When you were a wee tyke, becoming aware of music, what records did your Mum and Dad have? (Apologies at this point for exclusionary, entitled, gender-restrictive terminology). The records in my home were mostly my Mum’s – in spite of his claims to be “a musician”, the only notes my Dad was interested were wrong ones, or the ones he considered to be wrong. I can’t remember him ever bringing a record home, but my Mum did. She’d buy records that were playing in the record shop if she liked the sound of them, without knowing anything about them. Ike Quebec’s “Blue And Sentimental”, George Shearing’s “Out Of The Woods”, Bing Crosby & Rosemary Clooney’s “Fancy Meeting You Here”, and Dave Brubeck’s “Greatest Hits” were high points, and albums I’ve listened to ever since. There were also the usual James Last and Bert Kaempfert soundtracks for swingin’ suburban parties (not that kind of swingin’), a couple of classical albums, and a Readers’ Digest box set (“Mood Music For Listening And Relaxation”) that in common with other box sets – to this day – remained mostly unopened. The singles in a shoe box weren’t of much interest – I can remember a few Roger Millers, but nothing else.
Records weren’t as important to their generation as to mine – albums soon became my base currency unit, and were kept in my bedroom. I still have them all, as mp3. But apart from the handful of Mum’s inspired purchases, my parents’ musical tastes were never much exercised, and formed virtually no part in my musical education. They would listen to (some of) The Beatles with appreciation (a bit like Afterworders today listening to teh kids music hahalol), but that was as far as they got.
So – were your parents hipper than mine? What records did you enjoy from the gold-finish wire rack next to the gramophone?
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Gary says
My mum never showed any interest in music except on the radio as background noise. The only record she ever bought was “Carrie” by Cliff Richard cos she thought it was called “Gary”. My dad only ever bought/listened to Elvis Presley. Were my parents hipper than yours? I’ve given this question a great deal of thought over the last few years and I like to think so, yes.
Baron Harkonnen says
My dad was a Mario Lanza completist. I got an instant headache every time I heard the Italian twat.
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Yes I know he’s American.
Black Type says
My mum was also a super Mario fan. I didn’t really appreciate him at the time ( clearly not in the same league as Gary Glitter), but now of course I appreciate what a great talent he was.
Arthur Cowslip says
“Super Mario”? Was that deliberate? If so, that was funny. If not, it was even funnier.
retropath2 says
My dad liked Harry Secombe, Moira Anderson and the Seekers. My mum liked Jim Reeves. That was about it. My Uncle George was a much better role model: he loved Ella Fitzgerald, the Duke and the Count and any number of stride piano polymaths, Albert Ammons I think his favourite. He enjoyed having a listen at what I thought decent and would say kind things. He got a bit James Last keen towards the end of his life, which, if nothing else has explained how some folk here seem to rate him, suggesting there was a musical brain delivering the zillions of bizarre cover records. (In both senses of cover) Before he died, the last thing he played me was some Aretha Franklin, who I had earlier felt just another black “Motown” soul singer. He put me right.
Gatz says
My father was the musician, a church organist for most of his life and a choir master for much of of it. His enthusiasms were reflected in his record collection as well as his music-making – choral music, church organ music, plus brass bands, all of which I have always loathed and still find painful to listen too. He had a soft spot for the fringe of singer-songwriters too, so long as they weren’t too poppy, and about the only point of contact between his taste and mine that I can think of is Jake Thackray.
My mother played pop radio, but I only ever remember her buying 2 singles – One Night in Bangkok and I Am the Beat by The Look.
chiz says
Music wasn’t really a thing in our house. My parents would have been just out of their teens when Elvis changed everything, but they were in Birmingham, the West Midlands one not the Alabama one, and rock’n’roll never really made it as far as Orphanage Road, Erdington.
They had a Dancette which I had moved to my room by the time I was 12, but the discs that came with it were not inspiring. The singles included Dat’s Love from Carmen Jones, Paddy Roberts’ The Englishman With His Usual Bloody Cold and The Highway Code sung as plainsong. Somehow they had acquired Donovan’s Universal Soldier EP, either a gift or left behind by a guest, I suspect, because there’s no way they would have bought it.
By the mid 70’s we had a proper record player cabinet thing, kind of like a musical hostess trolley, which was only wheeled out for dinner parties. The LPs were the soundtrack of middle-class social climbing – James Last, Mantovani, Nana Mouskouri, and twee folky stuff for the brandy-cigars-and-wife-swapping stage of the evening.
Never quite in the same income bracket as their aspirational friends, their only concession to ‘popular music’ was the occasional bargain-bin Music For Pleasure knock-off like The Stars Sing Lennon and McCartney or Pinky & Perky Sing Simon & Garfunkel. There are a couple of gems among those that I still have, including a Beach Boys one that introduced me to Please Let Me Wonder and others, and Guantanamera by The Sandpipers, a group so impossibly fey and slight that their whispered renditions of La Bamba and Strangers in The Night would have been entirely drowned out by the clunk of car keys hitting the glass bowl on the coffee table.
Tiggerlion says
Your parents used The Sandpipers to soundtrack their swingers nights? Interesting choice.
chiz says
Well why not? What do you use for yours?
Moose the Mooche says
Bradley Wiggins says the best song to have sex to is Firestarter. I knew he was weird.
Tiggerlion says
You can have all kinds of sex to this (thanks to Morgana Robinson):
Milton Wright – Keep It Up
Failing that, there’s always Hejira.
Moose the Mooche says
As viewers of Raised By Wolves know, the theme from Question Time has its fans…
hubert rawlinson says
I believe that John Martyn on ‘Live at Leeds’ suggested Ravel’s Bolero to engage in beasting with two backs.
Sid Williams says
wasnt that used in 10, the movie? I remember some wag pointing out that it was a strange choice as it just gets louder without getting any faster. I expect Sting is a fan.
fitterstoke says
Correct, Hubes…he suggests that this is what it was written for: and Danny and John Stevens start playing a snatch of it with JM vocalising the melody…
nickduvet says
My parents were disciples of the man they called ‘Hansi’.
James Last, for it was he, provided the soundtrack of our weekends at home. Once in a while, I would find my parents preparing for a night out at the Albert Hall, for one of Hansi’s musical extravaganzas. In fact, the preparation would begun weeks in advance, involving my mum sewing a matador costume for my father and a flamenco dress for herself, so they could really be in the spirit of it when Hansi played Y Viva Espana.
My dad liked piano music mostly, so we had records like The World of Ronnie Aldrich, which kicked off with a fab and groovy version of Ride My Seesaw. His favourite classical piece – no surprise here – was Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto. Apart from that, it was Carousel and South Pacific. Everyone had those, right?
Tony Newley had it right – Stop The World, I Want To Get Off.
Moose the Mooche says
Ride My See Saw? Must we fling this filth etc
nickduvet says
Russ Conway too. As a nipper, Sidesaddle was always on our little portable record player with the speaker in the lid. My mum liked Johnny Mathis too. Helen Shapiro, Nat King Cole (Let There Be Love), Ray Charles (I Can’t Stop Loving You), Carole King (It Might As Well Rain). I’m thankful that the radio was always on in our house during the day, however bland and middle of the road it was. Jimmy Young was that friendly voice, a companion unobtrusive.
Boneshaker says
My parents were decidedly unhip, determinedly refusing to have any truck with that new-fangled beat music. My Dad was a fan of Mantovani, James Last and Geoff Love. He had a full collection of Manuel and His Music of the Mountains LPs, all of which were universally diabolical. My Mum was slightly more open-minded, stretching modernity as far as a sneaking admiration for Leeds crooner Tony Christie. She also invested in one of those magazine based classical music series which built over some 20 weeks into a reasonably decent collection. Dad’s musical saving grace was the fact that he liked Frank Sinatra, a pleasure that I derisively scorned at the time, but which in later life I found that I shared.
Black Type says
TC is from Sheffield.
retropath2 says
But now acclimed in Lichfield.
geedubyapee says
I think it was Jeff (“Yellow River”) Christie who was from Leeds.
Mr H says
As far as I was concerned, this was the most played on our radiogram!
Nick L says
Neither of my parents had much in the way of a collection when I were a lad, but what they did have was somewhat catholic…in fact the only actual albums I remember being present were one by Roy Orbison, one Buddy Holly and one Acker Bilk. There were a few more singles, Sandy Nelson, Ray Charles, but not much…although I loved my Dad’s little stash of comedy EPs, mostly Tony Hancock iirc and it was probably these I borrowed the most. The folks became much more interested in music in the mid eighties, my Mum being into the Pet Shop Boys and The Pogues, while my Dad developed a taste for Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac and Clapton. Odd.
Bingo Little says
My parents are about the age of a lot of the posters on here, and listened to a lot of the sort of music you tend to get on here. They spent most of their time at university stoned out of their minds and then went to live in a squat in Brixton. That whole 60s/70s dream.
Dad was big into Springsteen (he was at the better of the two nights at the Hammersmith Apollo in 75), Talking Heads, Dylan, Fairport and the Byrds. He had a decent sized vinyl collection, at the front of which he usually kept The Gilded Palace of Sin by The Flying Burrito Bros and Spike by Elvis Costello. He bought Mojo and Q for years until, like most of us, one day he didn’t. He was generally aware of what was going on with new guitar music; I can recall both being into 13 by Blur at the same time, he liked Radiohead a lot and we went to see Ryan Adams together a couple of times. For years I gave him CDs for Christmas, mainly Uncut style Americana, most of which he liked. Nowadays he mainly seems to listen to Ry Cooder.
Mum was big into Bob Marley, Led Zep and The Doors, although her tastes were a lot more erratic and of the moment. She also introduced me to the Lovin Spoonful and the Small Faces, for which I will always be grateful. In the mid to late 80s she was listening to Dire Straits, the Travelling Wilburys and Bon Jovi. I don’t think music was as important to her as it was to Dad, in the collector sense, but she liked what she liked – she’d hear something on the radio, buy the album and then we’d all be listening to it for months.
Neither of them were particularly elitist. They both enjoyed some of the records I brought home and were mystified by others; I can recall Dad giving fairly short shrift to my Jeff Buckley obsession (“ah, another dirge”). They never came out with all this stuff about the 60s/70s being some sort of golden wonderland – that was just their youth, and this was just mine, there was no pissing contest.
