tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36853397264930576342024-03-13T04:04:15.655+00:004AD First Decadejonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-29605561687816522082017-09-13T20:50:00.000+01:002017-09-13T20:50:57.227+01:00A very healthy marketNope...I'm still here<br />
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2016-2017 was a bad year for my collecting. Other more important things came up which left me a bit strapped for cash. But over the last few months things have picked up a little, if slowly.<br />
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The world is constantly changing. In the last couple of years the sales of new vinyl has gone up and up, but still small numbers next to downloads. People who threw away their turntables a decade ago and sent all their records to charity shops are buying decks again and revisiting their youth. Vinyl is on sale again in the local supermarket. The worth of those first pressings even from huge artists like Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd have gone through the ceiling and endless people think it's time to empty the loft expecting to have a treasure trove in the warped and dank boxes of vinyl they haven't looked at for 30 years.<br />
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At times I wonder if the 2nd hand vinyl bubble is at it's greatest extent and I ponder sometimes if it's worth cashing in before the big burst happens. How would I feel when vinyl really does become junk nobody wants it and my collection becomes worth less than the value of its plastic and paper recycling? How much of a gimp would I feel knowing its current value now just to see it become a sad old man's worthless obsession (I'm part way there already some would say).<br />
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But it is just a ponder occasionally, I would feel a cheat not to have taken up this challenge and at least follow it through to the 2030 4AD anniversary. Besides which, as time passes, the reason behind this quest becomes more and more relevant. While some first decade 4AD acts still manage a small recognition in some alternative circles, there is a range of 4AD acts that are not so well known that could easily be forgotten. Imagine missing out on The Past Seven Days song Raindance, one of the best 4AD songs ever recorded in my opinion.<br />
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So I must keep on with my mission.<br />
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Now, I know I have promised before that I will get back into writing this blog, then gone on to fail miserably and left an age until writing again, but I will try harder, honest. It is difficult to keep writing, especially when little is happening. I'm very aware of just listing what I have recently picked up and going over very similar ground, one entry after another. It would be good to hear some suggestions of what you think might be interesting to read about on this blog. I did have an idea of showing off some of my proudest collection pieces so far.....maybe I will have a go at that.<br />
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As a side note, Discogs, the online music collectors database and a useful way of keeping track of your collection, set up another database called Filmogs, which does a similar thing but for video, DVD, Blu-rays etc. Well, the same folk have just started another interesting database called Posterogs. It's very much in its infancy, but allows users to submit poster infomation into the database and track collections and wants. This is a really useful missing piece of my collecting need, as 4AD did many posters and the artwork is as an important part of the 4AD story. So I'm going to have to go through my posters and start to get them loaded up to the database (once I can sort out the picture orientation problem I seem to be having with the site). This is exciting for me as I can keep track of what I have (I have too many already to have them all framed around the house) and as others put on their collection, see what is out there and try and buy them.<br />
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So once again, sorry for such a long delay in posting. Honestly I will do better! Send me some suggestions<br />
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<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-48033937112155680112016-10-18T21:49:00.000+01:002016-10-18T21:49:01.931+01:00Where have I been? What time do you call this?How long has it been??<br />
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What can I say? It's been a topsy turvy set of months. I've been trying to tighten the purse strings for a while and then the smack in the face I really didn't want was the collective genius known as Brexit.<br />
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It seems to be a hippy dream ideal to want to live in a world where borders, race, sexuality and gender need have no real profile and are irrelevant, but that seems a dream moving further from reality. In a short period where David Bowie has left us and the world seems to have hardly noticed the legacy that just one man left behind, the country I live in seems to becoming more and more intolerant and regressive as time passes.<br />
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Why is this relevant I hear you say? Because the vote by the British public whether to leave the European union has its many sides to argue, but out of it has come an intensity of bigotry and a licence for intolerance. For those that may not know what has happened in this country, the place where I dropped from my mother and therefore am expected to have allegiance in gratitude, every person eligable to vote was asked to decide whether to leave the European Union. While I have my own opinions on the matter, the biggest argument to come out of the debate to leave was to stop the "legions" of foreigners "taking over our beloved country". This seemed to give voice to an otherwise quietly shamed population of ageing racists that revelled in the opportunity to be brash about their colonial attitudes.<br />
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But I digress, the outcome of this shameful set of proceedings was the majority vote going to the campaign to leave the European Union. Out of this moment of genius, the British pound slumped making the vast majority of what I needed to collect, stupidly expensive. Just Great! So apart from racism becoming a little more of an acceptable attitude and, of course, the rest of the baggage that goes along with those bigoted opinions, prices in the rest of the world have shot up, including postage rates.<br />
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There have been some interesting developments that have not gone by unnoticed in my slow period though. There have been some interesting statements that some of the earlier 4AD releases came in glossy covers and the later ones had a more matt finish. This has only been on a couple of UK releases, but I can't verify at the moment if there is any truth in it, but I am on the case. There was also a release, again from the UK, that came with both the negative and positive female wrestlers photos on the centre label. Again, I have to get this verified myself before I can give any definitive answer as to whether it's true, but I will update my findings here.<br />
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Another interesting development over the past year has been the number of music collection exhibitions taking place. These have ranged from photographic collections and memorabilia to actual record collections. These have been rare and scattered over Europe, but an interesting development none the less. I find this interesting because it is what I am aiming to do with my collection in 2030, on 4AD's 50th anniversary. I still have no idea where, or if anyone in the world will be remotely interested in it, but I'll worry about that nearer the time.<br />
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I was also fortunate enough to see Sex Gang Children recently as well. As with the Peter Murphy tour done recently, there is a new trend for older bands to play either an old album or do a tour playing the songs from an earlier period. The Peter Murphy gig was mindblowing, playing just the old bauhaus songs. All the songs had so much energy and were so fresh and new, 35 years on. Sex Gang Children did a similar thing, playing songs from the Song and Legend era. The music was just so refreshing and unique and full of ghusto. I was fortunate enough to meet Andi Sex Gang after the show and I just had to tell him how privileged I felt to be able to see himself and Peter Murphy play such material having been too young (just) to miss it the first time around. As I said to Andi Sex Gang, I find it so strange that with the acceptance of all types of music nowadays without the extreme elitist tribalism that always used to be so prelevant that, of all the music styles being performed by the younger bands, hardly anyone picks up and experiments with these styles of music. There is simply nothing like early Bauhaus and Sex Gang Children around anymore, which is such a crying shame.<br />
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I also have the knack of coming across the most amazing finds when I'm strapped for cash. It's been a tight year financially and the collection has had to take a back seat. It's always under these circumstances when one of the Lonely As An Eysore boxes comes up for sale. Predictably one has. This is arguably THE 4AD collection piece, a beautiful wooden box, limited to 100 copies, of which only 30 ever went on general sale to the public. It exchanges hands for around £1300 on a few occasions and rarely comes up for sale. Needless to say, once again it's outside my grasp, darn it!!<br />
