A Rule Bending Opportunity courtesy of Arctic Monkeys and Oxfam

A splendid tie-up between those Arctic Monkeys and Oxfam gives me the opportunity to bend The Great Vinyl Experiment rules a little and buy something completely new.

The 7″ vinyl version of the Arctic Monkeys new single ‘Crying Lightning’ will only be available from Oxfam shops and while buying the record you are encouraged to donate some goods as well. So get yourselves down to your local Oxfam and hand over some fantastic old vinyl that only I would want.

I thoroughly approve of this collaboration and, in a special world that only I live in, I imagine it to have been inspired by my very own The Great Vinyl Experiment.

Details here.

a spot of spotification

An offshoot of The Great Vinyl Experiment has seen me going through my collection of seven inch singles and compiling some playlists of old favourites. I so was pleased with a recent fourteen tracker ‘Seven Inches Of Pleasure’ that I decided to share it with the world.

Many folks seem pleased with spotify so I decided to see how many of the tracks it could find. To my great pleasure and surprise seven of the fourteen were available so here then is three and a half inches of pleasure, not entirely satisfying but good enough to be going on with…

tgve

35mm of pleasure

A recent morning of photography with laura barnard gave me the opportunity to try out my new camera for the first time. In keeping with my recent fondness for all things retro and inexpensive it’s a camera I bought for less than five english pounds from a charity shop. For those of you interested in these things it is a Halina from the 1960s and requires that all adjustments be made in a manual fashion. It uses proper film and everything. Using much guesswork and intuition I shot a roll of film and here is a selection of four of the pictures. I am rather fond of them.

Singers

The great success of the iTunes/iPod combination has introduced the trauma of genre anxiety into the mix of musical appreciation. There seem to be more sub-genres of dance music, for instance, that you can shake a rhythm stick at and trying to design the correct taxonomy for one’s collection of tunes is a task not to be entered into lightly.  I don’t bother with genres much (preferring to keep it to ‘stuff I like’) but I have been known to use the classification ‘singers’ as a means of identifying those artists known primarily for their interpretations of songs written by others.

Here are some records, all obtained under the rules of The Great Vinyl Experiment, by three of my favourite singers.

This is Sinatra! was the first long playing collection of Francis Albert’s singles and ‘b’ sides featuring arrangements by the great Nelson Riddle. A splendid laminated sleeve, heavyweight vinyl and twelve great songs make this a fabulous addition to the collection. The inclusion of advice on the inner sleeve that “This record must be played only on equipment having a turntable revolving at 33 1/3 rpm constant speed.” is the final element of its perfection.

One for my baby by Billie Holiday is a budget label reissue, with some extra tracks, of her Songs For Distingué Lovers album from January 1957. This was a particularly pleasing find since Distingué Lovers was one of the first CDs that I bought and it’s great to have it on vinyl. Also this has been the bargain of The Experiment so far as I paid only 25p for it.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook is one of my favourite records ever and was the first in her splendid series of Songbooks. 

In magnificent mono, this double album features brilliant song after brilliant song and, to these ears, is Ella at her absolute best.

Incidentally, for those of you of a digital persuasion, The Cole Porter Songbook is now in the public domain and can be had, as part of a 3CD set with the almost equally brilliant Rodgers and Hart Songbook, for less than four pounds. At that price there is no excuse for there not to be a copy in every home in the land. In fact, the Government should hand them out free to schoolchildren. The world would be a much better place for it.

A fine bunch of records then from, more or less, 1956 and a reminder of those pre-Beatle times when there was a strict division of labour. Writers wrote, arrangers arranged and singers sang.

Elsewhere in the 1956 forest something else entirely was happening…

A Cover Story

Sometimes I will buy a record just because of its sleeve. Not because the sleeve holds the promise of some splendid music (whether for listening or dancing pleasure) inside, but because the sleeve itself is just a great piece of art. There, I’ve said it – Art!

Here are a few examples (50p bargains all), bought under the strict rules of The Great Vinyl Experiment of 2009, that will give you some idea of the kinds of sleeve I look out for.

Seven inches of pleasure

The seven inch single is surely the pinnacle of home entertainment products – two great songs and over in five minutes or so. Here is a particularly splendid example found on one of my charity shop expeditions and secured for the sum of fifty new pence.

Chairmen of the Board – You’ve Got Me Dangling On A String

A great record from 1970 that went Top 5 in the UK.  My copy seems once to have belonged to someone called Sue, I wonder where she is now? This was their second single and features General Norman Johnson’s instantly recognisable voice. It’s one of those records that has been somewhere in my head since I first heard it nearly forty years ago.

Here it is on my record player, complete with added sunshine.

Rather terrifically someone has made a film of this record being played on an actual record player and uploaded the film to YourTubes. The modern world can sometimes be a splendid place and I thoroughly recommend that you have a look at this mixture of old and new technologicals.

You will find it here.

