55 From 55 - 2006

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

In late 2005 I was shunted from my comfy nook in the bookshop to open a new coffee shop branch, situated within the walls of a soulless shopping centre. I recruited a brand new young team for the job, all of whom wanted Radio 1 on in the staff room - Radio 1! I hadn't listened to daytime Radio 1 since...., well since I was their age! It was awful! I initially considered gouging my eardrums out with a rusty spoon to alleviate the tedium, but over time I eventually managed to relegate the majority of the aural wallpaper to the background of my consciousness.

Taken by my Cousin's 6 year old Daughter. 2006.

A Radio 1 programme that I did actually quite enjoy and which was the soundtrack to our late close every Friday evening, was Pete Tong's Essential Selection. Tong was no John Peel, but after the daytime drivel I'd been subjected to for hours on end, some of the tunes he played sounded positively cutting edge. Occasionally, Tong would spin a genuine cutting edge selection. One Friday evening in 2006 for example, he introduced me to 'Simpler' by Pete Heller, a minimal prog-house classic that still gets me dancing in my head every time I hear it. Mind you, if you think this is minimal, wait til you hear what's coming up in 2008.

55 From 55 - 2004

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

Though it might initially appear an extravagance, a trip to see my cousin and her family in New York worked out to be far more affordable than a holiday in the UK. I was in the fortunate position of being able to pick and choose travel dates to ensure the cheapest combination of flights and when I arrived in Manhattan, I ate with the family and slept in their spare room - free bed and board!

On a one-man mission to eat all the snacks in my Cousin's apartment. 2004.

My main indulgence while in the Big Apple was, not surprisingly, music. There are always so many gigs going on - and all in such close proximity. Also, at that time there were still a lot of great record stores in town, all of which had cheapie bins to lose hours rummaging through. My general rule of thumb was to not spend more than $1.99 on a CD. Though I'm sad to note that it has since closed down, Bleeker Bob's was never one of my favourite stores, the staff were legendarily surly. That being said, while wading through a pile of dusty cardboard boxes in a darkened corner of Bob's during my 2004 trip, I did unearth a promo copy of 'The CBC Sessions' by The Hidden Cameras for the princely sum of 89c!. My kinda price.

55 From 55 - 2003

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

On moving to Norfolk in 2002 I met Mrs S, though at the time we were both otherwise attached and it would be another three years until we became anything more than just chums. We began exchanging music tips almost immediately though. The brooding 'Down Below Him' by Chicago's Low Skies was one of the first tunes she pushed my way.

55 From 55 - 2000

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

Dad drops by to see if there's any Frank Sinatra records in the sale!

Making the decision was by far the hardest thing. A friend who was with me, swore that she actually saw a weight visibly lift from my shoulders when I said the words out loud for the first time - I'm closing the shop. I informed my landlord, accountant and bank manager who were all incredibly supportive. At the end of trading a few days later, I removed the Oasis, 'Standing on the Shoulder of Giants', window display and replaced it with three words, each letter printed on an A4 sheet of paper for maximum impact - Closing Down Sale.

The photo from my last piece of local press, under the headline, 'End of the Road for Mr Music'.

Over the next few days I was genuinely overwhelmed by the number of kind comments, phone calls and good luck messages I recieved from customers old and new, some of whom no longer even lived in the town, but had shopped with me in the past and had somehow heard the news. Three pieces were written about the shop in the press and I was also interviewed on local radio. A chap of a similar age to me, with whom I'd only recently been discussing our mutual love of red wine, came in on the Friday afternoon and handed me a bottle. 'I've been saving this for a very long time' he said, 'but I want you to have it, with my best wishes for your future'. It was a 40 year old bottle of Rioja. I eventually opened it a year later and it remains the finest wine I've ever tasted.

Behind the counter, or where it used to be, after everything was gone. I spent 14 years of my life in that little space.

On the evening of Saturday March 25th, after a hectic and emotional week, I closed the door for the last time and sat in the old place in silence. The following morning, I started dismantling the racks, boxing up the stock and generally stripping the place bare. It took the best part of a week to complete the task. I'd been 26 years of age when I started the business and now I was three weeks short of my 40th birthday. 14 years, gone in a flash. It didn't seem possible.