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Finally, in keeping with the spirit of this blog entry and as an "up-yours" to the growing intolerance I seem to be noticing of late, I wish to inform my wonderful readers of the latest book by the author of "Facing the other way the story of 4ad" Martin Aston. He has a new book that came out on October 13th called "BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS OF HEARTACHE: HOW MUSIC CAME OUT" and described as "a comprehensive history – spanning a hundred years, starting in 1920s Harlem – of the queer pioneers of Popular Music with over 90 new interviews."<br />
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Hopefully I won't stay away so long next time<br />
<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-90568244306603017482016-05-16T21:50:00.001+01:002016-05-16T21:50:31.837+01:00Cocteau Twins' LullabiesI promised to add to this blog whenever I got every version of a release and show all the different versions. This is always tricky as how is one to know whether there are other versions other than than the ones I know about.<br />
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I thought I had every version of the Cocteau Twins' Peppermint Pig single for instance, but recently realised that a US version of the CD was released in 1991 and, although outside of the "First Ten Years" remit, still helped me paint a complete picture. So after acquiring that version, I've added it to the blog entry at the end, please reference <a href="http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/peppermint-pig-pigging-mint.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">here</span></a> for the additional information (at the bottom of the page)<br />
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As I said, it's difficult to know sometimes whether there are other versions that exist. I used to think that there were only three versions of the Cocteau Twins first single Lullabies, only one of these being an original from 1982. When this happens, I hold back a little to give myself time to discover any other versions. Thankfully I did wait as I discovered what must be a very rare gem, so much so that I think I must also share this :<br />
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This is rocking horse poo and is about as rare to find as one of the these four versions of the Lullabies single. Somewhere out there may be something even rarer than the above, an original poster or postcard for the Lullabies single. I haven't found one yet, but as always, that doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. The image is taken from a book by Stefan Lorant published in 1937 called <a href="http://exploriment.tumblr.com/post/125708536157/our-lily-and-arum-lily-from-the-liliput-pocket" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Liliput Pocket Omnibus</span></a><br />
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So here we go then, Cocteau Twins 1982 single Lullabies<br />
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(1) Netherlands 12"<br />
(2) UK 12"<br />
(3) UK CD<br />
(4) US CD<br />
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The two CD's are re-issues from 1991. That is strictly outside of my collecting remit of the first ten years, but it would be a shame not to include them when there are just these four versions.<br />
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(1) Netherlands 12"- 4AD / CNR - 151.089 released in 1982<br />
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This is the rare one. Lullabies was the first Cocteau Twins single and was released in the UK and can be quite easily found. It wasn't until very recently that I discovered that it was also released in the Netherlands. The item on ebay had no photo and only had a description of the catalogue number. Discogs was a useful tool here, becasue even though it wasn't listed on Discogs, I could go to the CNR Weesp company to see if this catalogue was missing from the listings and it was. Something had to belong to the missing catalogue number, so I took it as a hint that this ebay item may be genuine....and it was!<br />
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This version has a slightly darker contrast on the cover than the colouring of the UK version.<br />
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The back cover has a slight amendment to the 4AD logo at the bottom :<br />
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It shows the catalogue number which is poorly printed and a little blurred (Do not adjust your set)<br />
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As is also the text "Marketed by CNR Weesp" in the bottom right corner<br />
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The labels are intersesting, as they resemble the 4AD labels of the previous year (1981). If my label history of 4AD is correct (<a href="http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/4ad-original-releases-re-prints-and.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">here</span></a>), 4AD must have distributed left over (possibly??) labels from 1981 out of the UK for the non-uk releases. (4AD labels were still used for Bauhaus releases in Greece even when Bauhaus were no longer with 4AD but by then on Beggars Banquet)<br />
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These crumpled paper labels were used on UK releases in 1981 and then they moved onto other picture labels in 1982 (as you will see in release 2). This Netherlands version still has the crumpled paper picture and older black 4AD label design<br />
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(2) UK 12" - 4AD - BAD 213<br />
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The UK version is lighter and brighter in colour than the Netherlands version<br />
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The catalogue number on the back sleeve is at a 45 degree angle (who knows why)<br />
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On one side the label has the female wrestlers picture, typical of 4AD in 1982, one of three picture labels used that year<br />
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and the other label all in white also typical of 1982 and progressed on from the 1981 black label.<br />
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(3) UK CD- 4AD - BAD 213CD released in 1991<br />
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As with the CD single for Peppermint Pig, this was released for a singles box set. But either some were sold separately or since then, some scrupulous traders have split them on the second hand market to make more money.<br />
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The UK version comes in a slim CD jewel case and the cover is the same as the original 12" a typical single cover that folds over itself and shows the 12" back cover on the inside<br />
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(4) US CD- Capitol - C2-15766 released in 1991<br />
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As with the UK version, this was part of a set but could also have been sold seperatly. The colour of both the UK and US CD's are a pinky bronze colour. But the US disc is slightly darker in colour than the UK one<br />
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The front cover is different to the UK CD version as it only has a single piece with a white back, no folder over with the back cover of the 12".<br />
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The inlay is also quite different with both the Capitol and 4AD logos<br />
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These are the four versions I have found so far. As with the Peppermint Pig single, if I find any more, or even a postcard or poster, I will add it here and let you all know about it.<br />
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Full listing here on <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Lullabies/master/5551" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Discogs</span></a>jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-29882358907565380952016-04-21T07:47:00.001+01:002016-04-21T07:47:13.810+01:00Utrecht International Record Fair 2016I have seen adverts for the Utretcht International Record Fair for a few years now and always wondered what it would be like to see it for myself. I live in the UK, so getting there wouldn't be that difficult, but I'm far away from being a comfortable seasoned traveller. This is not helped by the fact that I have one of the greatest disadvantages of being English. That means I belong to a country where the language is spoken nearly the world over and so, many English people, myself included, don't ever feel the need to even try and speak another language. Don't get me wrong, speaking other languages gives a person great confidence and potential, but my problem, apart from being English and being awfully lazy as well, is that I'm just not cut out for languages at all. I can barely master English (as many of you readers may well be aware of) so I'm awful at other languages. This doesn't help one's confidence when planning to go abroad. I personally would think it ignorant if someone talked to me in England in another langauge and just expected me to understand them and help them. So I think it's ignorant of me to be the same abroad. But then, if I had to learn another language to go abroad, I simply wouldn't travel. So I drag my ignorant arse around other people's countries with no attempt at the local languages. This makes me ashamed to be so ignorant and lazy, which puts me off travelling. Thankfully I have a wife that isn't so ignorant, so she drags my sorry ass to places I wouldn't dare to go myself, because I'm pathetic!!<br />
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This holiday was supposed to be different. I really wanted to see if the International Record fair would restore my faith in record fairs in general and in the traders as well, after all it should be the pinnacle in record buying. So I talked about it with my wife, who said I should go. As usual, the idea excited me no end, but the prospect of dragging my ignorant arse across Europe quashed that excitement harshly. I know the rest of the world probably think that most British people are drunk, inconsiderate twats when abroad and so most foreigners expectations are likely considerably low anyway, but I have a problem with re-enforcing negative stereotypes. I like to think that as a person with strange dress sense and an alternative view on life, it's a life bonus to hit people that have a stereotype with a persona of intelligence and moral fibre (rarely found in many walks of life). I don't care what people think of me, I do care what I would think of me if I bumped into myself on the street. My wife says I think too much....which was the whole problem, I was going to go, then I talked myself out of it, then changed my mind again, then decided against it.<br />
