincidence here and in 2014 wrote about the origins of the song "Smokestack Lightnin'" here. so the disc certainly piqued my interest and I will now investigate further.
The clear vinyl version looks wonderful, though I'm not sure if the wolf in on the vinyl or is seen though the vinyl, but I do like the design.
Another of Howlin' Wolf's songs is "Spoonful" (written by Willie Dixon) , a brilliant loping riff that I first heard on my friend Harry Clark's "Best of Cream" album as a teenager. I listened to my vinyl copy which I picked up from Beyond Vinyl.
This is my third post today so I am a little worded out, although I need extra posts if I am to hit 366 posts this year which is possible. This is post 339 so after this I need to post 27 times in 23 days which seems to be getting further away from me, but I won't let that happen.
So I'm going to share Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" although my favourite take is by Cream from the live "Wheels of Fire" album, but this post is all Howlin' Wolf.
I have just been into Newcastle to dispose of an awful Alcatel Tribe phone, donated it via CEX to a Muscular Dystrophy charity, then on the way to Waitrose I dropped in a Windows Record Shop in the Central Arcade.
They're all ready for National Record Store Day, but something I've noticed with them and other record shops in the town is that the amount and range of vinyl on sale is increasing in a big way. In another year or so vinyl may actually be elbowing out CD. Thanks to them I found this Charts page. I can't say I've looked at a music chart for a long time, but at the time of posting it's nice to see the Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey at number one.
I suppose this is one of those situation that demonstrates that sometimes things can be very cyclical, although I suppose the sale of music started with busking , the paper, then vinyl then tape, then CD , then they tried DAT and Minidisc, then you had digital, and now we have the return of vinyl. Live music will always be with us as well. I was thinking of this when I left Windows and saw their husge vinyl window display which made me think of Billy Preston's "Will It Go Round In Circles" so that's going to be the music for today.
So if you have any weekend left enjoy it , we have Easter coming so for a lot of us it's only a four day week. Which is good
One of the benefits of listening to vinyl is that you listen to a whole side with no option for a remote break, and on a normal well planned album those sides seldom pass twenty minutes and definitely not twenty five minutes, so you are given a natural break. Todd Rundgren's "Initiation" clocked in about thirty five minutes a side which always needed to be played with a new diamond needle. That was not a good idea. Also somewhat strange that his classic "Todd" clocked in at just over sixty minutes and was a double album.
When Van Der Graaf Generator's "Godbluff" was released the NME reviewer said that we needed a continuous play medium (actually one side of a C90 cassette or an 8-Track tape would have provided that) but CD and MP3 satisfied that perfectly and some albums are best listened to in a non stop sequence.
But I bought four second hand albums at the weekend for a tenner from Vinyl Guru and on Sunday morning listened to side one of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band followed by side one of "This Is The Moody Blues" especially for the closing song "Legend of A Mind" one of my favourite songs of theirs.
Digital music has no limitations and vinyl has lots , but vinyl is more of a personal experience and you feel closer to and more in touch with the music. The may sound trite but the sounds produced from an analogue vinyl source are always a pure curve whereas digital is always a series of defined steps however small they may be.
So how do we soundtrack this, of course Youtube is a digital medium and this is a digital medium but we shall go for "Action Strasse" from the first album I played yesterday.
In yesterdays post I spoke of "Revelation" being the first piece by a rock band (Love on "Da Capo") to take up a side of a vinyl album. That got me thinking of what followed from that.
Classical music seems to have often consisted of lengthy pieces in the form of symphonies , but these were usually split into movements to give orchestras and audiences a rest. Remember permanent functional recordings that could cope with that sort of length of music did not come until the vinyl album which was around the late forties early fifties , and some symphonies outlasted the realistic forty minute vinyl limitation (anything else results in groove cramming and sound degradation).
Pink Floyd took up s side of "Meddle" with "Echoes" and "Atom Heart Mother"'s title track took up the first side. Yes did the same with "Close To The Edge" and "Relayer" opened with the first side being taken up by "Gates of Delirium" .
"Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd and "Sergeant Pepper" by The Beatles were merged song cycles that had defined songs that segued into others.
Yesterday on my walk to work I listened to Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" which is just a single forty minute piece, obviously consisting of movements and it does amage me that artists can remember everything to perform these live. That was followed by "Passion Play" which was split by the silly "Hare Who Lost His Spectacles" by effectively took up a fill vinyl album.
However Tull were outdone by Mountain who on the original vinyl album of "Twin Peaks" stretched "Nantucket Sleighride" over two and a half sides even though it was only thirty minutes long, so we'll go with the studio take of that for this last post in January. It's only six minutes long and amazing song about whaling, a section of it was also used for an ITV news program "Weekend World" , and I always loved the early Mountain album covers, amazing artwork.
This is my fourth blog post today. I did my first gig review of the year on Spoongig here for the Shambolic KO afternoon , plus two entries in the #TenAlbumsInTenDays that I am doing , which will stretching to twenty days as I have received a second invite, so today I have actually written, for me, a lot of words.
Luckily yesterday I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, so I have probably incurred the ire and wrath of my male neighbours who live within earshot, as it may be pointed out that their lawns need mowing too.
Yesterday was Record Store Day 2018 but I just ended up getting a Sha Na Na LP on vinyl, "Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay" from Beyond Vinyl, but the rest of the shops in Newcastle were queued out the door so I thought I would catch up at those shops next week, though thatks to Mark and Kirsty they put me on to a new Vinyl Shop in Newcastle Vinyl Guru on the West Road. I also dropped by Empire Records the new branding of Long Play Cafe's vinyl sales and discussed among other things the Vertigo Swirl.
So I will leave you with some Sha Na Na from the album I bought yesterday, mainly for it's brilliant cover and the fact it was on the Kama Sutra label.
Today I had a little free time in the house to myself and decided to listemto some vinyl while catching up on some reading. Today it was still "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, while listening to "Velvet Underground and Nico" , "Strange Days" by The Doors and "Exile on Main Street" by the Rolling Stones.
Then I realised the "problem"
When walking and listening digitally I can listen to an album, even a double album end to end. When CD came out you could listto 78 minutes of music without interruption. When "Godbluff" by Van Der Graaf Generator was released the NME said that it needed to be heard as a continuous piece and vinyl didn't give you that. At the time you would have had to record it on to a side of a C90 Cassette, but CD changed all that.
And therein lies the problem, a side of a decent sounding vinyl album (33⅓ rpm) will clock in at ten to twenty minutes, so the music, while enjoyable runs out fairly quickly for me. I still like listening to vinyl but if I am reading then usually I up every fifteen to twenty misnutes to change the record.
That's all I wanted to say so I will leave you with "Sweet Black Angel" from "Exile On Mainstreet" which was the "B" Side of the lead single "Tumbling Dice".
Today I stumbled across another wonderful find , under The Tyne Bridge , next to Popolos , the Long Play Cafe. This place is gorgeous , it does coffee , cake on settees and couches , with retro record players from RPM , wonderful wall art , Bowie and The Beatles caught my eye and they sell second had vinyl , T-Shirts and other music..
They have an Anti Record Store Day wall display . When I asked them about this they told me that to participate in Record Store Day you have to pay a £300 registration then commit to buying NEW vinyl every month. If you deal in second hand stuff that's an overhead you can't justify. Record Store Day started out as a celebration of independence but it's turned in to another commercial troughing.
Anyway apart from everything I've mentioned they put on gigs , serve food, sell very reasonably priced vinyl (I resisted the Prince picture discs), I bought a copy of Genesis' Lamb Lies Down on Broadway , just so as I could read the libretto.
It was great chatting with staff and visitors , lots of people had just discovered the place like me.
Really it's worth a visit if you like good food , good company , good atmosphere , comfy chairs and vinyl , 7" and 12" , black , and other colours and picture discs.
Back In NYC is one of my favourite songs so it's an excuse to play it
