51

IN WHICH… I GET BLADDERED

Forty-eight hours earlier, I’d still had a gallbladder. By the time I began typing this chapter, in late 2018, I no longer had one. In between, in the pessimistic anticipation that I might not be around in a few days to do so, I decided that now was the time to make a self-promised trip to have a look at the vinyl delights of Reading. Early impressions of the town, which I’d never visited before were a little shrouded by the clouds of vape emanating from a significant percentage of those passing by and around the beggars taking the afternoon sun in the streets surrounding the main station. A small lady in white carrying a large black dog in her lap came by in a wheelchair as I struggled to establish my whereabouts. I couldn’t find a street map and never quite know how to find google-map or whatever it is called on my mobile. I located the Harris Arcade where I was aware one of the shops was located by the simple expedient of looking over the road as I left the station behind me, and spotting it sitting there. Having chalked that one up I left it where I could come back to it and went looking for the one I understood to be in Oxford Road.

The passer-by I asked for directions was so nervous that I was about to mug him that he upped his walking pace, causing me to do likewise, as he assured me, ‘I’ve never heard of it, it’s miles away. Goodbye.’ As I gave up the pursuit I realised I was standing next to a street map, perusal of which revealed that Oxford Road was hiding itself all of about 800 yards away at the end of one of the main shopping streets. When I arrived at the shop, the man in charge was looking over a guitar which two guys had brought in to sell him (musical instruments also a speciality here at Music Man) and which they were confident was ‘worth 800 quid according to the internet’. Mr Music Man wasn’t so sure.

‘It’s worth 150 to me.’

‘170 – we had to get a cab to bring it.’

‘No. 160 – the cab would only have been a tenner.’

‘Okay. Done.’

For that guitar they could also have bought 50 of Mr Music Man’s healthily priced and wide selection of rock and other genre CDs and still had a tenner for the cab home. Sadly, his records did not impress me in either their conditions or prices, so I opted for Wishbone Ash, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and Leslie West solo CDs. I retraced my steps, with the assistance of a purple number 17 bus, to the shopping precinct and the Harris Arcade. A few yards into this attractive line-up of bijou shops, I came across J.I.M. – ‘Just Imagination Memorabilia’ (‘Ask for Jim’ says his leaflet) – ‘retro dance vinyl – toys – comics and much more.’ So much more that it makes it somewhat difficult to manoeuvre around the limited available space. The guy looking after the premises clearly had stylish jazzy blues tastes and was playing music of this type. CDs were offered at very low prices – an average of two quid – although the records were more highly valued and not that appealing to me. I enjoyed looking, but couldn’t persuade myself to buy.

Sound Machine, further into the Arcade, is a rather presentable unit of a record shop. Two chaps behind the counter, two different generations. Behind them a tempting selection of valuable 1960s and 1970s covers. In front of them a nice new cabinet of ‘Just In’s, and all around any number of additional stock. Mellow atmosphere. I find a nice copy of the Shanghai (Mick Green on guitar, Cliff Bennett vocals) LP that you don’t often see – Fallen Heroes which, at two quid short of a tenner, was a no-brainer.

However, I had little time to listen to Shanghai, before I found myself walking towards the Central Middlesex Hospital with more internal organs in place than I would own by mid-evening. The last time this happened had been in the late 1970s when I was 28, and spent a couple of weeks at the Middlesex Hospital in central London, having a cartilage removed from my right leg. It saved my football career, but I was never the same afterwards. These days a cartilage op probably doesn’t involve any sort of stay in hospital and keyhole surgery enables it to be done in minutes. When I came round following the op, I couldn’t shift the leg, despite the urgings of the brutal female physio who demanded movement from the moment I opened my eyes. In the bed opposite a fellow in for the same treatment was lifting his leg up and down with no apparent adverse effect. I was worried. My op must have failed. Next morning, I was still marooned motionless in bed while the guy over the way was up and moving around the ward. When the doc who had carried out our ops came round with his gang of trainee medics he reassured me that the procedure had gone well – but the man opposite was now packing his bags and preparing to leave. It transpired they’d opened his knee up, decided there was no damage to the cartilage, stitched him back up – and sent him on his way. Phew!