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After a couple of months fighting with myself over the decision to go, my wonderful wife offered to go with me and just get the thing booked. So we did.<br />
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The flight only took an hour to Amsterdam. We booked a hotel in Utrecht right next to the train station, which was actually reasonably priced for it's location and was only a stone's throw away from the location of the record fair as well. The trains from Amsterdam Airport to Utrecht are every 15 minutes and it takes about 30 minutes travel time. We took out extra luggage space for the flight, just in case I found loads of stuff at the fair and needed to bring all that heavy vinyl back in a suitcase ( only hand luggage was included in the flight price). I had no idea if I would return empty handed or packed to the gills with so much stuff that I would be overweight at the airport check in on the way back....I had no clue if this fair would be the same as all the other UK fairs and be a total disapointment, but just bigger, or be an absolute delight.<br />
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The fair runs over two days, Saturday and Sunday. If the pickings were amazing, I may do both days, if they weren't, I may be going crazy by lunch time. We booked 4 nights at the hotel, so if my worst fears were realised we would still have time to look around Utrecht and even Amsterdam. Besides which, Holland has so many record shops, surely the backup of those may rescue an otherwise disastrous trip. There was plenty to do otherwise. So I booked tickets just for the Saturday in advance, that way if the fair was awful, at least I wouldn't have wasted a weekend ticket. If the fair was unbelievably good, I could still go on the Sunday as well and buy a ticket on the door. The tickets where about 12 Euro's each for one day and the weekend ticket wasn't much cheaper than buying the two days individually. There are supposed to be around 500 stall holders, but I have seen this before where exagerations border on complete lies.<br />
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The most difficult thing about the trip would be inconsideratly dragging a bored wife around with me for 5 days. Usually when my wife books a holiday, I remain totally ambivalent to the prospect, even right up to the day itself. This is mostly becuause of the reasons explained earlier and also becasue of the uncertainty that usually goes with a holiday. I like to know what to expect and have every scenario covered, which when it comes to holidays abroad is just unreasonable and impossible. This time, although there were still so many unknowns about this trip, I was excited and my wife was completly non-plussed. Once we got on the way to the airport though, we had everything planned and discussed beforehand. I just bought the Saturday tickets for us both with the option of doing Sunday if needed. I printed off a booklet of my 4AD collection from Discogs and also another booklet of my wantlist from Discogs too. The plan was for me to hunt through the records on each stall and when I found something that had potential, my wife would look the item up on my list. That would keep us both involved and hopefully try and minimise her boredom. She took her kindle book reader anyway just in case.<br />
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We arrived in Utrecht on the Friday afternoon and booked into the Hotel NH Utrecht, a surpisingly nice hotel. We had a tip to get a room as far up as possible as recent renovations had started at the top of the tower and worked down. The room was wonderful on the 15th floor and had an amazing view over the south of the city. After settling in we went out into the city to get something to eat. The Utrecht Centraal train station has quite a few fast food eateries that open quite late. The city centre canal has quite a selection of places to eat. We wanted to find some traditional Dutch food, but found that difficult to find. Instead, like in the UK, there were loads of Italian, Indian, Turkish and Greek restaurants and after a long day we just settled for an Indian, which was wonderful. While in there waiting for our food to arrive, two men just finishing and leaving the restuarant asked me if I was a trader at the fair, he thought he recognised me. They were traders themselves and like many we bumped into over the weekend, especially at the hotel, they had set up that day ready for the weekend.<br />
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The fair opens at 9am on Saturday. I planned to get there early to maximise the day, although I had read a review of previous fairs that told me that the Saturday is for enthusiastic collectors and Saturday morning brings the highest prices. Sunday tends to be cut price attempting to lure the passer by rather than the avid collector.<br />
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There is a map of the trade hall showing the hundreds of traders and who they are and which pitches they hold. Each one also has a small description of what they sell, if they bother to tell you. From those I put together a battle plan of the most likely top targets to hit first. There is a whole section in the fair devoted to Metal / Punk / New Wave, but the list of best potentials seemed to be all over the place. At least I had a plan, which was a start, which gave me a zig zag through the floor and at least gave me a focus to start on.<br />
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Although the fair is advertised as being held at Jaarbeurs which looked on a map to be part of the Beatrix Theatre, in fact it's accross the road and is a massive exhibition centre. On the Saturday morning after a quick breakfast stop in the train station, we made our way to the exhibition centre. I wasn't sure how many people would be lined up at the entrance at the opening time and I even wondered if it would be best to hit the fair a little later to miss any initial rush. There were streams of people walking their way to the entrance, strangely a mix of all sorts of people. This mixture made me wonder if we were going the right way as a 50/50 gender mix is not the record fair norm at all. When we got in I realised why. The entrance queue moved pretty quickly as the tickets were all printed barcodes which got the public through pretty fast. Once zapped in, I was all ready to go, trader map in hand. But in front of us was a massive hall of antique traders. As far as the eye could see, there were tables of bronze and old wood. I remembered another review of the fair which talked about getting past the other halls of traders, non music related. We moved into another hall and the antigues had turned into comics and movie collectables. We couldn't find any music at all, just hundreds of traders and people looking at "vintage" collectables. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a yellow sign that stood over a stall which said "45's". As we neared the sign, the next hall showed a mixture of scruffy looking and poorly labelled traders selling cheap vinyl mixed with other souvineer stalls, this still wasn't the fair I was looking for. Through into another hall there was a half empty expanse and I thought that this would be it. There were a buch of food traders selling allsorts of fast food and more cheap vinyl traders that looked like the records had seen too many poor days. Through the food retailers though was another hall, filled with lots of vinyl traders covered in banners and hanging "eye catchers" as their backdrops.<br />
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My poor wife, I was really concerned with the hell I was going to put her through for the next few hours, but she had a brave face on and we started to tuck in. The first stall was just on the outside of the main hall and looked sparse. The guy with his missus behind the counter was wearing a leather jacket and looked like a full on metal rocker and his stall was half empty. When a trader lays out his stock flat on the table, he hasn't got much to sell. That stall didn't last long, onto the next one. The hardest thing moving from one planned stall to another was closing my eyes to the draw of signs such as "New Wave" and "Alternative" sections on other stalls. I was determined to stick to my plan and get to the what I thought was the most likely best hitters.<br />
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After the third or fourth stall and finding they had practically nothing of what they had advertised as having and nearly a half hour of finding nothing even close to any 4AD stuff on sale, I started to get frustrated and pulled away from my plan by the section signs on other traders stalls. The problem with the fair is getting lost if you randomly have no method of going through the stall holders. I should have crossed off the ones I had visited as after an hour, I couldn't remember which stalls I had been through already. I'm usually not lost easily and I'm well coordinated, yet already I was struggling. I think just starting at one end and working a way through may seem a logical way to hit the rows one after the other, but that just may take a week to work your way through. The size of the fair just can't be under estimated, it's fucking huge!<br />