55 From 55 - 1999

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

Promotional bits and bobs. The ridiculous amounts of stuff that record companies gave away. Quite apart from advance copies of singles and albums, in my time I was given bottle openers, pens, writing pads, bottles of plonk, hip-flasks, towels, cameras, denim jackets, cuddly toys, mugs, tea-pots, mouse-mats, baseball jackets, hats, sunglasses, presentation discs, concert tickets, hundreds of t-shirts, thousands of posters and many more strange and unconnected things that were used to plug the latest releases. Most of these items would come decorated in the band's logo or a sleeve design and the majority of them I would give away to genuine fans of the bands in question, as a thank-you for their custom. I often wonder how many of those freebies subsequently found their way onto eBay, when they were discovered at the back of a cupboard, years later.

1999 was my last full year of trading. HMV and Virgin were busy undercutting each other, supermarkets were selling CD's for less than cost price and a new phenomenon called file sharing was beginning to take hold. It was a very stressful time. No-one knew the full extent of the financial hole I was in, other than my accountant and bank manager and they were both pleading with me to throw in the towel. As midnight approached on December 31st, I took a walk along the prom, which was buzzing with people who were out and about to usher in the new millennium. I left the crowds behind and wandered to the quieter end of the beach and looked out into the darkness as the waves crashed in. I still hoped for a miracle, but in my gut I knew that the game was up.

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In 1999, ace UK post-rockers Fridge briefly signed to Go! Beat Records, who released the band's third album, 'Eph', as well as a couple of EP's. Kieran Hebden of Fridge later found great success trading as Four Tet. From the 'Of' EP, this is the fantastic 'Remix'.
('Remix' was nowhere to be found online, so this is my first attempt at using Box. Please let me know if I've uploaded this incorrectly!)

Fridge - 'Remix'

55 From 55 - 1998

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

A handy aspect of running a record shop based in such a small town was that the local press were always keen to support small businesses. If anything interesting was going on that I wanted to publicise or promote, I only had to pick up the phone and invariably, someone with a camera would be dispatched to record the event. I featured an example of this earlier in this series, when Donny Osmond came a-calling. Sometimes though, it was the local press who reached out to me. That's how I wound up writing brief record reviews in the newspaper for a couple of years. And every now and then, presumably during very quiet news weeks, they'd offer to run a feature piece on the shop. Here's a photo from one such piece in 1998. Times were getting tough though. I'm putting on a brave face. Either that, or I'm burying my head in the sand.

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There were some excellent David Holmes remixes around in the late 1990's, his re-imagining of 'If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next' by the Manic Street Preachers is one of my favourites.

55 From 55 - 1997

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

Real gone goatee. One last turn behind the mic, 1997.

Large Virgin Records and HMV stores opened in a town 10 miles away. Up to now my business had thrived on my ability to track down, order and receive any available CD quickly and efficiently. From 1997 onwards, the tide subtly turned. Any CD that anyone could possibly want was only a bus-ride or short car journey away - why would they wait? The writing was on the wall, but I was either too close to the wall to read it or was deliberately looking the other way. Those superstores, only 100 yards apart, became engaged in an ongoing battle to outdo each other and caused considerable collateral damage to the independent record shops in the town. 10 miles down the road, the ripples steadily began eroding my business away too.

Sierra Leone musician S.E.Rogie died in 1994, soon after recording what would become his final LP, 'Dead Men Don't Smoke Marijuana'. The album was finally released in 1997 on the Real World label. This is the beautiful title track, 'Dieman Noba Smoke Tafee'.

55 From 55 - 1996

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

I had helping hands in the shop every now and then, but for the majority of the time I was a sole trader. This meant whatever the condition of my physical or emotional health at any given moment, I still had to be behind that counter, smiling at everybody who stepped through the door. It was particularly difficult to work through relationship upheavals, one of which occurred in 1996. My emotional trauma at that time also meant that I wanted to keep very busy after work, so I hit the gig circuit harder than ever before, running myself pretty ragged in the process. There are a larger quantity of surviving ticket stubs in the family archive from the period '96/'97 than for any other. And many more have been lost over the years.

I didn't get to the first UK Ramones show in 1976, but I was there to say adios amigos at the last one, 20 years later.

