29

IN WHICH… I FAIL TO SCORE

If a striker fails to fire and goes a few games without a goal, (s)he gets out on the training pitch and puts in more training. If a jockey undergoes a spell of several race meetings without a winner, (s)he shouts out the agent and demands that (s)he finds him/her some better mounts. If a cricketer is out for a sequence of ducks, (s)he’s off to the nets for more preparation. But what can a record collector do when a run of record shop trips results in no purchases? It happened to me during a period from late May to early June in 2018. I appreciate that could mean all of two days, but it was somewhat longer, and it felt like an unprecedented drought of 1976 proportions at the time.

I realised it had kicked in after I decided to catch a tube train out to Amersham to take a look at The Record Shop, which had certainly been smartened up a little since I’d last been there. It now had some eye-catching framed music press front pages on display in the window. This was a clever and topical touch given that recent weeks had seen the demise of the print version of the NME (New Musical Express) which, along with Melody Maker and Sounds, was one of the major influences on the musical thinking of so many of my contemporaries during the 1960s and 1970s.

I walked in on a posh couple buying musical equipment for their daughter, another string to this shop’s bow. I always like to look through their selection of vinyl rarities – which included this time an original May Blitz LP for 200 quid. Fortunately, I have one. They always stock very decently priced CDs, but nothing leapt out at me that day. I went all through their rock LP sections to no avail, but was entertained by the posh gent discussing the smooth jazz album which the shop owner had put on ‘to make sure it plays through okay before I put it out for sale’. Very relaxing, really not my style. But posh gent said: ‘This is great. I’d love to buy it, but I don’t have a record player. Never thought I’d want one again. But now I hear this I think I’ll have a word with the chap who is currently kitting out my music room and tell him to add a deck and speakers.’ Different world for some, what?

I pondered a reduced box set of seven reissued Fleur de Lys singles, down from £79.99 to £50, but that still struck me as plenty to pay for tracks I already own, wonderful though they are. I even looked through the selection of new issue albums and, bizarrely, found a copy of the Nuggets’ compilation I’d bought from them for £12.50 not long ago, now offered for £24.99. There was an interesting section with ‘two for £12’ albums which were otherwise £8 each – a decent sales technique, although the selection was mainly records which I’d expect most seasoned collectors to own already. I couldn’t bring myself to shell out for anything on offer.

Next morning, a Saturday, with no football to worry about because the season was over, off I set for the record fair in Uxbridge where I generally alight on something to buy. Not this time. I was, though, entertained by a conversation between an elderly couple and some of the dealers. The oldies were asking whether their collection of country music would be of any appeal. A selection of lovely non-sequiturs followed:

‘Have you got any early Dolly?’… ‘No, we’ve tried her but she’s not our style. We’ve got Steve Earle, though.’

‘Merle Haggard?’… ‘Well, The Dillards, we’ve got some of them.’… ‘There’s a name I haven’t heard for many years.’

I was thinking, ‘I have – I know just where that Dillards album I’ve been trying to get rid of for years is’.

If only I could suddenly have produced it out of thin air to impress this potential audience. I came out of my reverie to hear one of the dealers entering tricky terrain verbally. Responding to a couple of country names which the couple had chucked in his direction, he said, ‘I think the gypsies – can I call them that? Well, the travellers, is that okay? Anyway, they like them…’

I was now distracted by an Earth & Fire LP in a very dusty – no, be honest, it was disgustingly dirty – plastic cover. I checked the condition of the record – as thoroughly as it is ever possible to do in the type of environment offered by gloomily lit shops, and record fairs, which tend to be held in elderly council halls, where atmospheric contaminations galore have accumulated during many years of staging random events, classes and displays. It is difficult to form any sort of opinion in such circumstances, other than that the reality will probably be worse than it appears in situ, once you get it home for a proper look. I played the only trump card the would-be buyer holds over the seller – the ‘Fine, I won’t buy it, then’ one, and put the record back, tried unsuccessfully to wipe the dust and dirt from my hands, and moved on.

Flipping through some CDs under a ‘Progressive’ heading, I dallied over one by a group called Cyrkle, which looked like my sort of thing. There was precious little information on the cover but a surreptitious online search on my mobile revealed them to be ‘garage rock’ rather than ‘psychedelic’, and this copy to be at best ‘unauthorised’ – a polite term for ‘bootleg’. I did feel that a fraction under a tenner for a Cyrkle CD whose contents might disappoint was not justified, so I didn’t buy. However, my curiosity is now piqued and I will almost certainly react by buying the blooming thing next time I see it.