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After about an hour and half way through my list, I still hadn't bought a thing. I have talked before about how easy it is to recognise early if you are onto a winner. If there are no Cocteau Twins or Pixies, there's every chance that you won't find anything else. I had found practically nothing and was suprised that I hadn't bumped into any Cocteau Twins at all, anywhere. I had on my list a reminder to drop in on the Discogs stall and simply just thank them for a great site. With all the problems that I do have with Discogs, next to what I had before, which was an annoying Excel spreadsheet, it's an absolute godsend of a site. I turned up to the Discogs stall still empty handed. A lovel lady greeted me and asked if I had used Discogs. Of course I had to tell her how much I liked Discogs and also how much it also annoyed me as well, particularly the online snobbery of some of it's ardent users. She asked me to get in touch with her about any behaviour, but you can't stop people being gits online, otherwise there would be practically no-one on the internet. She left me her card and gave me a free vinyl carrier and some Discogs stickers. It was good to put a personal face to Discogs.<br />
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After a quick loo break, I finally bought an item. I was off finally after nearly two hours of nothing. There were quite a few items over the next few stalls that I already had. I was purposefully avoiding the UK stalls as I have practically everything on UK releases. It was amazing how easily I could spot a UK stall without talking to the trader or looking at the trading sign above the stall. Every UK trader had the same predictable stuff that I trawl through when at home at record fairs. There was more than once when I got halfway through a box and said "I think this is a UK stall" and lo and behold it would be.<br />
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In the centre of the Metal / Punk / New Wave section of the fair was an amazing trader that sold tons of Dark Wave, Industrial and Goth stuff. In there was the first Dead Can Dance stuff I had found as well as loads of cool stuff, unfortunately all ridiculously priced. There were a couple of Love Is Colder Than Death vinyl LP's both of which were priced at over 100 Euros each. The stall also had a Dead Can Dance picture disc, a bootleg, but a nice one. At first I thought the 20 Euro asking price was too much, but I changed my mind later in the day and by then it was gone. That's a lesson right there, if you see something and you are thinking twice about getting it, then just get it, because it may well be gone before long.<br />
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One other great stall was a Japanese owned stall of just Japanese releases. I got a Cocteau Twins and a This Mortal Coil releases from there. A lot cheaper than getting them posted from Japan. That stall also had good quality releases and all labeled very clearly. It was one of the best laid out stalls in the entire fair, very professional. By lunchtime we had resorted to just going up and down each aisle and picking out any New Wave or Indie section. The vast majority had absolutely nothing at all. Overall it was very surprising how few pickings there was. I still think that the main vinyl collecting market is still stuck in the sixties and seventies.<br />
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At lunchtime we pigged out on a disgustingly sickly waffle which just dripped with fat and sugar but filled a hole for a few hours. By the end of the day, this is what we had picked up :<br />
<br />
The Breeders - Pod (4AD, Rough Trade - RTD 168) LP, <br />
Cocteau Twins - Echoes In A Shallow Bay (Virgin, 4AD - 15VB-1064, BAD 511) 12" <br />
Colin Newman - A-Z (Beggars Banquet - BEGA 20) LP, <br />
Colin Newman - Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish (CNR Records, CNR Records - 656 010, 656010) LP, <br />
Colour Box - Breakdown (Second Version) (4AD, Megadisc - BAD 304, VR 22633) 12" <br />
Dead Can Dance - Spleen And Ideal (DG Discos - DG-219) LP, <br />
Modern English - After The Snow (Expanded Music - EX 28) LP,<br />
Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven (Rough Trade, 4AD - RTD 052T, M1-266) 12" <br />
Pixies - Surfer Rosa (4AD - VG 50372) LP, <br />
Pixies - Surfer Rosa (4AD, 4AD, Rough Trade, Rough Trade - MD 7917, RTD 72) LP, <br />
This Mortal Coil - Filigree & Shadow (Virgin - 60047) 2xLP, <br />
This Mortal Coil - It'll End In Tears (4AD - YQ-7045) LP, <br />
Various - Doctor Death's Volume I - Cette Enfant Me Fia Mourir (C'est La Mort - CLM001) LP, <br />
Various - Lonely Is An Eyesore (DG Discos - DG-214)<br />
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...and also a non 4AD release I had on my wantlist, an LP I have been after for a while and is hilarious. </div>
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Bad News (3) - Bad News (EMI, EMI - EMC 3535, 74 8310 1) LP,<br />
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My verdict on the Utrecht International Record Fair? It left me slightly warm. It was huge, there was a massive amount of vinyl on offer, but out of all that vinyl there small pickings from the 900 items I have on my wantlist. Record traders seem to be an internationally poorly organised set of beasts with a crazy variation of prices. There were a couple of items I already had that were priced in the range of a hundred Euros that just weren't worth that kind of money. Maybe on the Sunday they would have gone down in price, but after a full eight hours of searching, I was knackered and didn't fancy starting to rifle through A-Z boxes with all mixed genres in a hope of having a small amount of luck. My wonderful wife was also extremely knackered as well and hadn't moaned once all day. If it had been the other way around, I would have struggled to have been that patient and supportive. I am a lucky sod really.</div>
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I think I would go again. I would probably go row by row next time and pick out the labelled boxes on each stall. I may even confine myself to a Sunday to see if the prices are any better, although the pickings may be even slimmer by then as well.<br />
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Deciding not to go back on Sunday, gave us two days in Holland to do a spot of sight seeing. Utrecht is a wonderful place and well worth a visit. On the Monday we made a train ride to Amsterdam which in contrast is too busy and filthy next to the cleanliness of Utrecht (maybe because of all the drunk and stoned Brits that visit Amsterdam). There was always going to be an element of record shopping that had to be done when in Holland and the record fair just wasn't enough. So once again I dragged my poor wife around Amsterdam looking for what one website called the best record shops in Amsterdam. After hours once again spent looking through records, I finished with just one purchase :<br />
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The Birthday Party - Prayers On Fire (4AD, CNR Records - 656.009) LP, </div>
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By Monday afternoon both my wife and I had had enough of records and went around Amsterdam on a boat trip trying not to waste our tour money by falling asleep in our seats. </div>
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The whole experience was absolutely knackering. It was great to get home and get some rest. It's hard to know if it was all worth it for just 16 records. I suppose it beats doing it all online and I got to see some of Holland as well. Utrecht is a great city.<br />
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On a final footnote, if you ever go to a large fair such as this, take some hand cleansing gel with you. Once back home, I noticed that both my eyes had started with infections and it was only at that point I realised that I was handling goods that hundreds of other people had also rifled through. A good anti bacterial cleanser used occasionally may be a good idea.<br />
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Thanks for reading and sorry for taking so long once again to add a post. I will once again endeavour to make an effort and keep posting</div>
jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-64586346787653399952016-01-16T20:33:00.001+00:002016-01-16T20:33:52.850+00:00Business and Art, the eternal conflictI had an interesting but short conversation with a couple of colleagues at work a couple of weeks ago where they suggested that all music and all films are made purely for money and nothing else. To say I was shocked at this universal statement of absolute truth would be an extreme underestimation. The shock turned to disbelief that there are so many people out there that think that way, which turned to great pity for those that never open themselves up to the beauty of the art that artists tear themselves apart to make.<br />
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After reeling from the shock for a couple of hours, it did make me think of how music has progressed and changed over the last century and how Indie labels have been the modern saviour of music as a real art form.<br />
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As popular music grew in the 1940's and 1950's an industry grew on the back of it, manufacturing, recording and managing artists that were as happy performing their music for themselves which was unprofitable to the entourage as they were to paying audiences. The lure of the big bucks meant better returns from artists that could be squeezed and manipulated to the industries target markets rather than the small time risky propositions of the artist that wouldn't bend to the will of the money men.<br />
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It made a certain business sense to control an artist towards a carefully prepared target audience. But already the music artist with wild ideas was left to pick at the bones of industry or have no backing at all if they didn’t tow the company line in creative thinking. Thankfully the Sixties saw many an example of artists breaking free of these moulds and yet still making huge slabs of money for the controlling industry, which changed the way the executives saw the potential in an artist and gave them more space to explore and craft their art. But even in the heady days of the Sixties and Seventies when vast amounts of wealth was coming in from music, the artists were seeing hardly any of it. Only the artists with good and ruthless personal managers managed to squeeze anything out of the industry that gorged and fed off the artist.<br />
