36

IN WHICH… I SNAP – AMEN TO THAT!

If I hadn’t sneaked a photograph of him I’d have wondered whether he was real. I’d just spotted perhaps the single most individual-looking person I’ve ever seen in a record shop. I was able to grab a snap of this impeccably, if eccentrically dressed, dapper, late middle-aged gentleman who had entered the shop just a couple of minutes earlier and was now clutching a Lou Reed video tightly in his left hand, while his right was holding a rolled, furled umbrella, and two large black plastic bags. On his head was a Panama hat, with a dark ribbon around it. The cuffs of his white shirt poked well clear of the end of the sleeves of his dark overcoat, protruding in fact almost to the knuckles of his Reed-holding digits. The collar of his shirt was lifted proud and high of the red tie, complete with tie-pin, looping around his neck and far down the front of his shirt, some inches past the belt-line of his stylishly narrow, but oddly long dark trousers, which lapped around and over the tops of his black, patent leather, slip-on shoes. On the lapel of his coat he sported a large, circular white badge; on the right sleeve, just above the elbow, he also wore a black armband decorated with a red image.

He looked gloriously out of place, but no one else in the shop I was in, Beckenham’s Wanted, gave him a second glance. I had just reached the point in Paul Morley’s interesting, if somewhat pretentious, 2016 Bowie biography, when the still little-known superstar-to-be ‘moves to Beckenham… to stay with Mary Finnigan, a journalist a few years older.’ Perhaps the striking customer I’d just seen was something of an homage to that local boy, then ‘Davy Jones’, in whose honour a plaque was unveiled in 2001 at a Beckenham hostelry, The Rat & Parrot.

I’d arrived outside of Wanted long after its advertised 10am Monday opening time, to find several people milling about outside in the drizzle, unable to gain entry. A note on the door suggested that they would be opening at noon. It was 12.20pm. Being a highly-trained, investigative journalist I was able to see the shop’s phone number writ large on a sign above the door. Using all my hard-won experience I rang that number. A recorded message told me there was no one there to answer my query. However, during the time I’d been phoning, the door had been opened and the eager shoppers allowed in. I followed them in to a huge interior area, packed with records, CDs, and DVDs, and an impressive number of genre-identifying tags. Wanted, almost 20 years old, claims to be ‘the largest record shop in Greater London’ and ‘surely the most well stocked’.

‘Abbey Road’ was playing over the powerful sound system. Trying to find my bearings and discover where the material most likely to appeal to me could be found, I was impressed by the range of valuable original copies displayed around the walls. I decided to start at the ‘New In’ box, stopping briefly at a ‘mint original’ Amen Corner LP, with a £15 tag on it. I am still seeking an answer to one of rock music’s unanswered questions. The B-side to Amen Corner’s hit, ‘Bend Me Shape Me’ is called ‘Satisnek, the Job’s Worth’ and was written by the group. What was that title all about? The only clue to be had was that if you wrote ‘Satisnek’ backwards you got ‘Kensitas’ which even we non-smoking baby-boomers are aware, was the name of a then-popular brand of cigarettes. I decided to not trade up to this mint copy, reasonably priced though it was, because the poor condition, signed one belonging to my wife, once a huge fan of the band, means something to her. We really don’t need two copies.

I carried on flicking, discovering a Psychedelic Unknowns compilation LP, also priced at £15, which I had never seen before. This looked interesting. I removed the disc from the cover. It didn’t look too bad at first glance, although I could see a few divoty-type marks which looked as though they could probably be tracked by a stylus. I decided to hold on to this one. I finally located the UK Psychedelic section, and promptly prostrated myself on the floor – not in honour of the quality of vinyl therein, but because they were stored literally at floor level. In the process, I nearly knocked over a small child accompanying her father around the shop. There were several used Tenth Planet reissue albums in this area, some interesting titles, but generally around the £20-22 rate which struck me as a little hefty.