Gary says
“My parents are about the age of a lot of the posters on here”
That’s like… ouch. Only double ouch cos it’s true. It’s like ouch all over.
Moose the Mooche says
Bingo’s younger than the rest of us? Funny that he’s never mentioned that before…
H.P. Saucecraft says
He’s 14.
Bingo Little says
If only.
Kaisfatdad says
What a thoroughly enjoyable snapshot of family life in Bingoville.
Going to a concert with my parents was something that would never even have crossed my mind. Quite unthinkable from both sides. Being in a hall full of scruffy, unwashed hippies in tie-die T shirts and Afghans who stunk of joss sticks was not their idea of an evening out.
That’s certainly something that has changed, These days there is far more common ground. Families will happily go out together and enjoy an evening with the likes of Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Robert Plant, Suzanne Vega, Paul Simon or Anal Cunt.
dai says
I am annoyed my parents didn’t take me to see The Beatles in Abergavenny when I was about one ryesr old. How selfish!
* Yes, The Beatles played a cinema in Abergavenny
Martin Hairnet says
@dai It was the town hall, apparently. I spoke with some friends in Abergavenny this afternoon. They know someone who went to that gig as a boy. He claims to have carried their guitars and acted as a guide in town. He stole one of the promotional posters and had them all sign it. He kept the poster on his bedroom wall until he left home, when his mum rolled it up and put in in the attic. Years later, when he needed some money, he sold it.
Lennon arrived late via helicopter!
https://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/06/22/live-town-hall-abergavenny/
dai says
I stand corrected. Nice story,
The father of a friend once claimed he was walking in Abergavenny and somebody invited him in to hear a band playing and it was The Beatles! We didn’t believe him as of course they would never have played Abergavenny …
Was aware of Lennon’s solo arrival.
fatima Xberg says
All pretty much as expected. It just occurred to me that a more interesting question would be – what was in YOUR record collection when your kids were, well: kids?
(Since you asked, on my shelf in the late 90s were albums from Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Rolling Stones, nothing whatsoever Punk or New Wave except XTC. I was also heavily into rockabilly and listened to Rumble On The Beach, Cramps, The Voodoo Dolls – and The Fall. Favourite artists were Rachid Taha and Phillip Boa. And I had just discovered Phish which turned everything around a bit…)
H.P. Saucecraft says
That certainly is a more interesting question, Fats! Why don’t you go right ahead and ask it?
Kaisfatdad says
For once, Fatima, I don’t agree with you. But yours is an interesting question. So please! Kick a thread off and see where it takes us!! I have one friend who, at a tender age, played little but Al Bowlly to his daughter.
This has been one of the most enjoyable threads for weeks.
Hats off to you, HP, for asking exactly the right question. A bullseye!
retropath2 says
I’d have to ask my kids but I have fair guess it would be “dirges”, aka folk music, and Chumbawamba. I remember courting my second wife by playing her some of my finest, only for my daughter to holler downstairs: “for gods sake, Dad, stop playing that awful music: no woman on earth could possibly enjoy that”. Bit harsh, I thought.
fitterstoke says
Harsh, maybe – but was your daughter correct?
As a VdGG fan, I’m asking from a place of empathy…
retropath2 says
That particular wife didn’t stick around, it’s true…..
Kaisfatdad says
“That particular wife”…
Wives, eh? They come and go and it’s tough to keep track of them! I know the feeling!
fentonsteve says
About 500 times as many as my folks had. “Too many” is the correct answer, really.
Offspring the Elder, being a sensitive sort, discovered Bjork as a toddler. Many an afternoon nap was soundtracked by my ‘Vespertine live at the Cambridge Corn Exchange’ DVD.
My pal opened a hi-fi shop in a barn and had a 1970s vinyl themed opening party. I took along both the Offsprings – there were unlimited sausage rolls, cakes and fizzy pop – and my LP of London Calling, which we played all of side one. One afternoon the following week I came home from work to find Offspring The Younger (then aged 3) in the living room, playing my CD copy of London Calling at full blast. “That’s your fault” said Mrs F, as she rolled her eyes.
Shortly before his fourth birthday, my son had discovered Toots and the Maytals, via their set at the Cambridge Folk Festival, which had been on the telly. On his first day at primary school, we had to complete a likes/dislikes questionnaire. Under ‘Favourite song’ we’d put ‘Monkey Man’, whereas most his classmates had chosen ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ or similar. His teacher had a chat with him, he told her Toots was *way* better than Bob Marley, then I had a phone call asking me to “See Miss after school”.
We moved house when he was four and a half. It didn’t take long for word of the reggae-loving ginger-haired pasty-faced four-year-old to spread. The local kids would knock on the door: “Can Bob Marley come out to play?”
moseleymoles says
My parents were teenagers just before rock and roll, so though they (I think my dad) did buy records it was jazz and classical as much as rock. When I was old enough to investigate they had Blonde on Blonde, the White Album (which I now have) and Surrealistic Pillow (criminally given to record and tape exchange for a quid before the vinly revial – the guy must have got his poker face down behind the counter). Music was chiefly via the radio – so the Proms. Jazz was Louis Armstrong, Bix Biederbecke and Dave Brubeck. Classical was Bach, Beethoven. Far more impressive than the records was the stereo system my dad had in the sixties: KEF speakers the size of a small fridge and a coffin-like wooden unit on legs which contained a record player, Grundig reel to reel (mounted flat) and radio. Must have cost the size of a small car. I crawled under it aged 3-4 and gave myself an electric shock. Also about the time I according to legend took many records out of their sleeves and used them to surfboard across the polished wooden floor. Like many (and also to some extent us) the physical aspects of all this was a dad thing and while my mum enjoyed going out to concerts (classical) didn’t listen to much music at home or dream of buying any music.
mikethep says
My dad played Brahms, Mozart and Ludwig Van on 78 (true) or listened to the Third Programme. My mother mostly listened to Music While You Work and suchlike while slaving away in the kitchen. Everything changed when I brought home a 78 of It’s All Happening/What Do You Do by Tommy Steele when I was 11, and from then on any bloody racket in evidence in the house was down to me.
My children, on the other hand, had a first-class musical education. Chuck Berry, Stones, Elephant’s Gerald – (c) Rachel aged 5 – Paul Simon, Mose Allison, Emmylou Harris, they got the lot. Lucky kids.
jazzjet says
My Dad’s collection was mostly classical but he also had a number of Spike Jones’ 78s which very much coloured my comedic tastes growing up.
SteveT says
My mum adored music whilst my dad would jokingly suggest that come the revolution musicians would be put against the wall and shot. Mum had a substantial collection that included all the musicals such as My Fair lady, South Pacific, Sound of Music et al. In addition she liked Herb Alpert, James Last, Frank Sinatra and more recently Andre bloody Rieu who makes my ears bleed. When she bought a radiogram for the house she encouraged my burgeoning love of music by buying me my first ever lp – a collection of Beatles covers by a band called Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots.
Junior Wells says
We didn’t have a record player until after the Beatles toured Oz. Dad bought some Beatles EPs and a Simon and Garfunkel EP. I later used the Beatles EPs as frisbees when I nailed my allegiance to the Stones masthead. Mistake.
Mum never ever bought a record though she had the strongest musical ability – perfect pitch, light opera, country town musicals etc.
The musical was varied with varying influence on me. The classical didn’t get much of an outing when I was young. Nana Mouskouri, Val Doonican and on Friday nights, Jimmy Shand. Nana M was effective in rousing us out of bed on a school morning to take the record off but I continue to enjoy Jimmy Shand and Celtic music both Irish and Scottish. They were Christians and I still occasionally play the massed choirs in the Cathedrals of Britain.
Perhaps more influential was the Lions Club annual carnival. Dad was chief spruiker at the spinning wheel stand and it was here I heard early Elvis, Roy Orbison and others of their era played through the carnival PA on hot still Melbourne summer evenings. I think those evenings have stayed with me most.
Franco says
I remember my mum playing that”Venice in Peril” LP by baroque robot combo Rondo Venezia. Every Sunday morning,between 11 and 12. Strange.
retropath2 says
You think that’s weird? I bought it!
Paul Wad says
My parents’ small but almost perfectly formed record collection had a big influence on me. That, and Jimmy Savile’s Old Record Club on Radio 1 on a Sunday lunchtime. I think I’ve already written on here about all this, so apologies if I’m repeating myself.
I was lucky being born at the time I was (but really I would have preferred to have been born in about 1940), because it meant that I started taking an interest in music in the late 70s, when there were some great singles around (singles were far more important to me than albums at that time). My earliest music memories are watching David Essex on TOTP singing Gonna Make You a Star, and loving the Bay City Rollers’ TV show, the latter being my first favourite band. I had my mum make me a little tartan trimmed white suit, like wot they wore!
My dad is 7 years older than my mum, so they had different tastes. My dad liked the rock and roll of the late 50s, plus a bit of country and western, or more precisely, the western part. So he was the one who led me to Elvis, Billy Fury (his favourite), Roy Orbison, Ricky Nelson, Roy Orbison, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, etc. My grandad (my dad’s step-dad, a lovely man) died in the summer of 1976. My dad was mildly upset. A year later Elvis died and my dad was distraught!
My mum was a teenager through the 60s, so from her I got The Beatles, The Hollies (her favourite), The Kinks, The Monkees, etc. She also used to buy ex-jukebox records for me and my sister. Random ones, so we had no idea what she would bring home. And I mean random. From rubbish like The Dooleys and ABBA’s Summer Night City (we were so disappointed that of all the Anna singles she brought home one we didn’t know!) to Dr. Feelgood’s Milk and Alcohol and Ian Dury’s Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. You’ve no idea how thrilling it was playing the B-Side of that, scared my mum might come in and catch me!