Everything I Know About – Geography

In the first of an occasional series, inspired by conversations with The Teenager about her GCSE exams, I present to you Everything I Know About Geography.

I hope that in time these articles will evolve into a series of study notes that will help the young people to prepare themselves for a worthwhile and productive adult life.

The first Geographical Fact then is this – You can get really really ill from standing in dirty rivers. Creatures (possibly some kind of fish?) enter your body through your feet and do nasty stuff to your insides. We watched a film about this at school so I know it to be incontrovertibly true.

Secondly – Oxbow Lakes. I have no idea what they are, how they are formed or what their purpose might be. In fact I may have made them up.

Fact number three – Countries! Countries are really important in a part of geography called Physical Geography, in fact they are by far the most important thing about Geography. Countries are coloured in according to their political system and how big their hills are. Orange means that the hills are really low and the politics a tad on the liberal side. There are seven countries in the world and each has a different name, apart from Korea. North Korea is the world’s most secret country and does not appear on any maps.

In 1973, a law was passed requiring all teachers of Geography to sport a beard and corduroy trousers. A later amendment excused women teachers from the corduroy requirement.

 

Coming soon – Everything I Know About Science.

iPhone therefore iAm

I know that the technologically minded of you hate the iPhone camera and all its works. Something to do with megapixies or similar. I don’t have any interest in such matters but I do love a nice photo. For me the iPhone camera produces results that I don’t get any other way and I am very fond of some of the pictures I have taken with it.

Here is an example, possibly the first of many, for your viewing pleasure. I’d love to hear what you think of it.

The experiment continues

Regular readers will know that I have begun to conduct The Great Vinyl Experiment of 2009. In this latest instalment I purchase items too numerous to mention, return home safe and sound and make myself a cup of tea. Now read on, dot dot dot.

A day off with no obligations other than to feed and dress myself gave me the opportunity to explore more fully the record departments of all the charity shops within walking distance. The day was a great success and I came home with more than a bakers dozen of long players and a handful of seven inchers.

Along the way there were some great disappointments such as finding a copy of Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ double album in an immaculate looking sleeve that contained records looking as if someone had used them as dinner plates.  It’s always puzzled me how people can manage to get their vinyl into such terrible condition as it strikes me that it takes an extra special effort to achieve such results.

So, home to a splendid cup of tea and some listening on the new record player. In an attempt to pretend that this is about more than just lazing around playing records and drinking tea (phew, rock and roll!) I conducted a thorough statistical analysis of the new batch…

• I paid an average of  three pounds, three shillings and sixpence for the long players.
• Excluding a 1950s album that I bought purely for the cover, they were typically released in 1972. In about February. Probably.
• On average they are twelve inches in diameter.

I shall give a more in depth appreciation of some of these records in later posts but for now I’ll leave you with these thoughts:-

• The first Paul Simon album is a terrific record. It includes the quite brilliant ‘Mother And Child Reunion’, a single that I bought back at the time but no longer own. Also of note is that the orange CBS label is my current favourite item of nostalgia.
• There are more compilations by The Beach Boys and The Mamas and Papas than there are things that there aren’t quite as many of.
• Thanks to a splendid ‘Greatest Hits’ that I paid 50p for, I am rediscovering a love for early Elton John recordings.

More next time…

The first batch of vinyl – Side two

Here then are the other three records from my first batch of vinyl bought under the rules of The Great Vinyl Experiment of 2009.

Abba – The Visitors

I can’t remember when I first agreed to acknowledge the greatness of Abba but the first record of theirs I bought was a singles collection, optimistically sub-titled ‘The first ten years’. The Visitors was their final album and for me it doesn’t work that well. It came out in 1981 and has ‘eighties’, and not in a good way, written all over it. It suffers from more production than imagination with processed vocals, sledgehammer drums and bass playing that’s just too fussy. It’s not terrible but I think I’m off to listen to some of those classics singles like ‘Take A Chance On Me’, ‘The Name Of The Game’ and ‘Knowing Me. Knowing You’.

 

Rock Follies

I was pleased to come across this as an earlier find of the follow-up album had ended in tears due to the careless juxtaposition of the record, a table and an unknown object.

This was the soundtrack to a 1976 TV series and featured music written by Roxy Music’s sax player Andy Mckay who also produced it. I have to confess that I haven’t really listened to it yet and suspect I may find it a little too theatrical in nature. It does however have a great sleeve which may have been what seduced me. Imagine though if it had been produced by Brian Eno instead.

 

The Mamas & The Papas – People Like Us

Their final contract filling album doesn’t sound a lot like them and doesn’t feature Cass Elliot to any great extent. Having said that, I did find it to be a pleasing listen.

My copy is a reissue on the Music For Pleasure budget label which I am sure will feature frequently during this adventure as will the Mamas & Papas who seem to be a charity shop staple.

So, a slightly disappointing second part of the first part but not enough to divert me from my quest.