One man I've never seen in concert is Joe Henry. In 1996 he issued 'Trampoline', one of my favourite albums of the decade, probably of all-time. 'Trampoline' marked a distinct change of musical direction following a series of accomplished alt-country releases and the LP perfectly reflects the slightly woozy fragility I felt for much of the year.

55 From 55 - 1995

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

Belting out 'Powderfinger' and 'Mr Soul' during a Neil Young tribute night.

By 1995 I'd been through Madchester, Rave and Grunge, now Brit-Pop was at its peak. I didn't know it at the time, but my shop was riding the crest of its final wave. Business would never be this good again.

 A few surviving ticket stubs from the year in question.

1995 was the year I first stumbled upon Chicago post-rockers Tortoise, via a marvelous 12" single 'Gamera'. The following year the band would release their groundbreaking 2nd LP, 'Millions Now Living Will Never Die' and they are currently working on their 7th studio album.

55 From 55 - 1994

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far.

A while ago, I wrote a bit about about a band I and a couple of mates put together in 1980 (here). For my sins, I was the singer in that band. It's probably the greatest regret of my life that I never learned to play a musical instrument, so to make up for my lack of talent, I surrounded myself with people who could actually play and nominated myself as the person who would stand at the front and make unpleasant noises into a microphone.  In 1994, 14 years after the demise of my little band, from my vantage point behind the counter of a small record shop, I once again found myself in regular close contact with local musicians. I did anything I could to assist, encourage and promote their bands and solo endeavours at the time and it's a source of great joy to know that many of them are still making music today. Every now and then a local charity gig or private party would crop up and I'd ask a handful of those hugely talented young players if they'd mind backing up this old fool while he belted out a couple of good old good 'uns for old times sake. They invariably said yes, bless 'em. This explains why you'll be seeing a couple of shots of me clutching a mic over the next few days. Here I am bangin' out 'Like a Rolling Stone' at a friend's garden party in 1994. Note the dramatic return of facial hair!

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I enjoyed a couple of tunes from Failure's debut album, 'Comfort', in 1992 and third LP, 'Fantastic Planet' in 1996, but, for me, 1994's 'Magnified' is by far their best effort. The band's sound on 'Magnified' packs a massive droney wallop, particularly impressive when you consider Failure were a three piece. I caught a memorably deafening performance at the tiny Borderline venue in London, a few days after the album's release.

55 From 55 - 1993

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

In September 1993, Virgin Records chose Madame Tussauds in London as the venue for the retail launch of Belinda Carlisle's new LP, 'Real'. As was the norm for these events, the alcohol flowed, the nibbles kept coming and the album blasted from a specially erected sound system. There was no sign of Belinda though. After a while, several small groups of shop managers and buyers fell into individual conversations around a large central room. A man appeared with an expensive camera hanging around his neck and gradually made his way around the room, stopping to arrange each small gaggle of people into a group pose, while not actually taking any shots. We were slightly baffled. He arrived at our group and we asked what was happening. 'Belinda's on her way...' he replied, grabbing a couple of us by the shoulders '...you stand there...and you stand there....' And he was off to do the same to the next group, standing a few feet away. After a few minutes, the photographer re-emerged, this time accompanied by Belinda Carlisle herself. As they moved from pre-posed group to pre-posed group, Belinda paused momentarily at the front of each, just long enough for the shutter to click, then moved on. She walked up to us, beamed at the camera, 'click', and walked away without saying a word. That was it. 'Real'? Surreal more like. Then again we were at Madame Tussauds, perhaps she thought we were waxworks.

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From the final Gun Club LP, 'Lucky Jim', here's the sad and beautiful 'Idiot Waltz'.

55 From 55 - 1992

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

The album launch. Venues would vary from record company to record company and from artist to artist; Genesis at the London Planetarium, Black Crowes on a roof in Kensington, Garbage in a Soho wine bar, a long forgotten indie band on a Thames-side barge, but essentially the aim was the same. Ply us with drink and nibbles, wheel the band (or at least a band-member) out to meet and greet us, play the album super-loud on very good equipment, then take our pre-release orders while we're vulnerable! These occasions were also a great opportunity to meet and socialise with fellow indie retailers. It was sometimes a lonely business running your own, erm, business.