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The late Sixties and early Seventies did see a lot of new artists given the chance to record music with little prospect of fame and fortune as the industry started trying to learn from the past by taking up the trend of throwing lots of different artists out into the world in a hope that some of them would skyrocket. But generally, this was just another business ploy, mostly poorly executed and, as always, the interest wasn’t in the music at all, but in the fortunes it could create. Artists hated the business and the business hated anything from the artist that wasn't a guarentee of big bucks.<br />
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If you play devils advocate, you can see that both sides needed each other. But artists would act as temper tantrummed children trying to get their own way and throwing their toys out the pram when they didn't get their way and record companies and managment teams would manipulate their artists and drop them whenever the big money peak wasn't maintained.<br />
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There were always small independent record companies around that found the talent which then bigger companies would snatch up when popularity loomed. They were never that succesful and didn't last very long.<br />
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When punk came along it drove a similar do-it-yourself mentality that the artists had over to those that loved the music and chose to release their music themselves. This spawned a new wave of independent labels, management and even distribution that cared about the music they pedalled unlike their predessessors who most of the time didn't even listen to the music they made money from.<br />
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It was still a far from perfect marriage between artist and business. Many artists not really knowing what the major labels and management had been like previously, still thought they had a poor deal and the new independents were either extremely inexperienced, or had more passion for the music than they had business sense. This is where labels such as 4AD, Beggars Banquet, Factory and Creation came from. Their passion for the music they handled and promoted was always undeniably evident, not for the money the artists could make them but because they loved the music.<br />
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The Eighties then became a very difficult time for these independents to try and find that elusive level between the love of the music and care for the business. Torn between the whole point of these labels which was to get amazing music heard against making enough money to be able to continue doing that, many indie's ran out of money and disintegrated. I have a lot of respect for 4AD as they were one of the few labels to manage that careful balance and be able to keep going when all around them were failing. Yet even through that whole period, the artists from all these labels still complained about being ripped off by their "greedy" or deceitful labels.<br />
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Many of the profilic small independent labels around today were inspired by these post punk labels such as 4AD. Not all of the labels in those early days were greedy business exploiters and not all the Indie's of the Seventies and Eighties were primarily lovers of the art they produced (Stock, Aitken and Waterman of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan fame were an Indie label who were a pure business with a marketing strategy that made their music and artists to fit that agenda. Yes they also made their artists), but today we have some amazing small labels that primarily do it for the love of music and any money made is a secondary blessing.<br />
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There is an interesting last footnote to all this. There is a growing trend for artists to look after their own business managment, funding, marketing and distribution themselves. Gary Numan is about to start completely from scratch on his new album through <a href="http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/garynuman" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Pledge Music</span></a> where fans can buy a special pass to have access to his 12 month process of writing, recording and even trying to find inspiration for an album he's not even started on yet. The idea of sites such as Pledge Music is for artists to get orders for an upcoming album so that money can be made to actually get them made. A clever idea which has been creatively used to judge demand for special editions and special packages and even to sell autographs and instruments from the sessions. All arranged by the artists themselves.<br />
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Also, where at one time artists toured to promote an album, increasingly an album is produced to promote a tour and an artist makes money from touring and the album is almost a promotional giveaway.<br />
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Most artists who create music, do it because it's a part of their soul, a part of their make-up. It's an unfortunate reality, that to get that art out to people costs money and money from such output allows an artist to live a life where they can create more art.<br />
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So is art created purely to make money? NO, I'm afraid an artists primary reason for creating art isn't money. If an artists states that money is the reason for making their art, they ain't artists in my opinion.jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-72133395251237590512015-12-31T23:00:00.000+00:002015-12-31T23:00:16.392+00:00The sands of time keep on dropping away, darn it!<div>
Can anyone remember where I was this time last year?</div>
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Well I was desperately trying to get my want list down to below 900 items. Time is running out quicker than you may at first think between now and 4AD's 50th anniversary in 2030. I know what you are saying, 900 items in 15 years, that should be so easy. But I'm still discovering as many new items as I am finding, as last year's countdown to the new year showed. </div>
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I really wanted to be able to strike off a 100 items per year and at least stay ahead of the falling sands. All year I have been giving myself a hard time as the reduction in my wantlist just didn't seem to go down that much month on month. </div>
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Now at the end of 2015, a year on from trying to get below 900 items ....and failing and now have my wantlist down to...wait for it....</div>
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893</div>
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Hold on though, despite the awful lack of stuff to buy at record fairs and shops around the country, I have been buying online all year through (well except for December as I was a little strapped for cash). So I have I ended up only 13 items lower than this time last year. All year I've been perplexed as to why this is happening until I looked at how many items I have acquired this year, nearly 130. </div>
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This is why I don't have much time left until 2030. It doesn't help of course that I have such problems finding the stuff I need to get on top of everything else. Thankfully I got some great Aussie releases, thanks to a cousin in Oz (thanks Sophie and Tom) and travelling family. Postage from Australia is so expensive!</div>
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There's a few things I ought to be adding to this blog by now. I have some amazing posters, I have actually got some complete releases now other than Cocteau Twins Peppermint Pig and Bauhaus's Dark Entries. I have actually visited and had a nice discussion with an actual professional trader, so it would be nice to get a trader's perspective from him. And, of course, I still have many duplicate items that I need to give away, including a very nice Japanese Cocteau Twins vinyl edition of Treasure, worth a reasonable amount I'll tell you. So I have plenty to blog about in 2016</div>
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So a Happy New Year to you all and all the luck for this year in all your crazy collecting ventures!</div>
jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-29297814989519107892015-11-11T22:15:00.000+00:002015-11-11T22:15:23.517+00:00Top Ten 4AD Covers, What's Yours?A reader got in touch with me recently and asked me to do a feature on my top 4AD cover designs (Thanks Ar Ti).<br />
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The late seventies and early eighties independent music labels became renowned for their artwork. Of course 4AD, along with Factory, became synonymous for a label identity created through their cover art. All art is so very subjective. I did a blog entry on my favourite 4AD albums, but I'm sure there were many people that scratched their heads wondering why I picked what I did. I think visual art is even more subjective and opinion seemingly more open to ridicule. Nevertheless, I know what I like and why. My opinion has been asked for so I shall give it.<br />