The US section was much smaller and nothing in it attracted my interest. I looked a little more closely at the Psychedelic Unknowns and, under the rather stronger lighting in this part of the shop, saw it was in rather more iffy condition than had seemed the case. It also had a minor, but peeling, bump on the top right hand of the otherwise protected-by-cellophane cover. Not in the mood to point these faults out in return for perhaps a fiver reduction I plonked the record back in its rack, looked at the now torrential rain outside and cut my losses by trudging back to the station for the hour and a half journey home with no fresh finds to drool over.

Because of the monsoon I had abandoned my initial plan of also visiting the nearby Rollin Records in West Wickham, which, as it transpired, was just as well. It only opens on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I came back a few days later to have a look-see. I’ve seen the shop name shown as ‘Rolling’ and ‘Rollin’’ on websites. According to its fascia, it is ‘Rollin’’. It took a while to get my bearings in the neatly laid out shop, in which all of the records are smartly displayed in plastic covers, and in alphabetical order.

There is a lady out front and a chap who is in and out from the room at the back of the building. Not sure whether they are a couple, but when an obviously regular customer wanders in they all share a joke at the expense of a mutual acquaintance:

‘He rang the other day and said: “I’ll be in soon, it’ll only take 10 minutes as I know exactly what I want.” He came in at around 2 pm, and was here until about 10 minutes before we closed. Trouble is he just never shuts up.’

I was initially distracted by the excellent selection of difficult-to-find 1960s treasures to be seen on the wall display – The Who Sell Out, Czar, The Gods, Jade Warrior, Pacific Drift, Dulcimer, Trees, H P Lovecraft, Tomorrow, and many more – but, inexplicably, no prices revealed on the name and condition cards attached to the covers. However, all of the shelved record covers in the shop had prices on them, and discs inside them – and by and large they were perfectly fair prices to my eyes. Nothing much looked like an absolute giveaway bargain, but also nothing made me recoil in shock.

The first section I checked out was an excellent rack of what were advertised as psych compilations – there were a great many of those, although I’d say maybe half were actually ‘garage rock’ rather than psych. Many were on very unusual labels, but I took a chance and decided to buy one which did not appear to be on any label whatsoever. Dreamtime Downunder was the title on the clearly DIY cover, offering a dozen titles ‘from the Land of Oz & New Zealand’, by such little known (completely unknown to me) groups like Lotus, King Fox, Town Criers, Zoot and – my favourite – Leather Sandwich. Worth taking a chance on at a mere eight quid, I thought. The disc looked pretty unblemished –the plain, light brown centre label was entirely unmarked, with no words whatsoever on either side. I have since played it many times and, although the recording is hardly hi-fi, the psych sound is exciting.

I set off on the mammoth task of going from A-Z through the hundreds of ‘Sixties Pop, Rock and Folk’, then repeating the procedure for, yes, ‘Seventies Pop, Rock and Folk.’ Good selection but nothing to grab my attention… until I saw an LP by Mint Tattoo on the Dot label. The gatefold cover caught my eye – on the front, in washed out shades of brown, a healthy-looking, smiling guy with an unthreatening demeanour and a grown-out Beatle haircut posed in front of a fence, overlooked by a number of wholesome-looking young children. However, in the middle of the front cover was a square cut-out, allowing a view through to a red and light blue-coloured tattoo of ‘Mint Tattoo’ on a skin-coloured background. On the rear, two more, slightly less reputable-looking band members and more local neighbourhood kids – if they weren’t so obviously cutesy American, one might have thought of them as ‘scallies’. I took it out of its protective plastic to note that when opened out, the gatefold revealed that the tattoo, evident through the front cover, was actually inked on the upper chest of an otherwise naked female torso. On the left-hand side of the fold-out, track details and encouragingly rock-like shots of the three group members down one side and on the other, song details, with the opening track entitled ‘Vampire Symphony’ which is in four movements, one of which goes by the name ‘Leper’s Epitaph’. What’s not to love about that!? I had to have it for £20. Later perusal revealed that there is a connection between a couple of members of Mint Tattoo and the rather better known, very loud Blue Cheer, via guitarist Bruce Stephens, and keyboards player Ralph Burns Kellogg.

