Cocktails and Records

With time to kill on the weekend, I visited our ever-surprising local record emporium. After amusing myself with their fine selection of ‘documentary’ DVDs (The Joy of Quilting, Great Railways of Yorkshire etc.), I noticed a small ‘sale LPs’ section out of the corner of my eye and, never able to resist a potential bargain, I wandered over.

Now to be honest, I was just expecting to some dance music 12″s from last year and perhaps a flop R&B album at best, but what I got was pretty much the opposite.

Instead, an almighty Proustian rush transported me back to my record shop sales assistant days in the late 80s/early 90s. Unwanted memories of all the big sellers in our country town store instantly flooded back. For they were all there* – all the not-so-classic offerings from the likes of Jason Donovan, Rod Stewart (‘the Motown Song’!), Heart, Foster & Allen, the Rebel MC and Double Trouble, Holly Johnson and the Wee Papa Girl Rappers - most of which leapt off the shelves in our small local shop.

Although I didn’t buy anything, I went home feeling happy. The only confusion was what to find more cheering – the thought that no-one had bought these terrible records in the first place or that the proprietor had been optimistically hanging on to them for 20 years in the hope that someone might.**

 * with the exception of Jimmy Barnes thankfully.
** so if you want to buy a mint condition Jason Donovan LP for only three earth pounds you now know where to go.

I’m taking myself to Paris for the day on Wednesday. The aim is to immerse myself in the French language, but in reality I just want to go book and record shopping. So to that end, can any of you suggest any good second-hand record stores in central Paris? I’d like to buy some French pop on vinyl and I promise to put any funky finds up on the site.

I was just out on a lunchtime visit to Rough Trade to buy myself some more Christmas presents when amongst the skinny-trousered boys clutching their Kitsune vinyl I spied this in-store goody.

This is an ipod boombox and it offers an ipod dock, a radio, an alarm with ‘wake up and sleep’ function, an ‘accurately real’ time clock display, separate bass and treble controls, ‘powerful’ speaker sound system, EQ monitor and (wow!) a volume level indicator.

You’ve got to admire it for delightfully defying every single design principle that ipod designer Jonathan Ive and indeed Apple have ever stood for. Sleek and compact it is not.

The ipod boombox will set you back a trifling £195. You could buy one from Rough Trade, but it seems that they’ve sold out…

Recession? What recession?

Here’s an interesting question for you. What’s the most played album in your collection?

I overheard someone talking about this very subject this morning and although they were probably referring to the present time, it set my mind thinking. So during a bored moment at a conference today, I found myself speculating on what my most played records ever might be.

The following list is based on 25 years of accumulated music buying and listening, and comprises the records that I have probably put on the ghettoblaster / walkman / family hi-fi system / bedroom CD player / turntable / ipod most during that time.

So in no particular order of painful authenticity:

1. Colour by Numbers – Culture Club
2. Grand Prix or Songs from Northern Britain - Teenage Fanclub
3. West Side Story – Original film soundtrack
4. Whitney – Whitney Houston
5. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
6. Liberty Bell and the Black Diamond Express – The Go-Betweens
7. My Favourite Things – John Coltrane
8. America’s Greatest Hits - America
   
9. Extricate – The Fall
10. True Blue – Madonna

And I still play all of these records quite a lot to this day. Yes, really.

On a recent trip to give my spare money to Rough Trade I noticed that the staff were amiable, attentive and even chipper you could say.

I really don’t know what’s going on here.

It all started a few months back when I set out one sunny morning to Soho to buy the boy a Roy Ayers LP and myself, well, anything interesting that came along. I went to Sounds of the Universe and the people behind the counter were strangely pleasant and helpful.

This was surprising, but I could handle it.

Then the same thing happened again in Ray’s Jazz and then in Vinyl Junkies where a staff member actually left the security of the counter and asked me if I needed help with anything. We then had a conversation about how great Art Blakey is/was.

Since this auspicious day, the record store staff of London have been positively oozing good humour and cheerfulness. A guy in HMV spent at least 10 minutes searching through the racks looking for a 12” I was after and the proprietor of a local vinyl emporium waxed enthusiastically to me about the delights of Steely Dan.

This has now culminated in not one, not two, but three Rough Trade staff in one visit asking me if was finding what I wanted (and telling me not to buy the new LCD Soundsystem record). In any other shop this could be irritating, but I am just so shocked that I am prepared to deal with it.

Have record store staff suddenly realised that being nice to customers might help keep them in business or is it just me?

It has come to my attention that for a site entitled cocktailsandrecords there has been little mention of either. This has been largely due to the serious lack of either in my life recently. For the past few weeks our house has had no:

• gin
• vodka
• malt whisky
• blended whisky
• cointreau

A truly awful situation.

I have attempted to remedy this sorry state of affairs over the past couple of days and was planning on celebrating this Friday evening with both a cocktail and the new Von Sudenfed LP.

Well, I’ve got the cocktail, a martini (that’s a proper martini with gin and just a smidgeon of vermouth + necessary olive) but Rough Trade have failed to deliver on the music front. I went to the Dray Walk store this lunchtime and they have, in the words of the strangely helpful guy behind the counter, “suddenly run out of Von Sudenfed records”. A rush on Mark E Smith? Unbelievable.

I am instead basking in the early 90s with Monie Love…