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It is my opinion though which tends to cause some arguments. I have always had an issue between the lines of art and function or art and business. The past couple of decades have seen very clever people in business using clever strategy to sell something as art, that basically isn't art at all. Many of us are drawn to limited numbers, a special opportunity to experience something that only the appreciative will get to experience, but marketing anything as limited doesn't make it an instant collectible. Limited edition Mars bar anyone? In a similar way, just because something is marketed as art, doesn't make it art in my opinion. Designers are the problem. That half way house where an artist uses their talent to spruce up a functional item. While I respect the talent, I think many of these examples are simply not art. If a ceramic artist creates a cup, it's still a cup, no matter how talented the artist is. Selling it as a piece of art is just marketing. A cup is not made to represent any kind of emotional state or to represent the feelings or despair of its maker, it's simply to drink out of. A car is a functional item and, while it is nice to drive a nice looking car, it's not a work of art. Instead it is an object that has had the food budget of a third world country spent on it just to get potential buyers to go weak at the knees at the sight of it rolling around the streets of an eerily deserted city road.<br />
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The music industry is where sonic art meets visual art and a greater clash between representation and pure marketing uncomfortably meet. There's a blurred line between music made purely for commerce, cleverly marketed and packaged as the "real deal" against music made by artists that primarily make music to express themselves. My opinion is that designers for labels such as Factory and 4AD, although true artists, inadvertently helped blur the lines between function and art. For me album design is just on the right side of art, like a beautiful piece of painting on the side of a cup. The cup isn't neccasirly art, but the painting is. It doesn't matter how much artistic talent a designer has, if their work is poured into a functional item, for me the item doesn't become art.<br />
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But then I am an over opinionated walrus!!!<br />
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I've always loved the visual side of collecting music. I was always in awe of Roger Dean's designs in the seventies of strange other worlds on his Yes album covers. There was nothing better than sitting listening to Budgie's Never Turn Your Back On A Friend while studying the gorgeous full colour gatefold sleeve<br />
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I always thought that the Cocteau Twins cover design for Love's Easy Tears was very similar to Pink Floyd's Meddle<br />
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Anyway, onto my top ten 4AD covers, in no particular order, let's get on with it...<br />
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1 - Birthday Party - Junkyard<br />
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You may think that I would completely bow down to 23 Envelope but thats not true. I don't care for popular opinion or trend of thought. Just because I love much of what 4AD produced, there is no rulebook that says I have to be elitist in my personal taste.<br />
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This picture was created by an artist called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roth" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Ed Roth</span></a> who was a custom car designer and builder who put his talents into cartoons and illustrations. His character Rat Fink (with the gun) was a sort of alternative Mickey Mouse. I think that this cartoon represents the music perfectly, tight and structured while on the verge of chaos and both simultanious implosion and explosion.<br />
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2 - Dead Can Dance - Aion poster<br />
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Not the actual cover, but the UK tour poster. I like the actual cover of the album itself which is a very small part of the <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/delight/delightc.jpg" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Garden Of Earthy Delights</span></a> by <span style="color: orange;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Hieronymus Bosch</span></a>. </span>The poster covers the tour around the UK for the Aion album, a tour I had a chance to witness but regrettably I didn't go to. The tour poster is probably my favourite peice of 4AD artwork and looks fantastic framed and displayed. The quality of the colour and print is remarkable and must have cost a sweet sum to have had printed. If you ever get a chance to purchase this, you won't be disappointed. Of course the album is amazing too and featured in my <a href="http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/4ad-top-ten-albums.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Top 10 4AD Albums</span></a> list (in fact, a lot do, so am I biased towards the sleeve design).<br />
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3 - Dead Can Dance - Within The Realm of a Dying Sun<br />
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This cover always reminds me of Joy Division's Closer album cover in a small way. It's a step between life and death as the figure almost looks like an actual person cloaked and not an actual statue in a graveyard. The cover's photograph was taken in Paris, at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. It features the grave of the politician <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Grave_of_Fran%C3%A7ois-Vincent_Raspail" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Raspail</span></a>. Can you get more gothic than this and could the music be anymore gothic as well. Another fine example of the cover reflecting the mood of the music therein.<br />
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4 - Colourbox - Baby I love You So<br />
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I'm a sucker for reds. I know nothing about the images on this release, I just love the feel of the image. Very velvety. Let's hope that somewhere out there, there exists a poster for this. For me the font and text are irrelevant. "Sacriledge!" I hear you scream, but this is where function has to be performed for me. This would be even better without the text, yet maybe the 45 in the centre I would let stay. Don't get me wrong, the choice and style of font and the presentation of text is amazing, but it is functional in my opinion and would be better without it. But needs must as the devil grinds the marketing wheel. Still an amazing cover though<br />
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5 - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares<br />
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Used for the background of this blog. Reminds me of a drowned former glamourous life like a memory on a sea floor of some luxury liner. I wouldn't say the music is as atmospheric as the cover suggests, perhaps one small example of where the cover doesn't always accurately reflect the music within. I love the music on this album, but Bulgarian folk music can be quite harsh and beautiful at the same time, something not really reflected here. Still as a piece of artwork stood alone, it's a magical piece of photography.<br />
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6 - Pixies - Doolittle<br />
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The original UK release of Doolittle came as such a great package. A plastic bag with the cover printed on it, a full colour 12" 16 page booklet and an inner sleeve. Also 4AD sold a set of postcards with the artwork from the booklet. This is a full art set, an amazing collection of photography reflecting the songs of the album. The graphical element added to the overall look of the artwork and fits the metronomic feel of the songs. The images fit so well with the music on the album, even if the cover is overtly obvious with it's interpretation of the song Monkey Gone To Heaven, the artworks only negative reflection.<br />
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7- Coctea Twins - Treasure<br />
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Maybe it's because V23 liked to reflect the music in their covers that I like a lot of the covers for Cocteau Twins releases. I like the music and the covers reflect the music, so it should go that I like the covers as well.<br />
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This cover for me is very gothic. Hints of the Victorian and a melancholic wedding. The use of material gives you a reminder to your senses of something that you have have touched before and felt in your fingers, material that feels soft to the skin but coarse between a finger and thumb. Eerie and beautiful, it looks almost derelict, decaying. Incredible gothic beauty<br />
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8 - Cocteau Twins - The Spangle Maker<br />
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Victiorialand would be included in my top ten except for the beige surround which ruins the cover. But The Spangle Maker is a beautiful piece of work.<br />
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The original UK release came with an embossed sleeve where the frame was slightly raised around the photograph by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_K%C3%A4sebier" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Gertrude Käsebier</span></a> called The Crystal Gazer. Once again that Victorian feel blends with the gothic feel of the music and the blurred, distorted edges reflect the wash of effects used on the Cocteau Twins signature guitar sound. There are no fonts and text needed here. The tour poster is quite an incredible piece as well.<br />
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9- Cocteau Twins - Head over heels & Sunburst and Snowblind<br />
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Head Over Heels along with Sunburst and Snowblind is just the most brilliant photography. Nigel Grierson did some of the most unusual things to get shots like these. The high quality and sharpness in the variation of colour is just breathtaking. The photos encourage you to not only look deep into the detail and the range of colour, but to look more closely at the every day beauty around us all in the seemingly randomness of patterns in nature, things you wouldn't normally look at closely. A set of posters from these photography sessions looks incredible framed and mounted. I know as I have them in my hallway.<br />