This is why record collecting is so fascinating, if you are of a certain mindset. Having discovered that Bruce Stephens was in both Mint Tattoo and Blue Cheer, I then checked him out some more. I found that he had then joined a band called Pilot – no, not the ‘Magic’ one! In his version of Pilot, he played alongside Leigh Stephens, who had been in Blue Cheer as well and guitarist Martin Quittenton, from the excellent English band Steamhammer. Quittenton’s other claim to fame is, of course, that he was the co-writer of Rod Stewart’s solo hits, ‘Maggie May’ and ‘You Wear It Well’. Drummer Micky Waller also played on ‘Maggie May’ and, guess what, he was also in Pilot who had formed as a consequence of a meeting between Waller and Bruce Stephens. They turned up on holiday at the same venue and discussed forming a group with mutual acquaintances Stephens and Quittenton.

Having uncovered this backstory to Mint Tattoo, I went online to try to find a copy of their ‘Pilot’ album. For once there was no question of having to choose between paying more for the vinyl version with fewer tracks, or less for the CD with more. It appears there has never been a Pilot CD. I found a couple of reasonably priced copies on Discogs, both with relatively expensive postage charges, so decided to try the ‘make an offer’ facility offered by some sellers on there, which I hadn’t used before. You make your best bid for the record and the potential vendor has five days to decide whether to accept. I felt a bit of a cheapskate putting in an offer a mere £1.25 below the asking price, but, figuring that there wasn’t about to be a rush of people looking to buy the record, I thought by doing so I was only delaying my gratification by a few days at most. That’s what happened. My offer was ignored and I was invited to stump up the original asking price whilst feeling a little shamefaced. ‘Get over it,’ I told myself, ‘and just buy the blooming thing.’ So I did.

Back at Rollin’, I took the Mint Tattoo and Psych compilation records to the friendly lady behind the counter who calculated that £20 + £8 should equal £28, as I’d expected, but then generously said ‘Call it £25’.

Not only is Rollin’ Records a shop, it also has an online presence – and its own record label. Explains its website: ‘Rollin’ Records is a non-profit making label dedicated to releasing recordings from artists involved in the R&B, Rock N Roll and Rockabilly genres. All song publishing is retained by the artists, as if they’ve written it, then they should get the money!’

I vow to come back to Rollin’ at some stage, but now I leg it to the station.

Later in the day I emailed the shop to ask why they do not choose to tell customers how much the records whose covers were emblazoned on the wall, would actually cost them if they fancied a purchase. ‘Kim’ told me: ‘You are right, we don’t display the prices on the wall! The reason is just because we don’t want them stolen. The records would be unsellable if the covers are missing.’ Fair enough, if rather depressing in terms of this record shop’s opinion or experience of the honesty or otherwise of its clientele. You might also think, though, that any stolen covers would be ‘unsellable’ without the records inside them.

Having said that, I do own a smart red vinyl disc of the valuable (if pretty unlistenable) Hapshash and the Coloured Coat Featuring the Heavenly Host and Heavy Metal Kids LP from 1967, but somehow I have mislaid the sleeve at some unspecified time in the past. So if I were to see the cover displayed on the wall at Rollin’ Records I do wonder whether I would be able to resist the temptation of waiting until the backs of the staff members were turned before somehow elevating myself by several feet, unsheathing the cover from its plastic prison on the wall, coming back down without injury, concealing the cover cunningly about my person and sidling in an entirely unguilty manner out of the door? Thinking about it, I doubt it – although such a thing has happened in the past, as my friend, Martin Wilson confessed: ‘I once stole the cover of a Lightnin’ Hopkins LP from the wall of a record shop in Coventry while on a school trip. My mates dared me to do it, so I did. When I pulled it off the wall I realised it had no record in it, but it was too late to stop by then as other customers had started pointing and shouting at me. We all legged it. I’ve still got the cover, but have never managed to find the record to go with it…’