 Can't find any 1992 photos of me, so here are a few surviving ticket stubs from that year.

One album launch remains head and shoulders above the others though, and not just for the quality of the music. In 1992, after the success of their wonderful debut LP, The Sundays were signed to Parlophone and their second album 'Blind' was launched at the Abbey Road recording studio. I get shivers just thinking about it. The playback actually took place in Studio 2 (Studio 2!), though we were free to wander into the other studios and have a nose about throughout the course of evening. As a music nerd, it was an overwhelming and emotional location find myself in. Foolishly, I didn't take a camera with me to record this once in a lifetime event. I wish I had.

(The volume is very low on this one - crank it up!)

55 From 55 - 1990

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

The dream was to own a record shop with an attached small label and put out singles by local bands. I seriously looked into it at one point, but in reality I was never going to have the available dosh to fund such a venture. I promoted a couple of small local gigs (including the early psyche-pop era Shamen), but the town was simply too small to truly allow that idea to flourish. Instead I established contacts at several East Anglian venues and organised coach trips to concerts. This was quite popular for a while at the end of the 1980's and the early 1990's. We ran coaches to The Wedding Present, Waterboys, Wonderstuff, My Bloody Valentine, Sugarcubes and The Happy Mondays and more. The Stone Roses at the Norwich Arts Centre was a particularly memorable evening. After the gig a bunch of us spent half an hour chatting with the band, much to the waiting coach driver's annoyance. I also ran trips to both of Nirvana's Norwich gigs, a minibus to the Arts Centre in 1989 and a mid-sized coach to The Waterfront in 1990. I usually went to every show I sold tickets for, but those two were extremely popular even then, so I let others go in my place - d'oh!

Today's musical selection is the brilliant Weatherall & Farley mix of 'Abandon' by That Petrol Emotion. Shoot me down in flames if you like, but give me this over 'Loaded' any day of the week.

55 From 55 - 1989

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far.

A few words about the title of my business. I was the third (and final) incumbent to run a record shop on the site, the previous two people, both of whom I knew, had plumped for hanging their given names above the door, i.e. Fred's Records. I was keen to break away from the tradition and wanted to call my shop 'something', rather than another '(insert name here) Records'. The business title I'd chosen was 'Rhythm Collision', inspired by the 1982 Ruts DC album of the same name.

Looking sleepy in 1989.

A couple of weeks before I was due to take over the business in 1986, I had a series of meetings with a very helpful small business support company, who provided free advice and contacts for new starters. The first piece of advice they gave me, however, was to ditch my chosen business name, arguing that by putting my own moniker above the door, I would establish an immediate personal identity within the small community. I reluctantly allowed myself to be overruled and '(Insert my name here) Records' it became. They were right I suppose, I did become well known in the town fairly quickly and for a while it seemed that everyone knew my name. Rhythm Collision would've been far cooler though.

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'Torch' is my favourite track from my favourite Psychedelic Furs LP, 'Book of Days', issued in late 1989. If you like the song, try to track down 'House', the only UK CD Single from the album, where you'll find an otherwise unavailable stripped-down version of 'Torch' as one of the b-sides.

55 From 55 - 1988

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

My shop was located in a town that's a little off the beaten track and so I missed out on most of the personal appearances occasionally granted to fellow indie stores in the area. In October 1988, however, Donny Osmond, then in the middle of a clutch of comeback singles on Virgin Records, dropped by to say hello. It was intended to be a quick low-key visit, where he'd sign a bit of stock before being whisked off to the next port of call, but sensing the chance of a little free publicity, I alerted the local newspaper who duly dispatched a photographer to record the event.

If you're thinking that this isn't a particularly flattering shot of The Swede, you'd be dead right. But you should have seen the one they published - on the front page of the newspaper! It was truly awful! Donny was, as you might expect, an absolutely charming guy, who spent most of his short time behind my counter quizzing me about reggae, a genre he was newly discovering. I carried precious little reggae in stock, but had a couple of my own compilation tapes to hand, from which I played him a few brief selections that he listened to intently. He was particularly taken with 'Warrior Charge' by Aswad as I recall.

