The Black Sea...

I've been having a bit of a think (don't worry, it doesn't happen very often) and I've decided to stop posting the 'Road to Moscow' up here. It seems silly merely to replicate the posts here when, as my poorly maintained (and probably inaccurate) statistics seem to suggest, more people are listening to the podcasted version than are reading here (...unless of course there's just one very sad and obsessional Swipester out there who spent most of October downloading the same episode 950 times....which is a possibility I'm afraid I can't discount entirely....in which case, please stop it Spinster.) So if that's OK with you guys, I will try to post up the story of the season as it unfolds every week or so via the ploddingcasts and get back to blogging...

All of which, allows me to use this space to indulge my other passion in life (well, it would if you were allowed to upload images of donkey-based pornography involving dwarves and Haagen das ice cream) so I suppose it'll have to be records...

And here is an example of the very same that I was fortunate enough to come across in the Cancer Research Shop yesterday (how they haven't found a fucking cure yet after all the dosh I've been putting their way over the last few years, I do not know!) I thought this might interest Istvanski, if no one else, anyroad...




It's a copy of XTC's rather excellent 1980 LP, The Black Sea, complete with customised XTC, The Black Sea wrapping paper. Oh, but that's not all. A closer inspection reveals that the label of this fine original pressing of the album is somewhat of an oddity. The Virgin logo and track listing and so on appears to have been stamped over a Robert Stigwood Organisation label, as would have been more befitting an offering by stablemates of that label such as the Bee Gees or Eric Clapton....



Fascinating, eh? Obviously, being the lazy sod I am, I've made no attempt whatsoever to do any research, so I can't shed any light on the reason for this bizarre label/logo mash up in a ragga-stylee, but can only join the curious reader in speculation. Perhaps Richard Branson, finding himself overstretched financially by the twin demands of running a record company and starting up a budget airline had simply run out of the wherewithal to provide proper annotation to his vinyl product. Shamefaced and apologetic, the bearded elfin-faced entrepreneur sidled up to fellow impressario Stigwood to beg a few blank labels. All of which begs the question, are there a few hundred copies of Spirits Having Flown floating about with bare black centres? We'll probably never know. But do drop me a line if you ever come across one, won't you....

I also found this...



To my shame, I'd never owned this LP until yesterday. I'm not as obsessive a collector of bands' back catalogues as some of my mates, even when I really like them. Laziness again, I guess. I suppose I saw them as a singles band too; they really did pick such strong material for release in the 7 inch format - 'Strange Town', 'Eton Rifles', 'Going Underground' and, from this LP, 'Down in the Tube Station', 'David Watts, and 'A-Bomb in Wardour Street'. I always had a strong affinity with this album's darker, bleaker follow-up, 'Setting Sons'. It's a beauty though, even when you come to it belatedly as I have (I knew most of the tracks, I've just never had a copy of it.)

There's barely a mark on it, so it's an absolute joy to listen to. The boat whistles and horn and effects that usher in the unlisted (on the sleeve, at least) 'English Rose' play about the stereo soundscape quite magically; you really have been transported even before Weller's delicately finger picked guitar starts up. It's a lovely tune and, if the idea of it being used as the backing track for an advertisement raises the hackles, then that ire is slightly pacified by the appropriateness of the English Tourist Board benefitting from the song's bittersweet and haunting evocation of the loved and loathed place of one's birth.

I should have put a picture of the back of the sleeve up too, there's a photo of Weller's Rickenbacker guitar which bears a sticker for a band called The Boys - about whom, more later...



I'm not sure how many out there share this fascination with old records - one feels a bit like those old neighbours from one's own youth who clung obstinately (how English, how Orwell is that?) to their swing 78s while 45 and 33 1/3 rpm discs were then the state of the art preference of most. The smell of urine on one's clothes and an eternity spent trying to remember what you got up from the settee to go into the kitchen for can't be far away, you feel. But I quite like that feeling of being out of step and, who knows, perhaps even a little eccentric now. If an eccentric is what you are when you are true to yourself in the face of ridicule from others, then I suppose that I can live with that. And for any one who hasn't had the pleasure of listening to a really good pressing of a favourite pre-digital era album or single on a reasonably good turntable, it really does open your ears to what you've been missing out to by succumbing to the autocracy of the compact disc and MP3.

It opens your eyes too - in the broader, consciousness expanding sense. You are actively involved in the production of the sound, for a start rather than being a passive listener as you become once you hit that forward pointing triangle on the tiny keyboard in your hand. The stylus has to be maintained, cherished before being lowered onto the disc; no remotes, no remoteness here. Similarly, the surface of the record has to be nurtured and protected - perhaps that's what all this is; child substitution? I hadn't thought of that. De-ionised water or a pant of breath can help to lift those grubby paw prints off the playing surface; they're worse than scratches even, ruining the listening experience and the stylus at the same time. Velvet and fine cloth massage the grooves; this is another appealing aspect of the record playing experience as opposed to the act of bunging a CD on; it's very tactile. In fact, there's a whole dimension of listening to music that has been excised by the rush to digital. I could go on, but I'm sure I'll return to this subject, so I won't (and please excuse the choice of such an obvious metaphor here) start sounding like a stuck record just yet...




L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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