Wednesday, November 18, 2009

In Their Tender Grasp


When one of the Dads at the girlies' school told me he was moving house and planned to chuck all his vinyl out (!) I was round there like a shot for a rummage; he'd very sportingly granted me first refusal on the 'stock' before he hefted it up to the charity shop.

He's a bit of a disco bunny, as it turns out - so I picked up some late Marvin and an Imagination LP (*sings* - "Music and lights! I'll sing and dance with you all night!") a couple of nice twelve inches I'm sure will crop up here some Friday or other and - a tad anomalously given the general spangled thrust of his collection - this.

Which he was kind enough to let me have for nothing, even though I said I thought it'd fetch a few quid 'out there' (I was right - crazy prices for even the CD!).

We popped it on chez H last night and oh, what loveliness we found it to contain.

Sorry, poor work-rate I know, but I'm only part-way through computerising it I'm afraid; still, I wanted to share a little of it with you.

This old music is lighting up my dark, dark November, and perhaps it will yours, too.

The Lotus Eaters - 'German Girl' (1984)

The Lotus Eaters - 'Out On Your Own' (1984)

37 comments:

  1. Brilliant piece of rummaging and luck. The full version of 'The First Picture of You' turned up on a compilation earlier this year and I decided I had to buy this CD - til I saw the price of course. I was expecting to pay around £5.

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  2. Happy to 'sort you out' once I've done, nudge nudge wink wink say no more...

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  3. I'm shocked. You have no sense of sin!!

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  4. I really don't understand the getting rid of your vinyl, as Mr T would say i pity the fools. You know they will only regret it in years to come and wake up crying with the realisation of how foolish they have been.

    Still you picked up a gem there Mr H, I ain't in the slightest bit jealous.

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  5. I don't even think this had been played...His copy of Stevie's Hotter Than July has definitely had a lorra needle love, however.

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  6. This is the exact brand of luck and happenstance I pray for each time I visit a record store or garage sale or second hand store...

    Love this LP...'First Picture Of You' is a gem as well...

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  7. Luck & happenstance - it's how we all get by.

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  8. Damn it, now you've roused my guilt feelings. I borrowed 'Hotter Than July' nearly 30 years ago and I've still got it. Lost touch with the real owner in the mid 90s but still think of it as hers, not mine.

    I bought a charity shop CD yesterday because it contained one kitsch 70s classic. Should I post it?

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  9. I think you know the answer to that.

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  10. I have nothing to add but the word veri is 'bints' and I just can't resist.

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  11. I had this album and I gave it away years ago during the middle of a funny phase. I thought it was a bit...drippy. I still love First Picture, but didn't get on with the rest of it anymore. I shall listen to these with interest...and hope I don't decide it was actually classic....

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  12. You jammy git. That's just like the scene in High Fidelity (the book, not the movie) where that woman wants to get shot of her husband's record collection and it's full of rare Otis Redding and Sex Pistols singles - not that you were THAT lucky.

    I have The Lotus Eaters album all on mp3, downloaded it from somewhere sometime, I have so much crap on my computer I can't remember where half of it came from.

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  13. londonlee - that bit was cut from the movie, I found it on youtube not long ago. What all us saddoes dream about.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Esanwk37c

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  14. PS: Simon - I'm pretty averse to 'drippy' myself - but I find these poetically off-kilter and I like them for the same reasons I like China Crisis & Pale Fountains - that whole early-mid 80s soft Liverpool scene, it's aged well, in my humble.

    PPS: What a truly excellent word 'bint' is.

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  15. bint is an excellent word, however once got a slap when a student from a right on, dungaree wearing sister for using the word, so caution is the watchword.

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  16. Have you noticed what a moral bunch we record collectors are? John Cusack “couldn’t do that to another collector” and I can’t think of a 30-year old borrowed LP as mine. But Mr H doesn’t mind ripping off a father from his girlies school so maybe my theory is flawed ;)

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  17. I always had a sneaking suspicion that Mr H had character flaws.

    I on the other hand have none, morals that is, too feckin right I would have bought the singles, they couldn't have meant that much or a - he wouldn't have left them and b - asked his estranged and he would have guessed, extremely vindictive wife to sell them.

    Do you think that i may have thought about this a tad too much?

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  18. I didn't take his 12" of The Message by Grandmaster Flash on Sugarhill with the pic sleeve though. It's like a jungle sometimes.

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  19. Pic sleeve? Mine's black with the lyric printed in white (the reason this is the only rap I know by heart). Does that count as a pic sleeve or is there another one?

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  20. Good. You can borrow mine if you like but i want it back in 30 years. Have to be up early tomorrow. G'nite.

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  21. I love the Pale Fountains, but I can't stand and never have been able to stand China Crisis. The vocals used to annoy the hell out of me, and even at the tender age of 14 I wanted to slap him!

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  22. I could lose myself in this honesty.

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  23. Dear Davy, please email me...

    adam@fadesinslowly.com

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  24. how come the awful words 'get rid of the vinyl' seem to be heard far too often with the other words ' the wife's making me...' ? i do hope that this wasn't another of those.
    did you get a reason ?

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  25. 'I just want to clear the clutter and I've bought most of the things I like again on CD anyway'....

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  26. We people who gather need those who dispose.

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  27. I have a vague rule in my head that if I stumbled across something especially lovely in a charity shop I'd have to 'fess up to the person on the desk, but it was a car boot or junk shop I can have it.(*Pauses and ponders whatever came of the junk shop, if indeed there ever was such a thing*)(actually, and this is more than a ponder now, there is a shop I go past when the vicar gives me a lift homeward called 'Everything' which, from the look of the window, does seem to be telling the truth). Although I've been forming a sub-rule about whether I actually support the charity and whether that should make a difference.

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  28. I want a shop called 'Everything'...

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  29. Word is getting around my friends and colleagues that I'm getting "just a bit obsessed" with vinyl. This has led to a couple of donations of "vinyl stashes" in recent months. But it's funny, I keep them separate to my own records and don't think of them as mine. This has confirmed my suspicions that I have turned into a true digger. It's all about the joy of the chase and the discovery. Only when you find a record yourself do you truly bond with it (he says caressing his Tighten Up Vol2 LP). It must nearly be time for my medication!

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  30. 'He'll be fine. He just needs some quiet time with his records'

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  31. I sometimes think just who would be interested in having my vinyl and CDs after I have no further use for them (hopefully that moment in time is still a few years away).

    Blame it on listening to too much Cohen and Mozza

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  32. Surely a bequest to the nation JC?

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