Lizzie, one of the nurses on the ward was a Boz Scaggs’ fan. I’d never heard of him then, but I tracked down some of his records in tribute to Lizzie, who wrote on the ‘Get Well Soon’ card which I still have: ‘What can I say but that BOZ IS KING!! Lotsa love.’ I have enjoyed his stuff ever since and often wonder where Lizzie is these days, what she’s up to and whether she’s still, like me, listening to the Scaggster. Back to the present, and even in such an august institution as the Central Mid ACAD (the first ambulatory care and diagnostic centre in Europe) ward, I might have guessed that music would play a part in the experience.

Over a blood test, I’d met old-school hospital sister, Angela, and we’d not only bonded over a love of early 1960s and onwards music, but also treated the ward to a duet of one of the Bee Gees’ finest, ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’. Or maybe I was hallucinating in an anaesthetically induced haze? It seemed real at the time. She is of similar vintage to me and sat down for a chat when my departure for theatre was delayed while they hunted for a bed. It soon transpired we had a two-year-old grandchild each, as well as a shared love of Motown, and Lulu’s version of ‘To Sir with Love’. Angela raised the stakes with Billie Holiday and I countered with Tony Joe White. She outclassed me by revealing she listened to her music on a Bose system.

Now they came to wheel me off to face the knife – after the anaesthetist almost caused a cancellation of the whole thing by ill-advisedly knocking a large lump off of the high-tech bed I was laying on. The docs eventually decided they wouldn’t need it. The less said about the surgery the better, but they refused to let me depart the next morning with what they removed as a souvenir. Shame. I wanted to add it to my cartilage which sits in a bottle on the shelf next to my laptop. I spent a few days feeling sore and sorry for myself but decided that I could probably survive the few days in Liverpool we’d booked with friends, albeit at slower than normal pace.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed doing the Beatle things when we arrived. Sure, there is something of a theme-park atmosphere about the ‘Cavern’ area, where the recreated site is over the street from the actual location of the club where the boys learned their trade. As we wandered around there late on our first night it was possible to imagine that this must have been pretty much how it was back in those formative years. Music was pouring out of the bar windows into the street’s chilly air – a band hammering away with more gusto and guitar than subtlety and empathy.

One or two offers of illicit substances were made as we walked along. Drunk youngsters enjoying the sights and sounds staggered past, there was a slight edge of potential disturbance in the air. Watchful bouncers leaned against entrances, alert to any possible outbreak of violence. We took photos in front of Cilla’s statue and alongside John’s image on the actual Cavern site, laughing and reminiscing amongst ourselves. Then, as we walked along, a young man suddenly raced past at full sprint, threw himself into a wall, bounced off it, and crashed to the pavement, curling himself into a human ball (title of great psych LP by my 60s idols, The McCoys) and whimpering. Friends or acquaintances of his took their time to come and check on his condition, one offering me drugs as he strolled past.

Next day we visited The Beatles Story – much more informative about the early, Liverpool-based days than the later hippy-dippy times – and enjoyed a Magical Mystery Tour on a blue and yellow coach, which took us to see all four of the lads’ early homes and haunts, including, inevitably, Penny Lane and Strawberry Field. Just the words ‘Strawberry’ and ‘Fields’ retain the power to provoke nostalgia in me, even though this was the first time I’d been anywhere near their source. But to think that these two words and a street name had inspired a pair of the finest songs ever committed to vinyl was enough to plunge me into memories of my own earlier years and to remind myself yet again of The Beatles’ extraordinary musical abilities.

The trip gave me the opportunity to explore the record buying and selling scene in the city. Half a dozen shops sit within relatively close proximity, along Liverpool’s Bold, Slater, and Renshaw Streets, with Seel Street, School Lane and Smithdown Road also boasting record-buying opportunities. First port of call was the well-stocked, attractively fronted Probe Records, but it was disappointing to find no pre-loved/owned vinyl on offer, even though the depth of their new and reissue selections was impressive. In the Jacaranda Records Phase One in Slater Street, we found again a majority of new vinyl with a relatively small stash of second-hand records. Interesting features here were the bar, and the chintzy garden-shed listening booths equipped with little record players on which you could listen to prospective buys.

Also in Slater Street is dance music specialist record shop, 3 Beat.

