38

IN WHICH… I ENJOY A PIERLESS EXPERIENCE

The yawning gap haunted me for years. Gave me nightmares. Every time I was told as a child, that we were going on holiday to Southend I began to dream that I would fall into the gap between the Fenchurch Street Station platform and the train we were boarding. And that would be it. No more me. Every summer between the mid-1950s and early 1960s I suffered this mental meltdown, which recurred almost as soon as we got back off the steaming locomotive on the way home.

Now, nearly 60 years later, I was facing the nightmare again. It was a very hot Monday in July 2018, and I was going with my friend, Mike H, whom I first met on a horse racing trip to France some years ago, and whom I think I can claim as a vinyl disciple, to check out the record shops in Southend and Leigh-on-Sea. Mike bought into the serious record collecting ethos and is now as keen as I am – he loves, amongst others, 10cc and its component parts, Joe Jackson, Wishbone Ash, Spencer Davis Group, together with quirky local folk singers and bands.

The train we were about to catch was bound for my old holiday destination, the home of Uncle Charlie, Aunty Bet and my cousins, Vivienne, Jill and Janice. The three girls who would invariably introduce me to new music whenever we shared their home for those couple of holiday weeks. I owe my knowledge of Brenda ‘Miss Dynamite’ Lee, Chris Montez, and many others to them. They lived in Shoeburyness. A couple of miles down the coast from Southend-on-Sea. We were quite a musical family, all things considered. My cousin, Maxine Nightingale, about the same age as me, would go on to record two Top 10 UK and USA hits – ‘Right Back Where We Started From’, Number 8, UK, and Number 2, USA, in 1975; and ‘Love Hit Me’, Number 11, UK, and Number 5, USA in 1977. Maxine’s brother, Glenn, was a top-quality session musician for many artists, created his own solo material, and joined the Gap Band. Another cousin, Steve, married a lady whose brother was involved in Dire Straits’ management. Still another, my late cousin Dave astonished and disturbed most of the mourners, but delighted me with his choice of funeral music – Chris Rea’s ‘Road To Hell’.

All these memories came flooding back again at Fenchurch Street. This time, though, I finally banished the demons and hopped on board confidently. Mike and I exited the train at Southend Central. Now was not the time to enjoy the pier, the Kursaal, the amusements, the street illuminations or to go cockling, all those pleasures I’d so much enjoyed. We were here for the serious business of record shop investigating. A short walk up through the slightly down-at-heel shopping centre brought us to the Queen’s Road doorway of South Record Shop. This is how it describes itself on its website: ‘We sell new and vintage vinyl and new CDs. We stock everything from indie, punk, disco, new wave, psychedelia, electronic, garage rock, soul, rock & roll, hip hop, metal and everything in between. If we don’t have it in stock, drop us an email, or pop in, if it’s in print we can usually get it within a few days, if it’s more obscure, that’s exactly what we love to look for!’

From a wide range of vinyl and CD, I selected a 1976 Todd Rundgren LP, Faithful, interested to hear how the pro-Brit American tackled some psych standards like ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’, ‘Rain’, ‘If Six Was Nine’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, as well as his own Side 2 compositions. At £6 I didn’t haggle. Mike was a little busier, finding several albums to buy. The friendly lady behind the counter was a Lou Reed fan, playing a somewhat quirky sounding RCA album of his that I didn’t recognise.

We’d found another shop named online – around the corner in Princes Street. Only, at the address given there was a shuttered shop. Next door, there was indeed another record shop. This one, Twelve Tens, opened only on Saturdays, or ‘by special arrangement’ on other days, but, as ‘Dance & Electronic Music Specialists’, it probably offered little to tempt us non-dancing oldies. Southend’s other shop, The Record Museum in Southchurch Road may or may not exist. According to one website, it didn’t open on a Monday, and its telephone number produced a ‘number has not been recognised’ message. We gave it a miss and decided that Leigh-on-Sea, where we were confident there were two extant shops, was the better bet.

Strolling towards Leigh’s main drag from the station, slowed down by the heat and attracted by a welcoming hostelry perched next to the water, we adjourned for a short lunch break before walking up to Fives Record Shop in Broadway, there since 1977. It has a dark brown frontage with, on this day, large sections given over to Florence & The Machine and Ben Howard. It looked promising, but we were disappointed – others may be quite happy – to find that the shop stocks only new vinyl, and what we felt was a rather run-of-the mill selection of new CDs, together with either used, or reduced-price ones.

We set off to find 35-year-old Leigh Record Exchange, a 10-to-15-minute walk, at no great pace, in London Road, which proved to be the hit of the day for us. Mike filled his boots with some Wishbone Ash and Spencer Davis Group amongst his £77 of purchases which produced a very fair and appreciated 10 per cent discount. The shop had excellent rock and, particularly to my taste, prog/psych/sixties sections and I ended up finding precisely what I often tell people I want when they ask what sort of stuff I look for: ‘something I didn’t know I wanted when I walked in to the shop’. A private pressing on the Audio Archives label (number 078 of 500) on 180-gram vinyl of a ‘mega rare 1970s prog album’ released in a tiny quantity in 1971, on the SRT label, by Dagenham six-piece band, Collusion, featuring twin guitars – an invitation I usually find irresistible – was my first choice. This exciting item was backed up by a still sealed ‘super rare collectable 1972 prog/psych’ reissue of the group Bodkin’s stab at fame, on Acme Records. This album was recorded in Falkirk – not something you read on the back of many record covers. These two cost me 30 quid, less another generous discount by the knowledgeable shop proprietor.

We headed back to Leigh-on-Sea station, chugging back to Fenchurch Street, entertained all the way by conversations on which we didn’t eavesdrop, but which were loudly broadcast to the entire carriage. The first involved a group of schoolgirls speculating on ‘Lady Di’s death’ which they unanimously agreed was ‘murder, just like Marilyn Monroe’; the second, two foul-mouthed late teens, one of whom was pregnant but yet to introduce the lucky father-to-be to her family who, she felt, ‘are gonna f***in’ ‘ate ‘im, ‘e’s Greek.’ Didn’t quite get that – one of my own not very guilty pleasures is listening to Demis Roussos.

Then, on the train from Euston to Hatch End, my home town, I was one of some 30-plus people in the carriage forced to listen to a well-coiffed 50-plus woman on her phone to a friend who had probably hung up some hours ago. She was telling her in huge detail how ‘bloody lucky’ she had been the day before to attend an Earth Wind & Fire concert at which she was apparently ‘touched’, by Maurice White. ‘He’s so marvellous, and he’s 70,’ she shrieked. Well, actually 78ish – or he would be if he hadn’t died in February 2016. She probably meant Verdine White, his still-breathing brother.

Once home, a closer look at the two albums I’d bought from Leigh Record Exchange showed that subconsciously I can’t have been over-optimistic about the outcome of an imminent appointment with my GP. They featured Collusion’s ‘Might As Well Be Dead’ and ‘Saturday Morning (Down the Dead Highway)’, while Bodkin offered just two tracks on side one of their Three Days After Death album – Parts One and Two of ‘Three Days After Death’. Fortunately, despite my apparent presentiment, I did survive, so I celebrated with an overdue visit to catch up with Julian at Second Scene…