Friday Photo #65

Not too long ago, I stumbled upon a forgotten old external hard-drive, buried at the bottom of a box. Firing it up, I found 500GB of music, most of which I'd long since dragged and dropped elsewhere, plus a few dozen folders worth of photos. The majority of the snapshots had been backed up on other drives too, however to my surprise I spotted an unnamed folder containing around 30-40 Swedey McSwedefaces from 2017 & 2018, roughly half of which incorporated a cunningly positioned 7" single, where an LP would traditionally be. I have no memory of taking these shots, or what I originally had in mind for them, though they were obviously intended for the blog. Here's one now! 

Jon Hart's 'Toytown' was released in September 1980, very early on in my record shop career. The single marks Hart's one and only appearance on vinyl....and then the trail goes cold. Even this new fangled World Wide Web that everyone's talking about fails to throw up any further information about the man. One thing I can state categorically though, without fear of contradiction, is that Jon Hart was an admirer of  David Bowie's music circa 1967-69. How do I know this seemingly random fact? Take a listen to both sides of the single, then have a gander at the quite extraordinary, recently unearthed, period TV performance. Your jaw will drop.

Jon Hart - Toytown

Jon Hart - Recollections

Me, a Meme?

Loathed though I am to blow my own virtual trumpet, but I appear to have inadvertently kick-started an meme. It just goes to show that you're never too old. My first ever meme - at 57! Who'd have thunk it. Thanks to Brian, Alyson and John for picking up the ball and running with it and also to Charity Chic for suggesting it be christened Swedey McSwedeface! It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it did make me laugh out loud.

I'd already posted a few shots of me with various records covering my ugly mug, before the T.Rex one that instigated this little kerfuffle. 'The Slider' was my first LP, 'The Sweet's Biggest Hits' John's and 'Flaming Star' was Alyson's. Now John is in the market for further entries into the 'Doing a Swede' canon. Check out his post here.

I actually started the whole 'hiding my face behind a record' thing to silently celebrate the fact that after many years of being inaccessibly packed away in boxes, my LP collection is now stored on a recently purchased set of vintage shelving and, as you can imagine, I'm having a whale of a time rediscovering old favourites, while simultaneously bemoaning some of the things I stupidly chose to part with when times were hard.

Here's an LP I've been grooving to that you might not have immediately associated with my particular taste buds. 'Intuition' by Linx is a brilliantly crafted Eighties pop LP, stuffed to the gills with catchy, danceable tunes. Hearing it again now takes me back to my very earliest days of working in record shops, when the queue at the counter started when we opened the doors at 9am and ended when we shut them at 5.30pm. You try telling the kids of today that - and they won't believe you.

Linx - Intuition