After being a fan of the Rollers, then the Barron Knights, Showaddywaddy, Darts and Madness, my music obsession really took off with The Beatles, but it was having it away with my Nan’s copy of the Red album that started that, rather than my parents. To this day I have no idea how my Nan came to own that, as all her other records were rubbish, with no other one you could remotely called pop. But hearing that album was a revelation and it was pretty much responsible for me taking limited interest in current music for a few years in the early 80s, when chart music, on the whole, dropped in quality anyway. My parents’ record collection and Savile’s show also had a big hand in it. I can still remember the shock to my ears when, at around age 12, Like a Rolling Stone came on the show. I instantly became a Dylan fan.
My dad would listen to the show with me, and tell me everything he knew about the songs/artist. Similarly, he’d tell me about the records he had when I played those. He didn’t know a great deal, but it was enough to feed my thirst for knowledge. As well as the singles, he had Elvis’ Golden Records, Blue Hawaii, Neil Diamond’s 20 Golden Greats, Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads, great Billy Fury and Ricky Nelson compilations, plus a few ropey ones of course. It breaks his heart when he tells me of the massive pile of 78s he had when he was a kid, that he came home to find his older brother had binned (or more likely sold, knowing the brother in question). I can’t help thinking of it as a music version of what happened to another Barnsley lad 10 years later, when he came home from school to find his older brother had thrown his beloved pet in the bin, after first breaking its neck. The 78s would have been worth a few quid, as there were several Elvis ones, among others.
My mum only had a few albums, but there was a Monkees compilation and The Hollies Greatest Hits. They also had their fair share of rubbish, from Herman’s Hermits to a record designed to demonstrate how great stereo was, called Sounds Astounding. My dad used to love showing off his stereo speakers by playing this record. I think the two naked women on the album sleeve also held some appeal to the randy old goat!
I quickly went beyond my parents’ taste though. I can still remember my dad trying to talk me out of one of the records I wanted for my 12th birthday, The Beatles’ Blue Album, because they had “gone all weird” by that stage in their career. Bob Dylan was also a bit too much for them. Shortly after this initial surge of interest my uncle left a pile of records for me. He’s 10 years younger than my dad (cough…accident…cough!), and a lot brighter, so had a completely different taste in music. I can’t remember all of the ones that he left, but my favourite was Tim Buckley’s debut. I went and bought Goodbye and Hello (my favourite) after that, followed by Starsailor and Greetings From LA. I remember being quite taken aback by the latter two myself, after the first couple, but my dad gave up on me after hearing me play those. My uncle also left me Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother. Again, these confused me, because the full depth of my Pink Floyd knowledge was Another Brick in the Wall. But my dad didn’t mind my broadening tastes when I started helping him with the music quiz in his local. I can still remember the look on the quizmaster’s face when he came over to award the two free pints to the person who quickly identified the ‘guess the intro’ track as Ricky Nelson’s (fantastic) Teenage Idol and found it was a 15 year old! Or the look on my dad’s face when I asked for 2 pints of coke. “You should have let me shout it out, so I could have had two pints of cask and then I’d have bought you two cokes”.
My mum’s older brother gave me a bag of records around this time too. He fell between my mum and dad’s taste. The album in the bag was The Buddy Holly Story, which I instantly fell in love with, and the singles, thrillingly, included a couple of Beatles EPs. By this time I couldn’t go to anybody’s house without noseying through their parents’ record collection. Mostly they were filled with easy listening, show tunes and rubbish like that, although everybody seemed to have a copy of Blue Hawaii. I concluded it must have been the best selling album in Barnsley. But I’m sure you can imagine how excited I was to find that one mate’s dad had a copy of Life With the Lions. Shortly after discovering this, said dad threw a party and asked my mate if any of his mates had loads of records and fancied DJing. I jumped at the chance and said I’d do it for the Life With the Lions and was both terribly excited and somewhat amazed when his dad said yes. It was my first, and last, job as a DJ and I nearly got arrested (not really), when the police twice came to the door, as the neighbours had complained about the noise. I almost ran home with my bag of records and my new Lennon rarity. The fact that it was crap is irrelevant.
So that’s how my parents/grandparents/uncles/etc set me off on an obsession that’s become stronger over the past few years than it’s ever been. My new turntable arrived yesterday, after years of me saying I’ll never bother with vinyl again. It’s still a trial period to see how I get along with it, but I’ve bought a dozen albums to play with (my planned long weekend in Belfast has gone out of the window, with the funds diverted to HMV and Amazon!). Whether I can be bothered to get up 3 times whilst listening to an album that fits on one CD remains to be seen, but at the moment it’s as exciting as it was in 1981 when I started gathering records at pace. Unknown Pleasures and Kind of Blue coming today…
Vulpes Vulpes says
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Paul Wad says
And Unknown Pleasures is sodding scratched. Only a little one that took some finding, but enough to make the stylus jump several times. And when A Kind of Blue started jumping everywhere with static I began to remember what was so appealing about flogging all my records and moving to CDs in the first place. Having said that, my Marantz CD player jumps at the first suggestion of a scratch.
Life was so much easier when I was that 12 year old, stacking 6 singles on the spindle so they would play one after the other, all piled on top of each other. A cheap, rubbish, ancient record player, with a stylus that had never been cleaned, let alone changed. Seriously, it would start to resemble David Bellamy’s chin before you’d think about removing the fluff from it. Records that looked like Torvill and Dean had been practising on them. I had one that was so warped it was as mesmerising as watching the label on Paranoid, watching that single spinning round (I think it was Get In The Swing by Sparks from my mum’s brother’s bag of records). Vinyl that wasn’t really pressed with great care. I had the Cry Wolf single by a-Ha and it was so thin it was closer to a flexible-disc than today’s ‘180g vinyl’.
Or you might have a tape that had previously been chewed up, so you have a nerve wracking few seconds of wobbly music wondering whether the tape would unravel again. Or you’d have a tape your mate made you that cuts off mid-song, or something you’d taped off Radio Wacky, with the Hairy Sexpest butting in with a ‘humerous’ quip during the chorus. Or even something you’d taped but for some reason you only got one channel. I had California Dreamin’ on one tape I’d recorded myself by plugging the cassette recorder into the microphone socket of the record player and all I got was the guitars and maybe the backing vocals from the chorus. Before that, home tapes were made by telling younger siblings not to come into the living room, where you were holding the cassette recorder in front of the speakers of the record player!
The radios we’d have would be crappy little things, so the sound out of those was atrocious. And I’d sit in my dad’s van on long journeys with my earphone in, which for some reason just shoved into one ear, so I’d barely be able to hear it over the racket from the road. A bit like when they let you have music on when you’re stuck inside an MRI scanner for three hours and you can barely hear a thing over the racket of the machine.
What am I missing? Oh yes, scratched records. To this day there are songs that I expect to jump at certain points because my single of it always did. I’m lost without the recurring clicks at the start of Three Steps To Heaven that my single had. But despite all this we never once complained about how crap the quality of the recording sounded, because we were only interested in how good the songs were. But now we want everything perfect and as crystal clear as if you were sat in the studio.
And to that end, at the moment, after playing half a dozen records on my brand new machine, any benefits from the vinyl – I thought Moon Safari sounded terrific, especially the bass on the opening track – are far outweighed by the problems, for example the horrible sound from the static as side one of A Kind of Blue just ended. So until I get better techniques for cleaning the records and getting shut of the static, without paying through the nose for equipment, I’m a little disappointed. I’m sure it will improve as I get back in the swing of things.
But I guess this is just us. My kids listen to all their music through their phone, usually without headphones, so they seem to be willingly going back to poorer sound. It’s just us striving for perfection.
davebigpicture says
Are you sure your new deck is set up correctly Paul? The weight on the arm needs to be set and the deck needs to be level. I had a couple of new LPs jump and had to put a couple of shims under one side of the turntable.
Paul Wad says
Thanks, I will check this out. I’m just using it as it came out of the box right now, so I haven’t fiddled with any of the settings or looked closely at the plate, etc.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Here is SCIENTIFIC PROOF that vinyl is better than CDs: my vinyl copy of Regatta De Blanc has a clear click at about 15 seconds into track 1, side 2, which is ‘Walking On The Moon’ – the click repeats for three revolutions and then vanishes. If I play the CD I just hear the track, but if I play the vinyl LP, I tense up as soon as the stylus lands in the goove – several seconds before the first click – and then I can feel myself relax about 5 nanoseconds after the third click.
Why don’t I tense up when that track starts to play on the CD player? Because EVEN THE RUN-IN GROOVE on the vinyl has SO MUCH MORE sonic information even IN THE SILENT BIT that my ears CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE! PROOF!!
dai says
Give them a clean, often does wonders:
Paul Wad says
Do you know what, as a last shot of the dice I gave the Unknown Pleasures a clean and it isn’t scratched after all. I nearly gave myself eye strain looking for something that could be causing it, so I have no idea what it was that I had convinced myself I’d seen. On my brother in law’s recommendation I had bought this cleaning kit to give the records (basically, the complete works of Stephen Duffy) that have spent the past 20 years sitting in the back of my wardrobe a clean. That’s a job for this week. I wasn’t expecting to have to clean brand new records, but it seems to have worked.
I had just ordered an anti static brush to clean the dust off them and a little brush for the stylus, cos the cloth that came with the fluid seems to charge the records up. I guess it’s meant to be used with the fluid.
dai says
Good.
I bought Unknown Pleasures on vinyl in 1980, there was so much static noise between the tracks it was intensely annoying, one clean then and it was fine.
fentonsteve says
If you have a wet cleaner, don’t bother with the antistatic brush or the cloth, Paul. After an occasional wet clean, there’s little need for any more.
Buy some anti-static inner sleeve liners instead, to keep the grot out of the lovely clean grooves.
It isn’t the new vinyl so much as the dreadful (cheap) inner sleeves which is the modern problem.
Paul Wad says
I don’t have one of those machines pictured above. Just a bottle with a spray top, a couple of soft cloths and these two cheap looking pieces of plastic that apparently make a little stand to put the record of whilst you clean it.
I have noticed some crackling as I have taken a couple of them out of the inner sleeves, so the anti static ones sound like they’ll save me some time and stress…just like when I bought these slip on trainers, which saves me about 20 minutes when leaving the house when I’m having a particularly bad day with my hands. I wish I’d bought them years ago.
fentonsteve says
Honestly, Paul, save yourself all the time, money and cash and buy a Knosti Disco Antistat (or the Spin Clean pictured above). The best 40 quid I have ever spent.
