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National Album Day

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or … an excuse for more “new special pressings” at a premium price to coax people back into HMV (and/or appear at even more inflated prices on up ebay for the next week or so

Inspired by 6Music, I have dug out 3 perennial favourites and listened in full.
The Who – Quadrophenia
Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks
Pink Floyd – The Wall

These 3 albums were. I thought, hard-wired into my brain, but whether it is the context of the day or the fact I haven’t listened to them in full for a long while, I’m hearing stuff in there which renews interest and reminds me what was so great about them in the first place.
I can confirm that they are all … brilliant!

The album – a fine way to spend 40 minutes of your life

Next up: Damned Damned Damned – not just because of this National Album Day thing, but also because it’s Dave Vanian’s birthday

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Comments

  1. There’s also Record Store Black Friday coming up to squeeze a few more pips.

    Just back from the cafe where we played Tracy Chapman, Elvis Presley, The Kinks, Tom Petty and Seal.

  2. If you’re a fan of The Wall, which has been one of my favourite albums since I was in my teens, you should track down The Final Cut in the Wall. It’s a bootleg re-jig, incorporating tracks from The Final Cut and substituting some of the album tracks for live versions, extended versions, outtakes, music from the film soundtrack, etc. The whole thing clocks in at 2 hours 13 minutes, so it’s a lengthy old listen, but it’s brill. Gives a new way to enjoy an album that, like you, might as well be hard wired into my brain.

  4. Am playing only vinyl from 1969 this week (especially as Wilco album didnt show up).

    Today’s offerings (so far):

    The Band
    Arthur – The Kinks

  5. There has been a lot of talk about ‘skip’ tracks. In the seventies, when Rock was king, there was always at least one skip track but skipping on vinyl was tricky. Though, you could always have a rest at half time. CDs were much easier and mp3s actively encourage it. However, I think acts these days have upped their game. I find modern ‘albums’ far more consistent with barely any tracks requiring a skip. It helps that they tend to release new product once every two or three years rather than two or three LPs a year. Even so, I find it easier to listen to whole albums these days.

    • Raaawwwwkkkkk!

      The Beatles had loads of “skip tracks.”
      Why?
      Because they wanted to appeal to everybody and not just male NME readers aged 17 to 26.

      We shouldn’t blame the industry for this, we should blame Morrissey et al with their “exquisite taste.”
      The latest word is “curator!”

      One problem, The Beatles piss on all of them!

      • When The Beatles were on the go, the NME was the one of the poor relations of the music press. I would suggest the NME readership was rarely in their thoughts.
        The primary weekly in those days was Melody Maker. Disc & Music Echo was the second paper. NME and Record Mirror were little more than vehicles for regurgitating record company PR releases.
        NME didn’t gain its ascendancy until around 1972/73 with the Nick Logan era, when he sought to make it into something that could be compared to Rolling Stone/Creem.
        Sounds only began being published in 1970.

        • Erm … if you like.

          The NME reference was more about what the NME became, not about what it was like in 1964. The NME of 1973 or 1977 or 1982 or 1987 was what narrowed the goal posts.

          The Smiths et al appealed to such a pared-down audience because of the Stalinist music press of their pitiful era, something that The Beatles, mercifully, didn’t have to contend with.

          • Yes I was pared down all right. 26″ waist at the time. You don’t really know what you are talking about. We all listened to a broad range of music: dance music, old classics, reggae (not vile). The NME reflected that range too. Being so tied to the so called golden age of the sixties such that no other era can be permitted seems pretty Stalinist to me, a self imposed reign of terror.

            • What’s “not vile?”
              Strange turn of phrase.

              The post veered towards “skip” tracks, not we LISTENED TO ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, Darling!

              Wasn’t the point.
              At all.

              Still love Dodgers, would genuinely be steered by one more than, say, a Bob Dylan interview in 2019.
              I’d do the polar opposite, obviously, but I’d still be more steered by a Dodger. They’re great.

              • Morrissey. A rather recent reference. Possibly 30 years old. The reply was more about the tiresome endless vitriol for everything post 1972 or thereabouts. Shouldn’t rise to it of course. A mistake.

                • Never any “thereabouts” about proceedings, ever.
                  Very specific.
                  This awful place … the country, not the website … blew it.
                  Very specific.
                  Golden Age?
                  Working on it … it happened.
                  Hound Dog to The Sun becoming a tabloid are my recent reverence points. “Thereabouts” enough for you. Quite specific.
                  Don’t like Dodgers, though funnily enough, I’m more against those who had the option. They’re the real bastards.
                  What shall we do about them?

  6. The Record Fair came to town yesterday, bit of a red letter day with no record shops within ten miles and the nearest good one 30 miles away.

    I knew it wasn’t going to end well when a male (dodger) and his wife (dodger) start pointing at track-listings and humming songs. Famous songs, they weren’t Marvin Rainwater b-sides.
    This was Tony Blackburn’s fanbase.

    He tuts at a few of the prices and states, “I only really buy value-for-money.”
    Not an unreasonable statement, one I concur with wholeheartedly as a matter of fact.

    Anyway out of my eyeline he alights on his purchase from his visit to the Record Fair.
    Didn’t see the price. £6-£8 if the other CDs were anything to go by.

    Value for money?
    The Beatles’ “1.”
    A fiver at the supermarket, a regular for a pound at the Oxy.
    I rather got the feeling he’d never seen it before.

    Where do these people come from?
    More worryingly, do they get a vote?

  7. I thought I would join in yesterday so I made the effort to listen to a full album from start to end. On my own, darkened room, vinyl, LOUD. It was great, should do it more often.

    Pink Floyd’s Animals, in case you were wondering.

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