Start!

Seems that life takes precedence over humble blog writing and my impetus to follow up on my initial enthusiasm seems to have stalled. Anyway here I am to tell you about where it all began...

I like to say that 'Ghost Town' by The Specials was the first single that I ever bought. However the unseemly truth is that it was 'Can Can' by Bad Manners. I was obviously on a bit of a ska trip back then. Is 10 years old fairly young to be buying records? Anyway, before that I'd bought a few cassettes (tapes), one of which being 'The Best Of Showaddywaddy'. I believe they were popular at the time.

Just recently it has become clear to me that I pretty much just followed the musical styles of the day and flitted from genre to genre.

Obviously for anyone raised in the 80s you will hear the usual mantra of 'Top Of The Pops' was the best and that the charts "really mattered". If you really liked music then this was the case. I have a sister, four and a half years my senior, who seemed to like music. She would want to watch TOTP and because everyone sat in the living room watching TV together, I watched it too. I also had to listen to Terry Wogan in the morning at breakfast as he was my Mum's favourite. This would change later as my sister and I got older and would tune the radio in to Radio 1 or Radio Caroline (her choice, not mine). Plus we both used to come home from school at dinner time and would listen to (ooh) Gary Davies. So as you can see the beginnings of something were right there.

I remember my parents had an radio/cassette player which had been handed down to them from my Grandad and this become my pirating device of choice. At some point, I remember that I would listen to the chart rundown on Sunday and record all the songs onto cheap tapes. Instant record collection :)

I was pretty lucky in that I would get quite a bit of pocket money. Don't get me wrong, we were not well off at all. But I would get money off my Mum and Dad, my Nan and Grandad who lived just down the road and my other Nan and Grandad who visited every week on Wednesday. So I ended up with a few quid each week, which would rapidly end up being put in the Space Invaders or Galaxians machines in the amusements, but also start to fulfill my ever growing need to buy music. When I first started buying singles I used to ask my Mum to get me them when she went into town. She said at some point "I don't know where you're getting all the money from". I wasn't really going to tell her that I was spending as little as I could on school dinners in order to save money to buy records :) Anyway after that brush with being found out, I stopped asking her to buy them and stuck to getting them myself at the weekends.

After The Specials and Bad Manners, the single that I remember the most is 'Mad World' by Tears For Fears. This, I believe, was when I started to buy singles a lot, or as much as one's pocket money would allow. That single got played A LOT! When you're starting out your collection you don't have much choice right, so you play that same record over and over again. The b-side was a bit rubbish, but even it got played a few times.

45RPM

So why write a blog? That's probably the question that gets asked the most about blogs right? What have I got to say that could be remotely interesting or that hasn't already been said? Well this is personal, it's about me and my (mild) obsession with music and vinyl and how I grew up with it and what I bought and why ... maybe. Recently I bought a few books about the music that was happening around the time I was growing up.

Yeah Yeah Yeah - The Story Of Modern Pop (Bob Stanley)

Obviously we're talking about a specific period here, but this book covers much more. So to hone in on the relevant time frame, after wading through this, I moved on to















Rip It Up And Start Again (Simon Reynolds)

A great read talking about all the stuff I vaguely knew about, to the stuff that I really did know about! This also mentioned a few other books, a couple of which are mentioned below.















Sex Pistols: The Inside Story (Fred and Judy Vermorel)

I was interested in the Sex Pistols just because to me I knew the music and the Great Rock n Roll Swindle film, but that was about it. Even though they are seen as this hugely important band they only lasted about a year. So I wanted to find out more. This accompanied me on a trip to Sardinia and is a pretty quick but interesting read.












Making Tracks: The Rise Of Blondie (Harry, Stein, Bockris)

I've always liked Blondie, well OK the popular singles. But Debbie Harry was absolutely gorgeous and anyway this was reckoned to be a good book, so I thought I'd give it a go. As with the Pistols book this was prohibitively expensive new, but I got a second hand copy, albeit with a big crease on the cover, but it has been a great read. It ties in nicely with the various film books I've read that talk about New York at that time as basically a sewer. Some of the stories mentioned in the book are amazing. Some great pictures too.








Anyway coming back to the question raised at the beginning. I recently took it upon myself to write my own music application. Been thinking about it for ages off and on, and while my girlfriend was writing her dissertation and my work was boring, I though I'd give it a go. The idea being to create a web based application to play my MP3s. Yes that's right, creating a shit version of Google Play :) There were some other reasons behind this. I wanted to learn something new and keep my hand in with "web stuff" so I thought this would give me an opportunity to learn some new things. Plus, recently I have taken an interest in my old records. I've been buying the odd new bit of vinyl now and again for a while, but I realised I had some stuff that I don't have on CD and started working through my vinyl, recording it to CD and making MP3s out of it. This is all about the stars aligning. I finally gave in and treated myself to a new turntable. I got some software (Vinyl Studio) to help me fix the vinly recodings. So now I am creating virtual singles using my USB turntable, scans of the records and having great fun.

This first entry is all a bit of a splurge. But I hope to concentrate more on specific things over my next postings. But you know what it's like, this could be the first and last post :)