When I visited the newly established Twickenham Record Fair, I soon realised that I still didn’t have my buying head on. There was a good range of stalls and I was getting stuck into the ‘£12 each, five for £50’ box belonging to a chatty chap I’ve become familiar with, previously buying from him at Spitalfields and Guildford.

He had a wide range of sealed copies of mainly live recordings by 1960s bands, many of them of interest to me. I thought that a quintet consisting of a Jeff Beck, Insect Trust, Iron Butterfly, Spencer Davis, and Ultimate Spinach might be worth half a ton. Then I thought again. Most of the Beck tracks are on the Truth studio LP I own; Spencer Davis were live in Finland and how motivated would they have been to do the business out there?; the Iron Butterfly album didn’t even have an ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ live version; I’ve lived for years without ever hearing Insect Trust, who I’d always been told were too jazzy for my taste (turned out that was right); and I recently bought a studio Ultimate Spinach record, which I’d only listened to once since.

Then my phone vibrated. It was younger brother, Barry, about some family business. I told him where I was and he mentioned a mutual artist we both like – GT Moore and the Reggae Guitars. G T was one of the first white artists to champion reggae music, even before the Specials, UB40 and Madness et al widened the appeal of reggae, ska and bluebeat. He’d previously been a member of acoustic folk-‘rock’ band, Heron. When our discussion was over I turned back to the stall and decided suddenly that I didn’t really fancy shelling out 50 quid for quite a lot of music I was already very familiar with and didn’t actually need alternative versions of, plus another lot I wasn’t at all familiar with and didn’t much want.

I wandered around the rest of the fair, flicking here, pondering there and mulling elsewhere. There was a lively, encouragingly young throng, male and female, around the large dance music section, alien to me but an important part of the vinyl scene. I heard a father telling his seven- or eight-year-old daughter, ‘You like The Beatles, don’t you?’ He showed her an LP. ‘This is how we used to listen to The Beatles.’ She looked baffled. Probably thinking he meant that the cover somehow made the music.

I left the hall and nipped in to Eel Pie Records, in nearby traffic-free Church Street where, not only had the shop organised the record fair I’d just visited, but there was also an eco-friendly street food cum shabby-chic-cum-trendy-stuff street market going on. The shop doubles up as a cafe and there was an easy vibe about the place with several coffee-quaffers chilling as record hunters foraged. Two older examples of the latter were conversing about a current dispute between a man of their own generation, Jimmy Page and his next-door neighbour whose name neither of them could recall. ‘That pop star bloke, what’s his name?’ one asked the other. ‘Oh the feller from the That group, isn’t it?’ Yes, the ‘feller’ from the Take That group. ‘Robbie Williams’, I reminded them, receiving a grateful acknowledgement.

They cover most of the bases here but £36 for a brand new The Who at Fillmore East reissue album, and £32 for a double LP of the recent Rolling Stones at the BBC set? Okay, these may have been expanded editions of the basic albums, and admittedly this was in well-off Twickenham, but that’s surely a ‘try-on’, even for rugby fans.

As is normal, my latest fallow vinyl spell finally ended with a glut when I paid a visit to London’s Spitalfields Fair – and almost instantly on arrival found five buyable items. Spitalfields has a genuinely buzzy atmosphere, with the record stalls surrounded by shops, bars and food kiosks. There are scores of grizzled veterans from either side of the vinyl trading process and no shortage of new recruits. Some have already become familiar faces, others bring with them an air of mystery. What are they offering, where will they slot in the cost league?

One guy who turns up sporadically sells still-sealed CDs by named and obscure artists for a mere 50p. I was amazed at how many copies of the Pretty Things’ Balboa Island he had on offer. They’re one of my all-time favourite bands and I paid probably 11 or 12 quid when that album came out. I’m concerned that there were way too many pressed up, judging by the level of remainder copies presumably offloaded by the record company. Other more than respectable names like Cockney Rejects, Arthur Brown and even Hendrix (a double CD) were included in the ten-bob section, while for a mere two quid I found a relatively recent Robin Trower CD. You’re unlikely ever to undercut this fellow – elsewhere I saw the same CDs offered at £10 or more on different stalls.