I also bought a second-hand Pro-ject vacuum cleaner (think: a turntable on steroids). I squirt the cleaning fluid on, get it into the grooves with a carbon-fibre brush, and an arm sucks it off. I only ever use it on new vinyl as the Knosti is better at cleaning grot out of the grooves (but takes longer to air dry in the rack). It cost a lot more than £40.
Paul Wad says
I think I probably will, when I eventually start buying second hand vinyl, which has an air of inevitability about it!
On the subject of vinyl itself… I’m a Pet Shop Boys fan/completist, albeit only on CD, where I’m just a few promo CDs away from having everything that’s ever come out in this country, including multiple versions of all their albums. I swore blind, when I started buying CDs, that I wouldn’t get into anything like that and would only buy CDs to listen to. That pretty soon went out of the window!
As much as I initially tried, it was impossible to be a Pet Shop Boys completist on vinyl, because even if I had the money, which I most definitely didn’t, tracking down the ultra obscurities was almost impossible. I think I’d realised this pretty early on, because when they released Introspective, I remember wondering who on Earth would buy the limited edition boxed set to listen to, as all the tracks were on individual 12” singles. It seemed like a right old faff having to change record after ever track.
Fast forward to 2022 and it seems like many albums are being released like this. I looked at a few albums yesterday where the one CD was turned into triple LPs, never mind double. I get that the reason for this is that albums stopped being a maximum of 46 minutes when they started being predominantly released on CD. Rap albums for a long time almost always clocked in a few seconds under the 78 minute mark, which was to their detriment, as they were padded out with filler and dreaded skits. But I think I’d struggle to justify to myself buying LPs I already own on CD where there are less than 10 minutes per side, as it really does feel like a double 12” single and surely interrupts the flow of an album that was specifically designed with a CD or download in mind. Some of these albums were only around 40 minutes in length, so could have fitted on one LP, but I guess they may lose some audio quality by having the grooves much closer together.
fentonsteve says
I know what you mean, but the album-spread-across-four-sides format really does make for fantastic… wallop.
The half-speed mastered 45rpm double 12″ of Abba’s Arrival sounds the best I’ve ever heard. Yes, I do have more money than sense…
Black Celebration says
My dad had a completely music-free life. A master of the tuneless whistle, he didn’t own any records at all. Not even classical, Mantovani or James Last. Nothing at all. We had that BBC Sound effects LP though – perhaps he bought that.
My mother though – different story. Neil Diamond, 70s Cliff, Stevie Wonder, erm, Julio Iglesias.
They met and married in the early 50s and by the time Elvis was heartbreaking in his hotel, they were three kids deep and in their early 20s. We even lived in Liverpool in the late 60s – but rock n roll and the fabs were for teenagers.
dai says
My parents had no records in the house. We didn’t initially have a stereo either. Then my father had a work related accident and got a few hundred quid compensation, with that he bought a Sony receiver, cassette player and speakers. He loved classical music and would tape stuff from Radio 3 to listen to. After I got into music he would get records taped for me from guys in work and bring them home.
Later we finally got a turntable, remember my dad buying a box set of Beethoven symphonies and one or two others but that was it. I probably overtook him by the time I was 18 or so. My dad did appear on an album cover though and we had that one
Paul Wad says
My dad’s workplace accident was the best thing that happened! [adopts strong Barnsley accent] We were poor when I were a lad…
My dad was a labourer, working in a factory that, as far as I understand, cleaned and repaired coal mining machinery. He got paid around £60 per week. My mum didn’t work, cos mums tended not to back then. My dad got chucked off a machine and cracked 3 ribs. Okay, he had to put up with the awful pain around days 7-10 (I’ve broke mine 4 times, so know all about that), but he got £700 in compensation. We spent the lot on two luxury items – a tumble dryer for about £200, that we subsequently never used, because we learned how much electricity it used, and…drum roll…a video recorder with the rest. They were right expensive back then. And it was a clunky top loader, with no remote control.
Me and my dad loved our films as much as we loved our music and our football team. He was a fan of westerns mainly, but we both liked horror. Or, more precisely, I liked the idea of horror films, as I can’t imagine I’d seen that many by then (I was 11). I was allowed to stay up for the late night horror films when we were on holiday. Two I particularly remember were The Ghoul, with one of my heroes, Peter Cushing, and Night of the Lepus, a film about giant killer…bunny rabbits! Apart from those, the only other two I remember having seen by that age were spoofs, albeit excellent ones that I still enjoy to this day, in The Fearless Vampire Killers and Carry On Screaming. I bought a Hammer Horror magazine when we were on holiday, and I bought a Frankenstein figure from the campsite shop on holiday too, and a Mummy one the next year. I was looking forward to getting a Dracula the third year, but they’d stopped sodding selling them!!
Anyway, all this is to demonstrate that despite me considering myself as being a big horror fan back then, as I still am today, it was based on very limited exposure to all things horror. So when my dad and 11 year old me went down and registered at the video shop in town and went straight to the horror section to make our first choice, I wasn’t really prepared for delights Driller Killer had to offer. I was thrilled, if somewhat shell shocked. The second choice was where it all fell into place though. Zombie: Flesh Eaters. I’m not even sure if my dad knew what a zombie was, never mind me. If Clint Eastwood or John Wayne hadn’t been shooting them, or Elvis singing about them, he wouldn’t have seen them before. Over the next year we must have watched every horror film they had in the shop, and by the time all the best ones were ‘banned’ in 1984 I must have rented Flesh Eaters and Dawn of the Dead umpteen times each. Oh for the days when video shops would take 50p from a 13 year old and merrily let him walk out of the shop clutching a copy of Cannibal Holocaust or SS Experiment Camp!
Without my dad’s accident it would have been decades before I got to see all those films, and even now it’s pretty difficult to find uncut copies of films like New York Ripper, but I got them all watched by the age of 13. I have copies of loads of them now. My son is 12. And he most certainly won’t be watching them all for a few years yet!
dai says
Sounds similar to my dad. He was probably on a similar wage, worked (like everybody in the town) in the steelworks, he was an electrician of sorts, think he fell from a ladder hurting his back pretty badly while fixing a light that was very high up. Off work for about 6 weeks and the compensation must have been enough for a decent stereo, maybe some of it went on something else, but I was unaware.
Got my first video recorder as a rental, it was 13.95 a month (Radio Rentals), I worked for Ferguson (who made Radio Rentals equipment) in Enfield, my first job, and eventually got a TV (free) and a VCR to keep at a discount price. At the time a VCR was just the most incredibly exciting thing.
Was this (toploader) beauty:
Moose the Mooche says
I think our first was like that – from Granada tho’. Made more noise than the telly most of the time.
Paul Wad says
It wasn’t until our first one conked out…during frigging Live Aid, when I was intending on recording loads of it. I think I got Nik Kershaw’s performance and that was about it…that we then got one with a remote control, and ours was attached by a wire too. I guess it would save all the time I spend searching for it now, after one of the kids has stuffed it down the side of the sofa or something.
fentonsteve says
As an undergraduate, in ’89-90, me and my housemates rented one of those, a 28″ colour TV in a massive cabinet (containing valves) and a brand-new Hotpoint washing machine for £12.50 a month from Radio Rentals. Split between the 10 of us, £1.25 each was bugger all – about the price of a pint back then.
We used to charge our pals £1 a wash to use the machine (the local launderette charged £2.50), and set up a washing line in the basement (where the boiler was). That washing machine was on about 20 hours a day, and after 9 months sounded like a bag of spanners. We had to nag Radio Rentals to take it back at the end of our rental.
Leedsboy says
My dad had a small collection of LPs. The good ones were Cream, Elton John, ELO and Wings. He liked music and he had a music centre (Sharp – a shape tone arm and touch sensitive FM radio presets). I recall the tape eject button being nicely damped.
We were allowed to use it and I probably spent most Sunday early evenings taping the good stuff on the top 40.
My Mum had a Charles Aznavour LP. Later, she got a Bob Marley one. I like to think she kindled my interest in world music…
They were fine about me playing my records (and by 15 I had more than them). My dad did grudgingly admit once that hearing This Charming Man used to make him smile as he remembered me playing it to death. He never really got Joy Division though.
I suspect our parents got older earlier in those days. Music was for the youth and once they hit thirty, they drifted away from it.
Diddley Farquar says
Carpenters, Neil Diamond, Simon and Garfunkel, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Jack Jones. Nothing to upset anyone. Then my Dad had a bit of nice, fairly white, jazz and some classical, including opera. I would pick out the Getz and Gilberto, and Stravinsky (Firebird) as highlights. My Dad did much research before buying his hifi. He was pretty serious about getting a good sound. He subscribed to Gramophone and What Hifi. All their polite music made me fairly tense if I was in the living room at the time. They also had a whole bunch of Top Of The Pops records which were taped for parties. The cover images intrigued me at least. The Resurrection Shuffle was popular with their set. I remember Joan from the village turned up with a 45 of Hot Love one time, probably a bit raucous for my folks but they put it on anyway.
Mike_H says
Neither of my parents had any great interest in music. They just listened to whatever was on the radio. The Light Programme was pretty constantly on when me and my siblings were little.
When my big sister was 12, dad bought us a cheap record player but my parents had no interest in it and continued owning no records themselves. They used to watch TOTP with us and were very rarely critical of what was played.
When their ancient valve radio died, in the early ’70s, dad bought a “music centre” with a turntable and cassette player, which lived in the dining room. Dad acquired a couple of Mozart cassettes, a James Galway tape and a brass band tape. I think those are all the music he ever owned. He very rarely played them.
Us kids played our records upstairs. Mostly in the bedroom that me and my younger brother shared, because it was the biggest.
So my musical taste is entirely self-and-peer-acquired. No parental input.
NigelT says
I was born in 1950, so my first recollection of music in the house was from around the mid 50’s. My parents had a radiogram, built, I think, by my clever grandfather, and it had a 78 rpm turntable. I would just love playing records; anything, it didn’t matter, because it was magic. It was mostly light classical stuff from memory, although I was given a couple of popular 78s by my young aunt – The Ballad of Davy Crockett/Robin Hood by Dick James and Champion the Wonder Horse by Frankie Laine. The radio was on a lot, and I picked up on all of the late 50’s/early 60’s pop listening to that while I would build my Airfix kits or make the latest contraption out of Meccano. This was really important – the radio was a window into another world – and we would listen to all sorts.