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10 - Lush - Scar<br />
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The reason I have included the rear sleeve here is because the whole cover (even inside the outer sleeve) is a collective work of art. Once again it reflects the harsh and soft combination of the music. If this is shoegaze, those are some interesting footwear. This was released in an era when computer generated graphics were all the rage and years on look really tacky. But here Vaughan Oliver and Christopher Bigg have resisted the trend and produced something much more timeless.<br />
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All comments are welcome, remember these are just my personal choices and opinion, which I have a right to, even if you think my opinion is total tosh. Would love to hear your preferences....<br />
<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-526922407574651342015-10-26T13:29:00.000+00:002015-10-26T13:29:36.742+00:00How do you organise your vinyl, autobiographically?I've started running out of room... and so begins the record collectors dilemma. If I'm making room perhaps I should also re-order my collection?<br />
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There is something very OCD about storing records. I'm not too bad with it, not as bad as some collectors that like to implement all kinds of wierd and wonderful filing systems. Collecting records is a strange past time. I think that any record collector would love someone to browse through their records in awe, jealousy or just admiration. Unfortutely, this rarely if ever happens. So it's probably best to sort your own collection in what ever way suites yourself, becasue it's highly unlikely that anyone else will be struggling to find anything in your racks of vinyl.<br />
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To start with I thought I had made some room, which I could then use to expand my growing 4AD collection into. But as is usual I couldn't just stick to just re-organising the vinyl. So I had a total rethink (once again) of how I store my CD's, cassettes, 7 inches, posters, awkward boxes etc and also my wife's books and our DVD's. The whole room then was up for a re-design. Then, if the room is under review, shouldn't the decor?<br />
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No, No, No, No STOP!!!!<br />
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The spare bedroom where all my stuff is stored has had so many changes over the last ten years. To begin with it was a spare bedroom. Then it got transformed into the computer room, until we realised that the last thing either of us wanted to do was go and sit like billy-no-mates up stairs every time we wanted to go on the internet. I then redecorated the whole room, made a whole wall a rack of shelving units for videos, books and of course vinyl. I also designed and built a huge four poster bed to fit snuggly in the room. It was an amazing room, but it was never used as a bedroom and the four poster bed was so large there was no room for anything else.<br />
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So I sold the four poster bed and we got a bed settee. That did seem like a good idea at the time, a sofa for most of the time and a bed if visitors ever stayed over. That worked ok except we were never popular enough for anyone to stay over. Then when my wife started to study for her exams we needed an office, yet again. So now out has gone the bed settee and back in has come an office desk.<br />
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I made some room by moving around some of my box sets and set about re-ordering the 12" singles and LPs which were all in alphabetical order (easy mode). I needed to make room for my expanding 4AD which was the main reason for the re-sort. So I've split everything into three parts, 4AD, old music and new music. Typically this was a self styled seperation. My definiation of old and new music was pre-punk and post punk, so all my prog is pre-punk and all my goth and industrial is post punk. Of course there are some that are very close to call. Would Nirvana go under the pre-punk style as just another rock band, or were they heavily influenced by punk and therefore go under post punk? Of course they were punk influenced so that one was quite easy, but some records proved to be difficult. Still, I managed to split my collection into three parts ok. But then after an itial re-arrangement, I found out I didn't make much space for expansion at all.<br />
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I had to get more vinyl storage space. I could have gone to a specialist cabinet maker. There are a few out there that specialised in vinyl storage such as the <a href="http://www.i-cubes.co.uk/12-inch-lp-vinyl-storage-shop.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">i-Cube</span></a>. I had invented a more robust version of this myself 20 years ago when I moved around quite a bit. It involved a square cabinet which could be stacked either end up, that fitted vinyl inside perfectly but also cleverly stacked well either side my side or one on top of another to what ever arrangement I required. Each box was also handy to tip onto it's back and carry and stack when moving home. But I succomb to the simpliest solution, Ikea sell a unit system called <a href="http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/30275861/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Kallax</span></a> that are perfect for vinyl and can easily be transformed into other useful additions such as draws and baskets. They also stack and fit well with other Ikea units as well. So I bought and assembled a two by two unit which sits nicely on a set of draws. That has opened up loads of extra storage space now on my main vinyl racks for more 4AD.<br />
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Once I've done the vinyl, then will come the CD's, cassettes, posters and everything else to re-organise again. Spare time to do this of course is also at a premium.<br />
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So one part of one room had to be re-organised, which had a knock on effect on the rest of the room and what a suprise, nearly every cupboard, draw and shelf in the whole house nearly has also been re-organised. Always remember when starting a job like this, there are always implications that also need to be taken into account which will throw out any plans you make completely out of the window. At least loads of tat has been thrown away from around the house, loads of clothes recycled and lots of useful but never used stuffies relocated to poeple that will use them.<br />
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It's good to know I'm not a extreme hoarder!!!!jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-19546858487270712192015-09-23T21:00:00.002+01:002015-09-23T21:00:36.357+01:00Will I ever fall in love with Record Fairs ever again?Over the last two weekends I have visited two record fairs in the vain hope of not relying solely on the internet to find the stuff that I want. There is a certain pleasure in rummaging through loads of boxes of interesting music. The elation when finding something you've been looking for for a long time is there for the picking, in good nick and priced reasonably is hard to put into words. It's mostly hard to put into words because I can hardly remember the feeling.<br />
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The vast majority of record shops have little in the way of anything different or away from the norm. I always know how poor a shop is going to be in the first five minutes of entering one. If the shop has no Cocteau Twins or Pixies, stuff that's can be easy to come by on the internet, there's practically no chance of finding any Dead Can Dance, Throwing Muses, Birthday Party or Clan of Xymox.<br />
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I don't just limit my searches when out looking to 4AD stuff. There seems to be an English vacuum in second hand goth, industrial or anything more alternative to Wonderstuff. It would be great to find a section with Front Line Assembly, Diamanda Galas, 1919, Ausgang, Sopor Aeternus and on and on. That would be a dream. But when a simple list as that is just a pipe dream what chance do I have to find any Cold In Berlin, Soviet Soviet or some of the other remarkable music that's around lately. Go online I guess<br />
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But I keep trying out shops and record fairs and the last two weeks have been fine examples of disappointment. The first fair was in Derby a couple of weeks ago. I had been to the fair once before and there was a guy with a stall that had mostly punk and new wave stuff, so I was eager to see if he had any new stock on. After over three hours in a record fair with about 7 or 8 traders with stalls, I didn't find a single item on my want list of nearly 900 items. I did pick up a few interesting little other items though including a Gary Numan LP, 2 Crime And The City Solution singles and a Shellyann Orphan single<br />
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At least I walked away with something. It is disappointing to still have the same amount on my wantlist, to find nothing at all for my 4AD collection is extremely disheartening when a record fair supposed to be the best place to find these items.<br />
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So I decided to travel a bit further affield a go to a record fair that was billed as "the biggest outside of London". Surely that would be what I was looking for. Advertised as 100 tables with traders from all over the country, attended by buyers from all over the world it sounded too good to miss. One of the things I always find funny about these fairs, is how late the traders turn up to the event. 2 minutes before doors open and traders are still wheeling boxes of stock into the venue, leaving you thinking "this is your trade, wake up earlier in a morning".<br />