No Donny on today's playlist, but flick back to the 1972 post (here) to hear him and his Brothers rocking up a storm. Instead, this is 'Carolyn's Fingers', my all-time favourite Cocteau Twins tune, taken from their 1988 LP, 'Blue Bell Knoll'.

55 From 55 - 1987

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

My predecessor had certainly made a good job of running down his business. On the day of the handover, in the Summer of '86, we did a joint stock take. The count didn't take long and the value of the remaining stock was so low that we eventually agreed on a nominal sum of £1 for the lot. I had no stock of consequence and no record company accounts. Oh, and the shop was painted bright yellow, inside and out!

By 1987, thanks to help from Dad and a visiting Cousin, the outside of the shop was painted blue. It wasn't ideal, it was too dark, but, on the plus side, it wasn't yellow anymore. I'd also accumulated most of the main record company accounts and had gradually been increasing my stock levels. It was tricky. I was a very small business in quite a small town, so I tried to offer a smattering of everything without becoming too esoteric or blowing my buying budget. Mainly, I relied on my knowledge and the ability to source customer orders quickly and efficiently. This was how my reputation grew.

Behind the counter. 1987.

I ploughed practically every penny back into the business in those early years, but every now and then I allowed myself a treat. In 1987, one such treat was the debut import 45 by an Australian band called God. 'My Pal' played at max volume, was the perfect aural onslaught for cashing up and sorting out at the end of the day. The quality of the song is such that it all but overshadowed the rest of the band's brief career and it still sounds electrifying today. A heads up - the repeated guitar motif will worm its way into your ear and staple itself to your brain. You've been warned.

55 From 55 - 1986

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far.

I'd vaguely stayed in touch with the guy who'd been my first manager at the record shop in Ipswich, when I started working there at the back end of 1979. Not long after I'd moved on to manage my own store in 1981, he left the company to open his own business - a little one man record shop in a small seaside town. By 1986 he'd had enough and was running the business down and trying to sell up. Meanwhile, in addition to managing my own store, I was now also clocking up the miles every week in an Area Manager capacity - and there was talk of even more branches to come. After a period of anxious consideration, I made the decision to go it alone. I purchased my former manager's tiny business for next to nothing and left behind  the relative security of the indie chain after seven years. It was a nerve wracking time. I was confident in my musical knowledge and customer service abilities, but could I run a business? And do all of these things by myself?

This is 'Strangers When We Meet', track one from The Smithereens' cracking debut LP, 'Especially For You'.                                                                           

                                                                                                                                

55 From 55 - 1985

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far.

A momentous change in my life lay just over the horizon, but for now, from 1985, here's another twofer. The Moffs were an Australian band, heavily inspired by all things paisley and psychedelic. The catalogue they left behind was slim, though if you can only track down one piece of plastic by them, make it this one. It's an import 7" single on Citadel, 'Another Day in the Sun', coupled with 'Clarodomineaux'. I can't separate the two songs. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.

55 From 55 - 1984

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

The move in December 1983, took me even closer to London. It meant that the time it took from locking up the shop to arriving at a gig could be as little as an hour, depending on the venue, even less on a really good night. In 1984 my car could almost have done the journey down the M11 on auto-pilot. A wave of American bands, dubbed 'The Paisley Underground', began releasing records and traveling to our shores to play well received concert tours, while expensive, guitar drenched imports hit our racks from the far distant lands of Australia and New Zealand. All in all, there are any number of tunes I could choose to represent this busy musical year.

Here's one - the terrific 'Bad News Travels Fast', US import debut 45 by The Fuzztones, which for a time was a hugely popular racket behind our counter. With at least 50% of the staff anyway.

55 From 55 - 1982

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

From now on, I can't guarantee that a photo of my ugly mug will accompany every single post in this series. There will be more to come here and there (including the return of facial hair in the 1990's), but I can find none at the moment, for instance, taken in 1982. I do, however, have a cracking musical selection for the year in question. In the baking heat of July 1983 I would see The Beat's final UK show, supporting David Bowie at Milton Keynes Bowl, meanwhile though, back in 1982, Ranking Roger from the band joins forces with a young Pato Banton on the marvelously inventive 12" mix of 'Pato And Roger (Ago Talk)'.