I was given my first record player in 1963, and that was the first in the house to play 45s and LPs. It must have been only a year or so later that my parents then bought a stereogram (a Pye ‘Black Box’) and started collecting more music – I remember a lot of Gigli and operatic stuff, as well as The Sound of Music and other show music, and they collected records and CDs for the rest of their lives. My dad preferred classical whilst mum ventured also into Neil Diamond, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney….she loved ‘voices’. Oddly, she also really liked Bob Marley..!
They were very tolerant of my tastes, and I cringe now to think that I tried to convert them to all sorts with varying degrees of success, but it was so great that they were happy for me to have my music on in the house.
Pajp says
My parents weren’t musical and we had an LP collection that extended to about 8 discs.
As I recall, these were Joni James Sings Hank Williams, Behind Closed Doors by Charlie Rich, S&G’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, an LP by Nina and Frederick, a sixties “sounds exciting” compilation (the tracks were meant to demonstrate the wonders of stereo) and three Hot Hits LPs, 4, 7 and 9.
That was it. I remain (almost) word perfect on all the songs on Bridge Over Troubled Water and most on Behind Closed Doors and have a fondness for both LPs to this day. I did not know for a long time that the tracks on the Hot Hits LPs were cover versions. As a kid, I wouldn’t have realised and it would never had occurred to me to ask and, by the time it would ever have been important to me, I had long since stopped listening to Hot Hits. There are some goods songs on them, aren’t there. I was just looking, Hot Hits 4 has Stoney End, Resurrection Shuffle, My Sweet Lord and Sweet Caroline on it. Fanstastic!
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Dad had no interest whatsoever in music apart from singing The Old Rugged Cross when he was pished.
Mum had the radio on constantly switching between the Third Programme classical to the pop of the Light Programme. Her record collection was extensive, mainly centred around Frank, Ella et al.
Given my Dad’s indifference I was regularly dragged off to concerts varying from the SNO to Shirley Bassey. I also sat in cinemas with her watching musicals like South Pacific and West Side Story which was great because we ate at Wimpy’s beforehand and had a choc ice at intermission.
When I play some Ella (which is a lot) I always think of Mum cleaning & hoovering on a Sunday morning whilst belting out “Miss Otis Regrets”.
Vincent says
My parents liked soundtracks to 50s musicals, Joe Loss, Val Doonican, and “light classical – nothing too “heavy” “. My hippie brother came home mid-60s with Jimi Hendrix and Nice singles, plus psychedelic Beatles, Cream, and Jefferson Airplane albums. My older brother liked the Shadows, and his wife, Cliff Richard. I heard all this, but was first touched at 11 by the rockier end of glam (Alice, Bowie, Roxy). The mid-70s prog thing had percolated into hippiedom and the hipper 6th formers who took me under their wing, and I was initiated into the decadence and hedonism I have not yet been able to shake off, still liking psychedelia, Zappa, prog and jazz rock, though I liked punk a lot, and rarely listened to or particularly enjoyed 4:4 double-demin and leather Stetson trad rock (Bad Company, Free, Clapton, that sort of thing). I moved into post-punk, which was a druggier, more proggy kind of punk, and from liking jazz fusion, got into dancier jazz and funk, and eventually in the early 80s the soul music penny dropped. I now like 50s musical soundtracks and light classical music, as the circle fully turns. Still hate anything with autotune, Eurovision, and eurodance. Not interested in “drilling and vomiting” uber-metal, but some balls-to-the-wall dumb-smart Cult or Metallica suits me nicely. Oh, and in the middle of this, i like Sleaford Mods – spokesmen for a generation of middle-aged men as much as Hepworth and Ellen.
fentonsteve says
My mum was into Beat groups and had a collection of singles Fabs (up until they went weird, so pre-Pepper), had dated the bassist from local combo Unit 4+2 so Concrete and Clay was ever-present, Harry Webb had been at school with her best friend Dorothy* so Cliff and the Shads. I still love C&C and Move It, and they’re upstairs with her grey valve Dansette player.
My father was hugely into C&W, but not the good stuff – the real syrup. George Jones & Tammy Wynette were his king & queen. He’d trek off to the Wembley Country festival every year, never convincing me to go with him. He often worked night shift on Saturdays, so I’d have to record BBC Radio London’s Country show onto a C120 tape – that became the soundtrack to my Sunday morning homework.
The only LPs I can remember were A Hard Day’s Night, S&G’s BOTW, the Sound Of Music, and a LOT of terrible C&W.
I quite like bluegrass and Dolly, but George & Tammy make me grind my teeth.
retropath2 says
Get with it, Fenton, George Jones is now cool. Got that? Cool. Pshaww. (Difficult to always enjoy, sure, but cool.)
Moose the Mooche says
George was always cool. Huge voice, bad wig, handbrake-turn chord changes…. Genius.
hubert rawlinson says
Not forgettinghe knew how to have tractor fun before tory upstarts.
Paul Wad says
My dad had the Concrete and Clay single (although if I remember correctly it was actually an EP) and it was one of his favourites that always got a spin when we sat down to listen to his records.
hedgepig says
My parents birthdates book-end the Second World War. My dad’s records were either classical, or else comedy like The Goons, Gerard Hoffnung etc. My mum was in her mid-to-late teens just in time for The Beatles and so I’ve still got her original White Album, Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road. (I don’t play them: not because they’re valuable but for the same reason my kids don’t play OK Computer.) She also had the odd Beach Boys album and possibly even a Cat Stevens or two, but by the time I was born in the late 70s, she’d joined my dad on the shores of exclusively-classical-land.
(Although actually she does still have a cassingle of I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston which she took a fancy to when it came out, bless her.)
The biggest non-classical musical memories involving my folks are of listening to a compilation of kids’ comedy songs called All Aboard in the car as we shlepped for days across France, heading for the fixed caravan park in the Dordogne where we’d spend a couple of weeks each summer. Flanders and Swann, in a baking hot, rust-rattling Peugeot. Magic.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Impressed with your kids’ outstanding musical taste.
I bet you all sang along heartily about the wallow in the hollow – we used to!
Paul Wad says
The only other record of my Nan’s that I liked, apart from the Beatles Red album that went home with me, was the Tales of Hoffnung, with his bricklayer story. Noel Murphy turned it into Murphy and the Bricks, which I still have the single of.
Moose the Mooche says
There is a French widow in every bedroom….
hedgepig says
Affording delightful prospects.
bang em in bingham says
Both parents bought records. Mum: The cheap Woolworth’s LPs (Embassy Label?) “South Pacific” and the EP’s with the “highlights (ie best songs) of The King and I. ” My Fair Lady” etc…45’s Frank Ifield, David Whitfield, Emile Ford, Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney, Ruby Murray are a few I remember being played…Dad: loved Al Jolson, Joseph Locke and anything Brass Band-ish….the thing for me is they truly LOVED listening to their music just like we like listening to ours today.
Rigid Digit says
My parents record collection is best described as small and formed.
Beatles 1962-66 was the pick of the bunch (and one that I nicked).
The rest of it was sundry Abba, The Carpenters, Barry Manilow, Bobby Crush and Johnny Mathis.
I did once find a box of singles in the loft including Mungo Jerry and Chicory Tip (the Number 1 singles when I and my brother were born), plus a stack of Shadows, Cliff Ricjard and others on Columbia and Parlophone labels.
Turns out a neighbour of my mums worked at EMI Plant in Hayes and was constantly giving singles to my mum and her sister. They had a full set of Beatles singles and albums (up to 1967 when my mum got married and left home).
The split goes: my mum got Cliff Richard and The Shadows, my Aunt got the rest.
Does this lack of records explain my hording tendencies? Possibly, and may also explain why my daughters who grew up surrounded by music (and often “entertained” by Dad’s choices) have no real interest in music.
Archie Valparaiso says
The only one I remember – mostly because it was a release so clearly in contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 – was Jack Jones Entertains.
Vulpes Vulpes says
@archie-valparaiso How lovely to see you in here old chum!
Kaisfatdad says
My mother expressed a mild enthusiasm for Harry Secombe singing hymns on Songs of Praise. My father would have been more likely to visit a tractor showroom than a record shop. He liked Acker Bilk and once, when TOTP was on, he expressed very considerable enthusiasm about Agneta in ABBA. I was rather embarrassed as he was a fairly quiet chap.
I’d like to talk about Philip Larkin, for a moment. Yes, the man who wrote:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
(From This be the verse:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
Our book circle has been reading his novel, A Girl in Winter, so I’ve been Googling about him.
I found this quote.
“For the generations that came to adolescence between the wars, jazz was that unique private excitement that youth seems to demand.”
What? A member of my parents’ generation with a real passion for music? An eye-opening surprise!
Another great quote:
“Of a Sidney Bechet piece released in 1940, Larkin once wrote (to his schoolfriend Jim Sutton): “I rushed out on Monday and brought ‘Nobody Knows The Way I Feel This Morning’. Fucking, cunting, bloody good! Bechet is a great artist. As soon as he starts playing, you automatically stop thinking about anything else and listen. Power and glory!” I now know what he means: in wartime Britain, this piece must have sounded like news from another world.”
It’s from this excellent article.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/may/21/jazz-philip-larkin-john-harris
I can’t imagine there was a good jazz record shop in Hull. Did he order them by post of buy them on excursions to London?
Mike_H says
It seems there was a thriving mail-order record business between the wars and after too, for a while. Only really big towns and the major cities had record shops.
They sent out catalogues and you could pay by postal order.
Moose the Mooche says
My dad’s mates used to go to John Sheridan’s shops and there were one or two others.
Larkin’s tastes in jazz were deep rather than wide – there were a few artists he really loved and he could give or take most of the rest. Also, he reviewed records so got them free: and ordered them for the University library, a policy which I’ve benefitted from. The collection’s now been moved to the splendid Hull History Centre but is still borrow-fromable.