There’s always entertaining gossip to be heard at Spitalfields: ‘Paul Rodgers rang me on my birthday, to say…’ ‘Don’t tell me: Happy Birthday?’ The trader, who had been watching me as I pondered buying the live 1970 concert album by Mr Rodgers’ group, Free, was telling me about his friendship with him, while he also kept one eye on other potential purchasers. He spotted one who was just reaching out his arm to go through his box of reissued obscurities and collectables. But, even as he addressed his selling pitch to the man reaching out his arm, we both saw the potential customer withdraw that arm rapidly, as though he had been stung by a wasp, or realised he was about to touch something toxic and potentially fatal. With a small jump backwards, the man recoiled. ‘I don’t have anything to do with…’ he hesitated very slightly, before spitting the word out, ‘…new records!’ And then he was gone. ‘No pleasing some folk,’ observed the trader.

Personally, I am very pleased to see the recent introduction of new versions of old, often unobtainable rarities from the late 1960s and 1970s. Even if I was prepared to pay the money demanded for original copies of these LPs, I’m not sure I’d want, or could afford, to do so for any more than a handful. But these sometimes bootlegged, sometimes genuine, legal reissues, available for a tenner upwards, do provide the opportunity to own vinyl versions of records which might otherwise take a lifetime’s searching to source and a month or more’s wages to own. Or to take a chance on undiscovered music one might never have otherwise been tempted to taste. Many have been available on CD for some while and, in many instances, that is not only acceptable because it allows one finally to own the music in a physical format but also because it often provides additional ‘bonus’ tracks. These, of course, are almost always disappointing and of iffy quality, but they do at least bestow some bragging rights to the owners.

I recently discovered the work of the early 1970s heavy band Agnes Strange and was able to acquire most of their lively, riffy, recorded output for under 20 quid. Yet, here at Old Spitalfields, was a reissued version of just one of their LPs for 25 quid. I’ll leave you to decide whether the physical attraction of the shiny but limited content vinyl format warrants a significant price premium over the more convenient but less desirable CD version which, like any new car, immediately sheds a large percentage of its value the moment you take possession of it. Whereas with vinyl even the new reissues seem to hold most of their value in a resale situation and could even rise when the limited-edition releases have all been sold.

I stopped to take a look at another stall and heard a not entirely serious contretemps unfolding:

‘Why do you have a section for “male singers” and a section for “female singers”,’ demanded a middle-aged man ‘but nothing at all for LGBTQ singers?’ He glared at the seller, who began to stutter a little as he sought for an explanation. Whereupon his provoker burst into laughter, just as a man came up and asked, ‘Will you be here at the next fair?’ When told that he would, he admitted, ‘I’ve seen some records I want – but I’ve bought so many recently I don’t know what I have, so I thought I’d note the ones I want and then check whether I’ve already got them and come back if not.’ ‘You can buy them now and bring them back if it turns out you already have them,’ he was told.

I moved on to the next stall and, glancing at the selection of LP covers hanging behind him, I spotted a copy of Chicken Shack’s OK Ken? album from 1969, which had long been on my ‘want list’. The Rare Record Price Guide 2020 rates a top quality example at £100 in its stereo incarnation. This one had an £80 sticker on it. The would-be vendor saw me eyeing up the display.

‘One caught your eye?’

‘Yes, OK Ken?’

‘Yeah, good copy that. Got 80 quid on it. Could do it for 60.’ He began to scrabble around in a box for the disc itself. ‘In great nick, barely a mark on it,’ he enthused, and showed it to me.

‘This mark here, across track one and edging into track two, that’s barely a mark, is it?’ I enquired with a smile, already knowing how difficult it is to identify significant flaws on an LP even in bright daylight. It didn’t look terrible, though, to be fair, and it is 50 years old. Few of us look the same 50 years on from any particular birthday.

‘Well, we can discuss the price if you’re interested. Is the price frightening you? We could do 50.’

‘No, I’m not frightened, but I think I’ll carry on browsing to see what else is around,’ I told him.

It really is a good idea if you are conflicted about a purchase to take time out and walk away. If your mind keeps telling you to go back for another look, you’ll probably end up buying it, but just by walking away you may encourage the seller to trim the price. But if you walk off and find yourself looking at other possible purchases without giving another thought to what you walked away from – then you evidently can live without it and didn’t really want it enough to shell out.

I do have an OK Ken? CD, so do I require a vinyl version? Let’s put it this way, three days before I typed this, I was in Second Scene where I paid 40 quid for an original vinyl copy of the Steamhammer LP, Mark II which I already owned on CD. You tell me why I did it. Except that when I played it I knew I’d done the right thing.

As I did when I went to Kent…