A little more appealing to our tastes was Renshaw Street’s Eighty One which is situated at – well, work it out for yourself – and boasts on its sign: ‘Cafe – Venue – Record Store’. Reaching the vinyl involves a climb up a slightly rickety, steep set of stairs, but the journey is worthwhile as you emerge into a nicely bulging room of records of all types. Slightly pricey records, I’d say, although Mike delved deep and found an excellent £17.50 copy of an early Spencer Davis Group LP. He brought it over to show me and we gazed at the surface of the vinyl which was not exactly pristine but which did not seem to be suffering from severe scratches. A request to the youngish fellow running the place resulted in him giving us an on-the-spot demonstration of the cleaning capability of the expensive-looking machine there for just that purpose. Impressively, it turned the badly marked surface of the disc into a sparkling, reflective, mirror-like clean thing, which played very well when he then slapped it on to the Planar turntable. He slightly reduced the effect when he launched into great detail about why the record might be subject to the odd jump because he couldn’t ensure that the turntable was completely level, due, he claimed, to the inaccuracy of the chippie responsible for installing the surface on which it was sitting. Like so many things in the record collecting world – someone else’s fault, guv.

Hairy Records was apparently one of the longest established record shops in Liverpool, when it moved to a new address in Bold Street in 2012. It then appeared to become The Music Consortium, but we failed to find it under either of those names and scrutinising the internet suggests it has become an online rather than physical presence. However, Bold Street does contain an Oxfam outlet from which I purchased a double Doves CD, before we sought out Dig Vinyl. And you do need to seek it out because only a very small notice outside and a tiny wall-mounted sign at the side of the Soho vintage clothing shop it shares, are there to identify its whereabouts down in the basement it has called home since 2014.

But it would take the accolade as the best Liverpool record shop we found, in the eyes, ears and wallets of Mike and me. And (well, well, well) it was also certainly the only shop we found here, or indeed anywhere else, with its own brick-built water well bang in the middle of the records. The chap behind the counter did not appear to be positive that it was a working well. ‘Why would you have windows in a working water well?’ he asked. Why indeed? But there seems to be no doubt that there is water at the bottom of the well. And some excellent records and CDs at the top of it. I snapped up albums by Dennis Wilson, Spooky Tooth, The Honeys and a great psych compilation CD from Past & Present. Very competitive prices here, a cafe in which to rest and gloat over finds, and a boutiquey style shop to walk through en route to discovering this excellent venue.

When I arrived home from Liverpool, I discovered that my car required a new cambelt (whatever one of those may be). While this was being done, the Audi showroom gave me one of their newer models with which to escort Mrs S on her weekly Sainsbury’s outing, although at 38 grand, it’s unlikely to be my next permanent conveyance. When I returned to collect my own refurbished vehicle, the service chap rushed through the details of what had been done to it, before asking me excitedly, ‘What was the great music on the CD in your car?’ It transpired he’d been listening to a CD by Creation, which I’d recently bought and had left in the player. When I told him the track was probably ‘Makin’ Time’ he immediately looked it up on his mobile, logging on to something called Shazam to identify the track and save or download it.

Then he asked me had I heard of Jefferson Airplane or Big Brother & The Holding Company and could I recommend any similar music that he may be able to source. I suggested Quicksilver Messenger Service and he quickly found ‘Pride of Man’. From there we jumped to Fleur de Lys, by which time he was agreeing to buy a copy of this book when it was published. At this point he mentioned another of his favourites, Brian Protheroe, who had a hit with ‘Pinball’ in 1974. When I later told Julian at Second Scene about this, he too declared an unexpected fondness for the Protheroe single.

Julian’s shop was packed with heaps of boxes full of unpriced records yet to be sorted and graded.

‘We decided to try sending out flyers – and it worked. We’ve had loads of local people bringing their records in. Some of them have no idea what they’ve got and say they were about to give or throw them away – they’re grateful for any offer of money and despite knowing that they would almost certainly accept very low offers I do feel obliged to offer them a fair price. But then there are the others who have a ridiculously inflated price in mind and think I’m trying to rip them off if my offer doesn’t measure up.’ The new approach was paying dividends and Julian told me he’d brought in a good selection of unusual records as a result: ‘Have a look through, I’m sure you’ll find something.’ I did – a McKendree Spring LP, and the brilliant 1973 self-titled Byrds’ album which for some reason I omitted to buy at the time – for 20 quid the pair.

Now that I was back from the home of The Beatles, I once again found myself faced with a decision to make between them and their eternal rivals…