Finally Did It!

Playing a track off this on my show on Sunday. Rare kraut / jazz. MPS.

https://www.discogs.com/release/725275-Wolfgang-Dauner-Quintet-The-Oimels

Very odd, but inspiring LP. Title means the long hairs, BTW.

 

I think “Gutbucket” was a popular sampler which I played a lot … Beefheart, Groundhogs, Bonzo’s and Canned Heat etc.
It was classed as underground music which originally attracted me.
Them were the days !!!!!

 

Thanks.

 

I'd be careful on prices on that one. You need to look at history of what it has sold for. I reckon if you listed it in the UK at £200 it would sell.

 

Didn’t come across that one

 

“Nice enough to eat” introduced me to Schizoid man and then quickly followed by Court of the Crimson king LP.
Classic album

 

I was always jealous of my mates who had picture discs,”I was wish I was that cool,where do they buy these from”,in Woolworths the discs only came in black

 

I used to have a fantastic vinyl collection, but like many I sold nearly all of it when ai bought a CD player in the early 90s. I shudder to think what it would be worth now. My Beatles collection was the best bit. I daren’t look up how much some of those rarities now go for, for fear of having a stroke. One of two mistakes I made in the 90s, the other being leaving my Subbuteo at my girlfriend’s parent’s house in Liverpool when we moved to Brighton. I’d taken it round there cos she had a little brother I used to play it with and I didn’t have enough room in my poky room in the nurse’s home to lay the pitch out anyway. I had around 30 teams and all sorts of stuff with it. When I split up with said girlfriend she drove up to Liverpool shortly after, so I asked her to fetch it for me, but was told to go and get it myself. It was years later when it occurred to me that I could just have asked one of my mates to go round and get it. Why I never thought of that at the time, I’ll never know. D’oh!

But with regard to the vinyl, I only kept two collections, neither of which are worth much, although one of the records I wouldn’t part with for less than £300, and I actually continued to complete those collections after getting shut of my record player. I’ve always avoided getting back into vinyl, because I don’t agree with the nonsense that vinyl LPs sounds better than CDs. Some do, some don’t. There are well mastered CDs and poorly mastered CDs, just as there are well mastered LPs and poorly mastered LPs, so it’s not possible to make a gross generalisation like that. Most LPs are better than their CD counterparts aesthetically though, there’s no denying that. But it’s far, far easier to damage an LP and affect its sound than it is a CD, so it’s all swings and roundabouts.

So I’d always resisted getting back into vinyl, particularly as it is expensive these days and I own 4-5,000 albums on CD. I also had major spinal cord surgery 20 years ago and don’t have much feeling in my hands, so I am extremely clumsy. But then about 6 months ago my brother in law bought a new turntable and he made the fateful decision to offer me his old one…and I said yes!! I bought LPs from several different genres (Illmatic, Blue Train, The Man-Machine, etc) just to see if vinyl adds anything. It did. So I bought some more. I’d also had to buy a pre-amp and some cleaning equipment. It is amazing how fussy I am about the cleanliness of records nowadays, when back in the day I only used to clean the stylus when it started looking like David Bellamy. I guess I had got used to the clean sound of CDs, so wasn’t prepared to listen to records that sounded worse, due to pops and clicks. But I still wasn’t sure whether I would stick with the vinyl, so I kept all the boxes they got sent in, in case I wanted to flog them again. Then the record player conked out.

So I was at a crossroad. By now I had a couple of dozen LPs and quite a few singles. Do I ditch the vinyl experiment and f'log them all, or do I spend ages researching the best record player under £300, buy it, buy a Knosti Anti-Stat cleaning machine, some ridiculously expensive cleaning fluid and then spend every last penny I had since then on records, which would soon get totally out of hand, helped by being unwell so often over the next 6 months that I would spend almost 3 weeks in hospital, the beauty being that through my company’s Private Medical scheme I would receive a cash benefit of £100 for every night I spend in an NHS hospital, so I would basically spend all day in hospital record shopping and spend the whole bloody lot on records, coming home to a ridiculous scene the other day, for example, where my living room had so many boxes it looked like the Embankment in the 80s, thus having the fastest growing record collection in the west, along with the fastest emptying bank account in the west and a pile of cardboard record packing boxes in the garage that went beyond just being a fire risk some months ago and now has its own postcode?

