Everything will always be alright when we go shopping

[venta]

This weekend, I was in Oxford. And the best thing about being in Oxford on the first Saturday of the month is that you can go to the secondhand record and CD fair in the Town Hall. For extra indie-cred, wave your antique IMSoc membership card at them and demand to be let in for half-price.

Then scour the boxes they hide under tables for hidden treasure. Two albums for a fiver ? Why, I don't mind if I do...

Aerosmith - Nine Lives : I make no apology for this. Shame Permanent Vacation was in the slightly more expensive box :)

Black Tape For A Blue Girl - : I have vague memories of having had this band recommended before. And they've got a good name. First impression of the album is positive overall, but I have a feeling it'll be one of those where I can never tell the tracks apart. Big, swooshy, dripping arcs of etheral melody; music to cry to. Sometimes the violins remind me a little bit of Ed Alleyne-Johnson's stuff.

Catchers - Stooping To Fit : OK. All right. I s'pose. Disappointing, really, because their other album, Mute might even make it into my top-ten-albums-ever. For some reason on Stooping To Fit they decided to ditch the haunting melodies, spare arrangements and fragile tunes and instead to sound a bit like every band, ever. Still, (a) I was warned to expect to be disappointed, and (b) it was a quid.

The Coral - The Coral : I thought I already owned a copy of this. Turns out I didn't, though. Must have mp3'd someone else's.

Devo - Smooth Noodle Maps : Note to self. Do not buy an album you have never heard of out of a bargain basement box. It may be in there for a reason. When I was 15, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are DEVO! sounded like nothing else, and seemed wonderful. Catchy, quirky, and sometimes terribly serious and awkard. I've barely heard any Devo since. Smooth Noodle Maps is the last album they made before splitting up, sounds a bit like they'd been overrun by the Ghost of EBM Yet To Come, and does not, on one listen, appear to be a Good Thing. I'm hoping that (a) it might grow on me and (b) earlier Devo hasn't degraded and become rubbish while I wasn't listening.

In The Nursery - Duality : Having never seen any ITN albums secondhand before, I found two. By playing eeny-meeny, I chose Duality (the other was Anatomy of a Poet). Duality makes for rather pleasant listening - it occupies that strange halfway house between orchestral music and rock - but isn't at all what I was expecting. Where's the Big Drums ? Serves me right for completely ignoring the advice I was given.

Garbage - Version 2.0 : I think I had a taped copy of this at one point, but I've either lost it or recorded over it or something. It's certainly not new, but seeing Garbage recently reminded me that they've actually got a surprising number of good songs.

So, that's a neat half-BerWick (ie seven albums) for me.

Kind of. I'm keeping quiet about one other purchase. Coming soon to a Desk near you on a Friday afternoon.

Second hand CD shops are as much fun as secondhand bookshops. And that's not an accolade I bestow lightly.

Comments

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Second hand CD shops are as much fun as secondhand bookshops.

They are, but they don't smell as good since they stopped being 2nd hand record shops. Although the shop on Gloucester Green (Massive) still smells pretty good...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I make no apology for this.

Because none is required, I hope ?

It may be weak compared to their better work, but there's some perfectly decent tracks on there. "Something's Gotta Give" and "Pink" in particular are both very fine indeed. The former is a style I've never heard elsewhere, which someone really should do a whole album of. The latter is a bit Faster Pussycat, but with the advantage Aerosmith's superior instrumental skills.

<looks around at the crowd, which consists only of jezzidue>

That's all. Thankyou.

[j4.livejournal.com]

sion_a really likes Smooth Noodle Maps... if you decide you don't want it I'll take it off your hands. Also, I have Devo's Greatest Hits you can borrow (or have a copy of) if you want to listen to some more of their stuff.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I reckon Smooth Noodle Maps gets another couple of listens before I consign it to the Great Record Bin In The Sky. I'll let you know if it's ultimately heading that way :)

In theory I'd like to borrow the Greatest Hits, please, but I have no idea when I'm likely to see you or cross paths with you or yours in the future... and if Complicated Plans are to be involved, I might be able to find one living a little closer. Thank you very much for the offer, though!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Because none is required, I hope ?

Hmm. I do regard Aerosmith as inherently a little un-credible, and later albums especially so. Not that that means I don't enjoy it, just that I rather expect other people to take the piss when I do.

For all I'd say I've heard Nine Lives many times, it's always been in the background at parties and so on. I don't know it that well, and can't off-hand place Something's Gotta Give.

I'll get back to the apology question when I've listened to it a few more times.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever really frequented real-record shops, so I'm not familiar with the smell.

Record shops scare me, because records don't have proper spines and thus it involves lots of manual sorting through to read titles. While you're doing that, assistants look at you funny, and appear to be alternately daring you to buy something they don't approve of and wishing you'd leave.

Mind you, a large number of the second-hand CD traders on Saturday had stacked the disks in boxes with their spines hidden, so you still had to sort manually anyway. That's just perverse and should not be encouraged.

[liriselei.livejournal.com]

Note to self. Do not buy an album you have never heard of out of a bargain basement box.

i dispute that ! without buying unknown albums on spec from bargain boxes and their equivalents i might never have come to possess albums by Crush, Dark Sun Riders, Ednaswap, James Hall, Minxus, Rowland S. Howard, Ryan Downe, Sixteen Deluxe, Slingbacks, Subrosa, Toiling Midgets, Torcher, Traci Lords or Your God Rules, all of which i'm rather fond of.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I do regard Aerosmith as inherently a little un-credible

Not without good reason, either. Mark and Lard (on Radio 1 a few years back) used to have a feature where they'd pick some particular current event in the world of entertainment and listeners would phone in suggestions for particularly appropriate tracks to play. The aim was primarily to get bad puns out of the track titles. Towards the end of the show they'd read out a top ten of suggestions, backwards from 10 to 1, finishing by playing track 1. On one occasion, every track of the top 10 was by Aerosmith. Good grief, I thought by about #3, are they really going to play an Aerosmith track ?!

But no, they weren't. They got to #1 then played something completely different.

The implication, though, was that they get a significant minority of requests for stuff like that. Their disinclination to actually play it being something of a vindication of your suspicions.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah... I was a bit ambiguous. Buying an artist you've never heard of is fine.

But buying an album you've never heard of buy an artist you do know about is often not such a good idea.

Not that I'll stop doing it, of course, because sometimes it works well. But you know, sometimes albums get forgotten because they're bobbins :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yay, I remember the days of the Cheesily Cheerful Chart Challenge!

Mind you, I'd also have thought that, when they did that afternoon show, Mark and Lard were not given terribly free reign about what to play, and proper rock wasn't really within their remit.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Very likely true. Certainly some of the other Radio 1 shows have strongly hinted on the air that there are pretty strict limits on what they're allowed to play in terms of both genres and release dates.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

buying an album you've never heard of buy an artist you do know about is often not such a good idea

Sad but true. But I can reassure you that earlier Devo is still just as it was. Freedom of Choice I would recommend ahead of Q. Are We... if you're looking to re-investigate -- it's equally wonderful in parts, but in more parts.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I've got a copy too. That ought to be transferrable :)