Kaisfatdad says
“Pay by postal order”! How wonderfully of its time.
Larkin’s taste were certainly not wide. He had few kind words for jazz after 1955 and did a real hatchet job on Coltrane’s A Love Supreme in 1965:
His playing resulted in “a thin, keening noise, sometimes sour as an oboe, at times expiring in an upper-register squeak, possessed continually by an almost Scandinavian unloveliness.”
https://medium.com/@johnharris_60942/too-late-for-me-larkin-and-modernism-73478bc5a29e
If you want to hear what Phil did like, the “Larkin’s Jazz” playlist on Spotify is very enjoyable.
This is a smashing poem.
mikethep says
Turns out you can still get postal orders, remarkably. Which children’s book hero was it who was daily expecting a postal order? Bunter? William?
Freddy Steady says
One of Jennings mates I think?
Kaisfatdad says
Larkin made it very clear that he had no time for any jazz produced after about 1955. Bebop, for example, was an abomination for him.
So in 1961, the Telegraph appointed him as their jazz critic! That was rather like calling in that Paragon of Prog, Chris Welch, in 1992 to cover new hip hop releases.
Beezer says
Always either Venables or Darbishire
hubert rawlinson says
Bunter I believe
What’s up, old fat man?” whispered Bob Cherry.
“I’ve lost it!” moaned Bunter
“Lost what?”
“My postal order!”
“Oh!” gasped Bob Cherry.
For nearly fifty years Bunter had dreamed of cashing his postal order at the post office. Now, finally, the moment had arrived, and, disaster had struck!
ip33 says
A very prescient thread because my Mum passed away last Monday and of course I’ve been thinking of music for the funeral in a few weeks. There’s only one choice really, Frank Sinatra. My mum absolutely loved him, saw him live in the 40s,50s,60s,70, & 80s and that was mainly our record collection growing up, that and my Dad’s Benny Goodman 78s.
Moose the Mooche says
Sorry for your loss, ip.
Mike_H says
Yes. Condolences.
They all go, eventually, but mums are special.
Tiggerlion says
Best wishes to you and your family, ip. You really can’t go wrong with Frank. Both my parents loved him. I think I know every word to Songs For Swinging Lovers.
duco01 says
[sings]…
“A lot of shoes, a lot of rice
The groom is nervous – he answers twice…..”
Vulpes Vulpes says
Those ABBA rascals, eh? Copycats!
Martin Hairnet says
They were channeling.
Kaisfatdad says
Very sorry to hear about your loss, Ip. Good luck with all the practical stuff.
I am seriously impressed by your mum’s concert going, She saw Frank live over five decades! Remarkable!
Vulpes Vulpes says
Condolences ip33, it’s a hard knock to take. I think you may be able to take consolation from the fact of her long devotion to and enjoyment of the masterful Frank.
ip33 says
Thank you to everyone for their kind words. My Mum made it to an impressive 91, and even though the last few years were blighted by dementia she never lost her love for music and especially Frank. Thank you again, you really are a lovely bunch.
dai says
Adding my condolences
Leem says
My mum made it to 91 too in 2018. Such a loss. But eventually the memories are a constant source of joy. Mike_H’s comment about mums being special wells me up just thinking how true it is. An arm around your shoulder.
fentonsteve says
Another virtual palm on the shoulder, IP.
fitterstoke says
My condolences, ip33…
Freddy Steady says
Pretty much only Rambling Syd Rumpo.
It’s not MY fault I’ve turned out this way…
Moose the Mooche says
On the other hand, you do know how many times you’ve lunged your groats.
Freddy Steady says
Griddle my nodes, it’s Reg Pubes!
Junglejim says
Lend me your great Nog!
thecheshirecat says
Music was ever present, and was also in the upbringing of both parents. I think it took me a while to realise that not all families put such store in music, or thought about it as anything other than wallpaper.
My mother and her entire family grew up in the choral tradition of Northern industrial towns. Pop music passed her by entirely. Her housework was soundtracked to a transistor tuned to Radio 3. What now seems a modest record collection was dominated by Kathleen Ferrier, Gilbert and Sullivan and the full gamut of classical taste. She also once worked as a redcoat at Butlins and would be part of the display team of English country dancers. In fact, that is how she met my jazz-loving Australian father, on the English country dancefloor (which also cross-references why I hate jazz – threads passim). Strangely, the folk music side of things was never heard in the house. Not so long ago, I found there sheet music stamped EFDSS Cecil Sharp House. Given my recent trajectory down the trad road, it made me wonder why that had never been shared.
Dave Ross says
My Dad died in 1992. Mum is still going but now in a home as her vascular dementia takes hold. My brother dealt with her little maisonette sale and gave me a box of albums he found in the cupboard under the stairs. He wanted the furniture. Fair enough. The main two are Dad’s Frank Sinatra albums and mum’s Engelbert Humperdinck albums. There’s Bread, there’s, Demis Roussos, there’s England Dan and John Ford Coley among others. I’d Really Love To See You Tonight remains an absolute tune. But really it’s all about Frank and Engelbert.
As an aside Mum had been in the care home for a couple of months when the manager rung me to say Mum wouldn’t join in the events in the main room. I wasn’t surprised to be honest it’s bleak place where people mostly sleep open mouthed. I did ask and she just said “they play Frank Sinatra in there and it makes me cry. I don’t want them to see me cry”. I must call mum tomorrow….
Tiggerlion says
On Christ, Dave. My dad died in 1992 as well but my mum is still going strong, living alone in a bungalow and still driving an automatic. No signs of dementia whatsoever.
nickduvet says
Something in the water in ’92? My dad died on December 8th that year. Not likely to forget that date, given its significance to folk like us. My mum’s still here, like Tig’s living in a maisonette, happily involved in the local community. I speak to her several times a week. She’s got that stoic attitude of a war baby. Covid didn’t phase her.
Billybob Dylan says
My dad had a pretty big record collection and a decent stereo, too. About 99% of that collection was classical stuff. I remember he had a Chris Barber album, “Abbey Road” and “Please Please Me” on pre-recorded open reel tape, but apart from those three, it was all classical.
My most vivid memory of my mum, who passed away in 1977, was her wandering around the house singing along to a John Shirley Quirke album of a Sunday morning.
simon22367 says
Dad loved his classical. Sunday morning would find him in the living room, supposedly dusting, but was actually conducting the orchestra (complete with baton). The occasional bit of George Formby was as close as he got to pop music. A small collection of LPs and season tickets to the Royal Albert Hall were as extravagant as he got.
When not listening to The Archers (it seemed to be always on), Mum liked a bit of Neil Diamond, Val Doonican and Julio Inglasias. I’m quite proud of the fact that she walked out of the a Julio gig because it was boring. It wasn’t the same a few weeks later when she was Neil D. Dancing in the aisles she was.
Locust says
As my dad was a professional classical musician, his collection was 90% classical. The rest was music he’d bought on tours with the orchestra; Celia Cruz and Ariel Ramirez from the South American tour, Pete Fountain and musicals from the US tour. And an album of an a capella choir singing Italian folk songs in a very forceful way that would make my brother and me giggle…
He rarely listened to these albums himself, however – like most musicians he’s not that interested in listening to other people making music, unless it’s live. But he’d sometimes put them on and make us kids listen to them, for our musical education, I suppose…not that we minded, we played them when he wasn’t around as well. We’d of course have to go to his concerts quite often, and see the operas he was in the small theatre orchestra for, every summer at the Drottningholm Palace Theatre (an 18th century theatre still in use with its original machinery). We enjoyed it, most of the time.
He likes jazz as well, especially Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, and used to be part of a jazz trio in his youth. He doesn’t like pop and rock, but after seeing the Amy Winehouse documentary a few years ago he was smitten, and I made him a CD of her recordings, which he enjoys. At soon to be 96 he still plays his instrument for at least two hours every day.
Mum also loves classical music, but she’s more into opera than instrumental music. She didn’t have many albums of her own, a couple of musicals like West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof, a 70s album of feminist songs that my oldest sister gave her; then just a few cassettes. Glenn Miller, other big band stuff that she danced to in her youth. But she’d listen to the radio while cooking.
She would take me out on the town to see musicals and light operas in the theatre when I was around ten years old, after their divorce. Lovely nights, just the two of us, singing the “hits” on our way home late at night. Later she was a member of a work art club that would get her reduced ticket prices, and sometimes free tickets, for the opera and ballet, and she’d bring her friends along who’d never been. At her funeral she wants us to play something from “Misa Criolla”.
Having much older siblings I also grew up with a few of their albums, that had been left behind when they moved out (while I was still a toddler). The Beatles, Desmond Dekker, The Band, Jimi Hendrix. And I always carried a small transistor radio with me from room to room all day long (when not in school), listening to the very diverse mix of music that was played, from all genres and ages. A pretty well-rounded musical education, I’d say.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Mum n’ Dad music on T.V. had a bigger presence than the meagre record collection: they liked Julie Felix (and the flirty thing David Frost had going with her), Jake Thackeray, Nana Moussaka, Esther n’ Abi Ofarim, and in the early days of the medium (cabinet set, BBC only, screen the size of a paperback) The Black And White MInstrels. Billy Cotton and Acker Bilk (this is sounding like a Van Morrison lyric) got scant respect from my Dad, who Knew About Music (so did not enjoy it). A respectful hush prevailed when Semprini played, and I think my Mum appreciated Russ Conway’s to-camera twinkling more than his ivory tinkling (@moose).
mikethep says
Russ Conway only had 9 1/2 fingers, you know. He was the Django Reinhardt of the 88s.
He was also a powerful babe magnet.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I suppose this is where the story about him and the donkey on Bognor beach gets “referenced”.
nickduvet says
I think I first heard the words golden showers in connection with him, too. Allegedly.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I wonder if The Small Faces’ “Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass” has any connection?