Anybody who knows me won’t be surprised that I chose the latter, as I do have a tendency to go a tad overboard when I get a new obsession or idea (understatement!). For his part, my brother in law admitted that he hesitated about offering me his old record player, because he knows what I am like. Certainly with the amount of records I’ve bought over the past 6 months I could have paid off most of my sodding mortgage. But I am very pleased with my new collection and have been able to handle them with few accidents. I do long for the mid-80s though, when there were loads of record shops in Barnsley and the Tuesday market was ace. When I moved to Liverpool in 1988 it wasn’t particularly well served with decent secondhand record shops, although a few started up over the next 5 years. I used to love my first day off after payday though, when I jumped on a train and went to Manchester, which was fantastic. And there used to be an ace record fair in Liverpool every month, which I went to if I had that particular Sunday off.

I haven’t been to a record fair since I started buying records again, but I imagine they are somewhat different these days, and there are less bargains to be had. Car boot sales used to be a great source for records too, but not driving means I can’t get to them. Again though, I imagine people overprice their records these days. There used to be car boot sales at Stockton and Sedgfield race courses that were so big they had to be seen to be believed. I got some right stuff up there. I have found that I am subconsciously replacing a lot of records I used to own years ago, so I’ve been picking up loads of 80s stuff, the good thing being that a lot of stuff I listened to wasn’t particularly popular, so I can pick the LPs up for a couple of quid. It’s really annoying in some cases though, that I cannot afford to buy (or more precisely, I’m not prepared to pay the asking prices of) quite a few records I had back then. Have you seen how much New Order’s Substance goes for, for example. And when I do look online or go into record shops these days I never look at the Beatles section, cos if I saw the prices on some of the stuff I used to have I think I would burst into tears.

 

I have a ridiculous amount of vinyl mailing boxes in my basement and was going to pop into Andy’s shop down the arcade to see if he wanted them, but I’m not sure whether he only uses new ones for stuff he sends out. You can have first dibs if you want them, as I don’t think I can be arsed, and I don’t really have enough money for, buying stuff to sell on again. Of course, most of them have my address on the label that you’d have to remove or stick your label over, but I’ve only kept the good quality ones, although that’s around 95% of the ones I’ve received. It’ll probably go into triple figures.

 

A long post but a very good read, thanks for posting

 

I had a major obsession with Prince in the 80s/90s one of my big regrets is I never got to see him in concert. Absolutely unbelievable musician, his Super Bowl half time show will never be beaten in my opinion.

 

It’s a shame more people in the UK don’t sell via Discogs, as I get fed up with finding stuff I want, only for it to be in Germany or Italy. It can be easier to find more obscure stuff on Discogs than it is on eBay though, although I find I have come across more dishonest sellers on Discogs than I have on eBay, regularly buying Near Mint records that look like their previous owner was Edward Scissorhands. I have plenty of time on my hands though, so can trawl deep through Discogs and I’ve got some right bargains on there. You just have to allow for the actual grading to be one or two levels below what it has been listed as. Over grading is such a problem that it’s a delight when records arrive in the condition they were listed as.

I bought a stack of ‘Near Mint’ LPs off someone whilst in hospital last week that were dirt cheap, but had poorly graded sleeves. Some 80s stuff, like The Blow Monkeys (I used to own every record they’d ever released!), The Bible, etc, all for a couple of quid each. I can put up with a slightly shabby sleeve at that price, as I don’t listen to sleeves. When they arrived yesterday I was surprised to see that the records, although a little dusty (easily cleaned) were indeed Near Mint, but the sleeves, which were graded as Good or Good+ were actually better than some I have bought that were sold as Very Good+.

 

Yep, one of my big regrets too. I had heard horror stories about how long it took to get away from the O2 Arena, and I lived in North London back then, so when he played his 21 nights I didn’t go. What. An. Idiot!

I’ve always liked Prince, but I got heavily back into him a few months before he died and bought all his albums on CD that I didn’t already have. I was determined that next time I’ll walk down to London to see him, if I have to. The timing was impeccable.

I haven’t learned though, and there’s a few people played/playing in Leeds recently and in the near future that I have decided against going to see, cos getting home from Leeds at night is a hassle. I’m sure I’ll regret it in years to come.

 

Yes, I’d filled a basket with some good stuff the other day, but then read his bad feedback (always read the bad ones) and he was like Basil Fawlty, replying to each one with insults. I think his name was Punk DeVille if you want to have a look. It was a shame, as it was some good stuff, but I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. On eBay, they always side with the buyer and their policy for items not as described or faulty is that the seller pays return postage, so you are pretty safe on there. I read loads of listings on Discogs which states they don’t accept returns or the buyer has to pay the return postage. I think if it ever came to an argument about this I’d get PayPal to sort it out.

I have always managed to get my money back for duff items, but the problem is that it happens so often.