Mousey says
My Dad had a trunkful of 78s in the bedroom, which he had collected starting as a student in the mid 1940s. When I started trying to play blues piano in about 1967-68 (inspired by Otis Spann and other musicians I heard on Blues Is News on the NZBC at 9pm on Wednesday night), he’d go into the bedroom and pick out records he thought I’d like – Jimmy Yancey’s “Tell ‘Em About Me”, Count Basie’s “Red Wagon” and the Benny Goodman trio’s “More Than You Know” (which we played at his funeral). We had a wind-up gramophone early on which bit the dust and in about 1964 he bought a Phillips portable mono record player which could play 78s. When my parents moved to a retirement home all the 78s went to the tip, except for a few that I kept for sentimental reasons.
Here’s Jimmy Yancey. I spent hours trying to work out how to play this, and still can’t, but it left me with a lifelong appreciation for his playing.
And if you’ll forgive the indulgence, I recorded my own tribute to him “Lullaby For Jimmy” on my album “Songs For Solo Piano”. This clip sounds a bit clunky as it was just recorded using the camera mic on the balcony (of Studio 3 at Abbey Rd no less)
nickduvet says
What a musical education, Mousey. I’m a proud owner of your CD, bought when @mikethep and I came to see you play in Auckland, whenever that was.
Mousey says
@nickduvet I remember that Auckland mingle with much fondness though like you have no idea when it was – five, ten years ago?
mikethep says
It was when my Oz residency visa came through and I had to go abroad so that I could return to Oz and make it real. So that makes it 2015!
Can’t help wistfully comparing my dad with his Brahms and your dad…
Mousey says
Here’s another one. The piano solo by Joe Bushkin is sublime
GCU Grey Area says
My parents had a handful of records, which could be played on a Bush radiogram. Big glossy brown, with a lit-up strip to tune it to different stations. Valves, I guess. It sat on a chest of drawers, and was mainly used as a radio. I can only remember records being played once; the Nutcracker Suite. The ‘gram might have been a wedding present. They both liked music – Dad and his father were in the town’s Silver Band – but seemed happy with Radio 2 on all the time, rather than playing records. Mum especially liked piano music; classical, some jazz, and adored Satie. She also liked a lot of ‘World Music’. Starting with Ladysmith, she had a lot of things like Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabate.
H.P. Saucecraft says
“Radio 2”?! Get off my lawn!
GCU Grey Area says
Or the Light Programme as it probably was when they had it? It featured Hilversum, Droitwich, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne etc on the tuning dial. I seem to remember one of the valves went, and it was replaced by a Ferguson transistor.
H.P. Saucecraft says
… and not a Ferguson tractor, we hope.
eddie g says
On the whole I think I had a fairly hip mum. She liked Mama Cass, Ben Folds and Roxy Music- ‘All I Want is You’ being her favourite by the latter. ‘The Luckiest’ being her favourite by Folds.
But she also had a soft spot for the mushier side of country such as Don Williams. As a sulky and image-conscious teenager I gave my girlfriend at the time a tenner and implored her to go to the Boots record counter in Bangor to buy a Don Williams album for my mum’s birthday because I was too embarrassed to do so.
fentonsteve says
My mum wanted Daddy’s Home by Sir Clifford of Richard for her birthday. I was so uncomfortable buying it that I looked shifty enough for the Woollie’s security guard to stop me on my way out of the store. He was a bit deflated when the stash hidden in my bag turned out to be a Cliff single… and a receipt.
H.P. Saucecraft says
This is a fantastic record purchasing anecdote.
Beezer says
For a hard working, bluff cove my Dad liked sentimental tunes. Jim Reeves was his guy for that. ‘I Love You Because’ and ‘Welcome To My World’ spring to mind now straight away.
This would have been the early 70’s. I remember looking at the album sleeves with photos of a determinedly hair-oiled and side-parted Reeves and thinking how ancient these records must be. They weren’t. Just about 20 years or so.
My Dad told me that he’d died in an air crash. I was appalled at such a fate for what seemed such a nice straight square of a singer.
Johnny Cash was another he liked a lot. ‘San Quentin’ ‘… I shot a man in Reno. Just to watch him die. That struck me as cold and sinister. And I loved it.
Don Williams. ‘Tulsa Time’. ‘You’re My Best Friend.’ He looked a bit like my dad. Apart from the Stetson. If he’d worn a flat cap I’d have been a confused 8 year old.
My mother was a Bert Kaempfert/James Last kinda gal. We had a mail order 12 Lp set of their i would assume then entire joint output. On Polydor. Superbly played stuff whatever anyone says, and with that pumping Fender bass sound at the front of the mix getting everyone up to dance after a few sherries.
My Mam and Dad were lovely.
rotherhithe hack says
Mainly movie soundtracks for my parents. I have fond memories of hearing the songs from ‘High Society’. Not so much of ‘Calamity Jane’.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Ooh yes. High Society – forgot that one, which is odd, because I still play it.
Junior Wells says
Oh yeah the musicals:
No No Nanette
Oklahoma
Paint Your Wagon
And dont get me started on Gilbert and Sullivan.
Martin Hairnet says
I’m adding West Side Story and South Pacific. And perhaps a version of Carmen, the opera. A highlights disc, perhaps.
mikethep says
Now you has jazz…
David Kendal says
I think everyone I knew growing up had a similar story to a lot of people here – a radiogram at home with some light listening, but not that many records. I think my parents bought the radiogram because they knew their teenage children would be interested in music. They saw records as expensive and had other things to spend money on. When we’d grown up, they would go out to concerts, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart, and Neil Diamond, because they thought music was only part of it and they liked the presence and showmanship of the act. Maybe harking back to the way things had been when they were teenagers.
Everyone I knew at school seemed to be interested in one kind of music or another, but you took it for granted parents weren’t. The one exception was my friend Nick’s dad, who had grown up in the fifties and had a strong interest in jazz and blues. He actually had a wall length shelf of albums. I remember the CBS Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson compilations, but he also had more modern stuff: The Atomic Mr Basie, John Dankworth , Oscar Peterson and so on. He was quite happy for his sons to play these to his friends, and they broadened my taste. He’d in turn listen to Soft Machine, Frank Zappa or King Crimson. He liked some of it, and his main complaint was about the tone of some of the electric instruments which he didn’t like – something I find about these records now. At the time, I thought his interest was polite. He was so old – probably 45 – how could he be open to anything new!
Kaisfatdad says
Nick’s Dad sounds remarkable, David. A wall length shelf of albums!. And an openness to all the new music coming along too! A rare creature for those times.
tkdmart says
Anyone else’s parents have Charlie Smithers Live At Pontins?
Arthur Cowslip says
My parents were in their teens and early 20s in the sixties, so as you can imagine they had a good few decent records in their stash. In fact, probably my musical taste still derives mainly from my dad, as a good few of my favourite albums were directly nicked from his collection: Abbey Road, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Deja Vu, Tubular Bells.
There were also a few more “out there” records that fed my love for slightly harder and slightly weirder stuff: The Age of Atlantic compilation, the soundtrack to Easy Rider, stuff like that.
In general really, they had all the big hitters you would expect, including all the big mainstream acts of the day, all the kind of records you would expect a young couple to buy in the early to mid 70s: Bread, Carole King, Cat Stevens, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.
I feel I had a pretty solid musical education to be honest. Nothing too challenging or exceptional, but enough to form an addiction to decent music.
Martin Hairnet says
As a nipper I think my initial fascination was with the album covers. The records inside seemed almost incidental to the picture on the front. La Paloma by Benny Vaughn and his Orchestra always caught my attention in the rack. The cover featured a bikini clad woman leaning against a palm tree on a beach in some tropical paradise. There was the suggestion of something exotic and exciting, but when I eventually got round to playing it I remember being utterly deflated by the turgid music on offer. An important early lesson in disappointment management.
There was quite a big age difference between my parents. My dad grew up in the 30s and 40s and had played piano in a trad. jazz band. There was an upright piano in the hall and he could play a decent repertoire of tunes by Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Albert Ammons and the like. When it came to listening he preferred classical, but his collection dated back to the 40s and was all on 78- including entire operas in musty leather wallets – and was banished to the attic. As he got older his musical attitudes seemed to harden as my own musical interests emerged. He became obsessed with Mozart as the one true genius and used it as justification to rubbish almost everything else. His default position was to dislike anything I might play him, although, in an unlikely twist, he did profess a fondness for the vocal stylings of Queen.
I don’t really recall the sound of the radio in the house, but my mum – thirteen years younger than my dad – seemed to acquire a steady stream of contemporary singles and the occasional album. My Way by Frank Sinatra, Tie a Yellow Ribbon by Tony Orlando, The Black Eyed Boys by Paper Lace, You Won’t Find Another Fool like Me by The New Seekers, some Showaddywaddy and Mud; you get the picture. She continued buying stuff throughout the 70s and early 80s – Dancing Queen, some Boney M, an early Modern Romance single, The Birdie Song. There was never any danger of this becoming a serious collection in the Afterword sense. She liked the odd tune, but thought records looked untidy on display and that was about the extent of it. In later life she enjoyed weekend breaks with friends to London, and would invariably catch a musical. Of course, my dad would have nothing to do with her love of Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera and it became something of a cruel family joke.
yorkio says
Which reminds me… I was looking through the records section of one the local charity shops at the weekend and was amazed to see that it was *still* stuffed full of the same records that they couldn’t shift 30 years ago – James Last, Manuel and his Music of the Mountains, Nana Mouskouri, Jim Reeves, Slim Whitman, Mrs Mills, The Bachelors etc. I couldn’t help wondering whether it had recently come in as part of a house clearance or whether it’s just been sitting there on the shelves for the past quarter of a century.
TrypF says
My dad moved around a lot due to work, so before I was born he and my mum had abandoned their vinyl for a small box of cassettes. I can remember getting the music bug around six years old and going through the box to find anything that would float my pre-teen boat.
There was a lot of dross. The Spinners! A traditional Greek folk club, recorded live! There was some stuff that I dismissed at the time but has a little cultural cachet nowadays – The Carpenters’ Now and Then and John Denver’s Live in London* for example. There was a bit of humour which I remember fondly – a couple of Jake Thackeray albums which are a bit blue here and there, which I I adored on the long car journeys but can’t listen to now since my mum got dementia and died a couple of years ago. Some interesting stuff which sparked something – The Four Seasons, Switched on Bach, the first Sky album (I still think the opener Westway is a great lost film soundtrack).
Then there was the tape that blew my tiny little mind. 20 Golden Greats by the Beach Boys. I liked the surf stuff OK, but it was the more mature stuff about growing up, falling in love and settling down that first gave me pause for thought (When I Grow Up… , Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Breakaway). And then there was Heroes and Villains, and Good Vibrations. When I put on the oversized headphones with the curly lead, cued up these songs, I was in a strange heaven, a soundscape I couldn’t understand but I somehow felt right at home in. They were dark but uplifting, hinting at a troubled mind struggling to express a turmoil I’d never know in glorious stereo. From ‘my children were raised…’ to ‘sunny down snuff I’m alright, by the…’ is still the most life changing listening experience I’ve ever had.
Coda: Years later, I found a copy of Revolver in my aunt’s collection that had a dedication to my mum from my dad. They were cool after all!
* This copy of ‘Live in London’ had a track entitled Juggling (Spoken Word). Exactly what you think – two minutes of John Denver going ‘whoa! oops! Dp you think I should try for four, folks?’ etc. Different times.
Rigid Digit says
Sky – Westway.
Film Soundtrack, definitely. Francis Monkman’s retained work from Long Good Friday which he couldn’t find the visuals for.
Paul Wad says
Have we all moved this forward though, to consider our kids answering this question in years to come? My parents had around 30 decent singles and 7 or 8 decent albums, and within a short period of time I knew the records inside out, cos I wanted to use the record player, liked the sound of the songs and then wanted to know about all the people involved in making these records. I then used them as a starting point to build my own record collection and was starting to buy records with my own money from about age 11 and it soon began jostling with football as the most important thing in my life.
My daughter is 16, my son is 12. My living room has 4,295 albums on CD. The sum total of all the CDs my kids have taken off the shelf to listen to is…zero! They have absolutely no interest in them and as far as my daughter is concerned, all my music sounds the same. This from a girl who listens to music that actually does all sound the same! The kids know I love The Beatles and Bob Dylan and Elvis. They know how much I like Sophie Ellis-Bextor, because they both like her too. And they know I listen to rap music, cos they don’t like it. My daughter knows I like Mitski, Sigrid and Taylor Swift, because she was amazed that I like Mitski, Sigrid and Taylor Swift. She was also impressed when I told her I had a signed AJ Tracey CD, when I heard her listening to him on her phone. And, if pushed for other people I like they would both say the Beastie Boys, because it was a family thing when my son was a toddler and referred to them as the Beastly Boys. My daughter might also name Oasis, because I recently banged on to her about being on the guest list at Knebworth, and maybe David Bowie.
And that’s about it.
I can still remember my dad’s story about nearly having a fight with Frank Ifield, and about a kid down the street believing him when he told him he was Billy Fury. And my mum saying that Adam Faith had a really bad complexion and was covered in make up, and that she drew a life size picture of George Harrison for her art homework I really think that in years to come, when asked about their dad’s record collection, my kids answer will be that it was brill, cos they had a lovely holiday in the south of France when they flogged it, and it was really helpful of their dad for keeping everything logged in a big spreadsheet, with notes to let them know which ones were signed and which were the most valuable. For CDs, see also books, comics, James Bond and Batman memorabilia. One big sale. I think the only things they’d rescue would be some Blu Rays, and even then they would only be interested in about 10% of them (the horror ones). But I guess if you could go back to 1980 and give me an iPhone, iPad, Xbox, PS4, VR set and a TV with Sky and Netflix, my answer to the question about my parents’ record collection would be “dunno, I never left my bedroom”!
retropath2 says
Lord help our poor kids as they have to manage the detritus of our obsessions. And, even those who have diligently discogged them all for worth, the chances are still of a job lot decanted into landfill. It would take years to listen to, let alone differentiate chaff from chow.
I had faith in my kids, each accumulating fairly large collections of discs. But, come travelling here there and everywhere, they let it all go. Streaming is all they want or need. I ended keeping and copying the remains of their collections, as they left them for permanent ‘safekeeping’ in my garage, them telling me to dump them when I reminded them. I blame their mother.
mikethep says
I’ve spared my offspring the pain of a vinyl collection – the last load I gave to the son-in-law to sell in his record shop. (“Dad, you’re so 80s,” was the daughter’s verdict, completely ignoring the fact that the 80s was my last decade of vinyl.)
But the books, now…there are thousands, some dating back to my childhood. I’ll never be able to afford to ship them all out to Oz (or have the space). Once I’m gone I won’t care, of course, but it’ll be a hell of a job getting rid of them.
moseleymoles says
I am getting better at the books. Setting a defined area of shelving has helped, so once that’s full (which it is of course) it’s one in one out. Why I even said goodbye to a Philip K Dick – finally after 30 years realised that his non sci-fi novels are very mediocre and there was a reason why they weren’t published until after his deification.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Having everything on kindle (and my phone, which is in many ways better than kindle) hasn’t been a problem. You don’t have to throw anything away.
fitterstoke says
“Better than kindle” – does your phone have a particularly big screen? I find it frustrating to read books on my phone cf. my kindle, just ‘cos’ the screen is comparatively small…
H.P. Saucecraft says
@fitterstoke Standard screen size (I suppose). I just checked – my comfortable font size on a Kindle gives up to ten words a line, with the average about eight, on 26 lines of text. On my phone I’m averageing seven on 33 lines, so the word per page count is the same, and there’s no appreciable difference in readability. And I don’t have to carry an extra device with me. I prefer the interface on my phone – no Amazon prompts, and I never appreciated having certain functions disabled because I didn’t connect with the “store”.
Martin Hairnet says
My sixteen year old daughter had an art class yesterday. Students were asked to come up with drawings inspired by Aesop’s fables. She chose the fable of the fox and the grapes (the origin of the phrase ‘sour grapes’). But instead of a fox, she drew a human figure in a dress wearing a fox head. Only a few weeks ago I’d shown her some remastered Genesis footage on YouTube, with Peter Gabriel in full Foxtrot costume.
Kaisfatdad says
Classy, Martin!
Martin Hairnet says
Here’s the sketch:
hubert rawlinson says
Excellent.
fitterstoke says
I like that…not for the first time, I wish I could draw.
Moose the Mooche says
Like the dolphins…. the dolphins can draw…
….what?
fitterstoke says
I know they’re supposed to be intelligent – but I’d like some evidence that dolphins can draw…
H.P. Saucecraft says
I am impress.
Paul Wad says
Ha! I asked my son what he thought about my music and he said that sometimes he likes it, but sometimes it’s rubbish. So I asked him what I listen to and who I like and sure enough “The Beatles, Elvis, Bob Dylan, rap music, Sophie, Beastie Boys”
hubert rawlinson says
We had several eps by Jimmy Shand (and we’re not even Scottish) Gracie Fields the carefree heart. My favourite was a 78 of Trains by Reginald Gardner which I still have. I don’t recall any LPs though.My father like the Pattersons he would visit a friend of mine on record stall to chat. When he died I asked my friend if he’d like any of the Pattersons LPS he said I think the market for them has sadly passed on.
My father’s favourite piece of music was Beethoven’s pastoral symphony I asked for it to be played at his funeral but not the bit with the cuckoo. I got the bit with the cuckoo.
Razorweed Onion says
I was lucky. My dad was a jazz and opera fan. His father had been a song and dance man in Music Hall before World War One and his sister was a star in Hollyood before the talkies finished her career what with her Herne Hill accent. And their father was also a performer, his hit song The Sheeny Man has problematic lyrics.
My mum on the other hand liked Matt Monroe and was particualrly fond of Herbie Mann.I think it was the cover of the Push Push LP. Crikey.
So my dad loved jazz, and also opera. Miles was his man but also Brubeck [thanks for introducing me to The Last Set At Newport and giving your copy to my lovely American girlfriend one tipsy Sunday lunchtime around 1980], Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans especially. It wasn’t until his 50s when I was in my early teens that he got into buying LPs but then he went for it. As well as Miles and those I mentioned he had Sidney Bechet, Gil Evans [doing Hendrix], Charlie Parker, all that jazz. We’d always have a bit of music Sunday lunchtime, invariably jazz. But he also had less predictable stuff like Janis Joplin’s Pearl, Voodoo Chants, Chain Gang songs and even German military music. We all make mistakes.
Round about 1972 when I was 16 or so he’s take me to the Bull’s Head in Barnes, a big jazz pub. Sunday lunchimes we’d see the greats of London jazz – Humph, Tony Lee, Bill Le Sage, Kathy Stobart, Dick Morrissey. Stefan Grapelli one unforgetable night. My Dad would buy me Bacardi and coke, maybe two and he’d drive back and we’d have Sunday lunch.
He was one of those men who went through WW2 in the Army and who didn’t really have mates. Until he was into his late 60s [Jesus H, that;s what I am now] and then a Miles fan moved in next door. So each Tuesday they’d go to the other’s houses and drink a bottle of wine each and listen to Miles.
So I he gave me a lot great music on record and at gigs – Thelonious at Hammersmith Odeon!
And that’s why I’m sat her listening to the Delines and now Ennio Morriconne and thinking about him.
H.P. Saucecraft says
You were lucky!
Arthur Cowslip says
Fabulous story, love it.
kidpresentable says
Lots of McCartney, Wings, Leonard Cohen, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Diamond, The Rock Machine compilations. Good stuff!
Kaisfatdad says
I saw this little beauty in our local chazza yesterday. What a splendid sleeve design.
From 1957, Frank in his heyday, produced by Nelson Riddle.
https://sinatra.fandom.com/wiki/A_Swingin%27_Affair!
Foolish child that I was, I was far more interested in those swinging piglets, Pinky and Perky.
Paul Wad says
Wow, you’ve just reawakened the memory that I had an LP called Pinky and Perky’s Nursery Rhymes when I was little. I haven’t thought about that album since it was given or thrown away about 40 years ago.
Moose the Mooche says
This may be controversial, but I think Pinky and Perky were a bit shit.
(Guess what my phone suggested for a word to follow “perky” there…)
hubert rawlinson says
Of course P and P introduced the Beakles to the world.
Mike_H says
Time for a piglet reassessment?
Steven Wilson remix mega-boxset?