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There may have been 100 tables (I didn't count), but there were only about 15 to 20 traders, three of which had been at the other fair in Derby just a week before. On asking they had no new stock since the week before. Then as usual there were the bargain basement traders. These have hundreds of CD's, usually mass bought stock that no-one can sell. I know even without spending hours looking that there's gonna be nothing in there. After about three minutes of walking two loops around the tables, I knew only one of them had any chance of anything remotely like what I was looking for. Still I persisted and stretched my patience as much as I could tolerate, knowing I would be writing this blog, and searched though as many of the traders stock as my willingness allowed. But my initial hunch was right, as aways. Only one trader had anything worth buying, the one I had picked out in the first three minutes and none of his stock hit any of the hundreds of items I was looking for, except one.<br />
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The NME Peel sessions compilation was the only find out of thousands of records. I did pick up Cocteau Twins and Birthday Party bootlegs as well as an Xmal Deutschland peel Session release, but none from my list. The bootlegs were quite recent and the Peel session was some years later after Xmal Deutschland had moved on from 4AD.<br />
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It is dis-heartening at times. I would have thought after this long that I would have picked up some specialised trader, eager to find the stuff I want. Instead I generally get "good luck with that" in a semi-sarcastic voice based on the experience of how rarely 4AD stuff is picked up and how quickly it's bought up. As much as buying online is nowhere near as satisfying as browsing through physical boxes looking for that special gem, it's the form I have to keep relying on.<br />
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As a finishing note and as mentioned before, I'm accruing quite a stock of duplicates again just wanting a good home. So watch this space as there are plenty more 4AD items to give away. Here's a sneak preview and you won't believe some of the items I have that just maybe you could own soon. Tell me if you recognise any...<br />
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...and as a last note Andy and I are back in the studio again putting together another song. After months of just not feeling it, Andy has managed to kick me into shape and we're composing again.<br />
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Until next time....guess the releasesjonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-10708534605679953812015-08-18T20:54:00.000+01:002015-08-18T20:54:53.974+01:00Thank You Dear Reader, Thank YouI just had to post again.<br />
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Congratulations to Jez Smith in Florida who won the Greek pressing of the Cocteau Twins album Treasure on lovely vinyl, posted today to Jez. Thanks to Martin Aston for picking the winner as well. I put a list together of folk who entered the draw, numbered by the date and time order of when they requested to be entered. Martin Aston then gave me a random number and what a surprise, that number was 4 of course.<br />
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When I first started this blog I wondered if anyone would be interested in reading it, I guessed that with the power of the internet that I may find one or two like kinded people. More than anything, I wanted to make sure I stuck to this quest and the best way to do that was to make my mission public and more embarrasing if I ever was tempted to change my mind.<br />
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After seven months from starting this blog, I was estatic about getting <a href="http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/celebrating-1000-views.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">1000 views</span></a> of my humble blog. I couldn't believe that there are enough folk out there interested in my crazy mission to want to read this.<br />
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4 years and loads of blogs later and I have over 950 related items collected and I'm expecting to be about half way through getting to the final target of acquiring every release by 4AD from the first decade from every country, in every format, inlcuding all the related compilations and pre-4AD signing releases. I still haven't began to look at putting a website together or even where to exhibit the collection in 2030, which is the main part of the grand plan.<br />
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The journey so far has been incredibly interesting, frustrating, fun, depressing, humbling and rewarding. Today has been a very rewarding day. Giving away a piece of 4AD history to a fan is part of the whole mission and makes me so very happy. If the mission is to exhibit my 4AD collection in order to make sure that the amazing art that 4AD released does not drift into obscurity, giving away a part of it fulfills that same mission. It's also a good day because.....<br />
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This morning this little blog reached 49,999 page views, then......<br />
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...........50,000 page views<br />
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I'm absolutely bowled over. Thank you so much for everyone that has taken time to read this blog, commented on it, entered for any of the giveaways or just given me moral support. I actually believe I can get another 50,000 over the next 4 years which is so far beyond any amount of interest I even dreamed of when I started this. So thank you to you all and please keep on reading, please keep on commenting and please keep your eye out for more giveaways.<br />
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The journey continues ..............<br />
<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-49137736947575155452015-08-11T20:28:00.001+01:002015-08-11T20:28:41.190+01:00You bought it for how much?It's been a long time since my last entry. Ah what can I say, I have no real excuses. But interesting things have happened on ebay this week. Three early Bauhaus test pressings went up for auction in the week and I watched with suprise and dread as the bids sky rocketed for them. Take a deep breath, if you have any of these on your radar...this could induce a wallet attack.<br />
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First up is a test pressing of the flexi-disc 7" of God In An Alcove. This was released in 1982 and was blue in colour and was part of the flexipop magazine that gave away a single with each copy of the magazine. The song came from their debut album In The Flat Field which was released under 4AD, so although released in 1982 after the band moved to Beggars Banquet, it still fits into my collecting criteria. On Discogs the test pressing for this release has sold twice in the last year, once for €15.00 (around £10) and again for $10 (around £6.40). These were sold in February and June of this year, so not so long ago (I can't believe I missed those).<br />
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The ebay auction finished at a whopping £180....ouch!<br />
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The three auctions were all from the same seller. All looked as genuine an item as they could, but I do always wonder how easy it would be to get the regular release and paste a white lable onto it. The next item was a white label test pressing of the 7" single Telegram Sam. I haven't seen a test pressing for this before, so I was quite eager to see if the bidding would stay in the sensible area or sky rocket like the item above also did. When going into an auction, I always think it best to think rationally beforehand of the absolute maximum you are willing to go to before you get involved with the bidding process, as many times a sort of primeval instinct takes over and you can easily convince yourselve that this is the only moment in your life that you will ever see this item for sale and start bidding accordingly. I judged that the item might be worth around £40, seeing as you can easily pick up the full release for a couple of quid. it was already at £45 by the time I found it listed....arse!<br />
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The final winning bid .....£205....what???<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I know smart ass, this isn't the uk version!!</td></tr>
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The final item, the one I could easily have arguments with myself over about how willing I was to push the spending limit on, was a white label test pressing of one of the first pressings of the 7" single Dark Entries. I have reviewed the versions I currently have <a href="http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bauhaus-dark-entries-7-heavenly.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">here</span></a> and it looked as though this could be the crowning piece as the matrices showed it either to be the first Axis version or the blue 4AD labels version. As with the Telegram Sam release, I had never seen a test pressing of this before. It was hard to know what this would be worth so as to set myself a reasonable limit. I actually thought £50 would be a reasonable upper limit, as this would very likely be the only test pressing of this release I would ever see. This is what you have to be careful of with auction sites such as ebay, you can so easily argue with yourself into bidding more and more and if you dont make up your mind beforehand about your upper limit and leave the decision until near the end of the auction, you can easily argue even more with yourself. The typical argument is, "wouldn't be a shame if it just went for £1 more than I was willing to go to" or "I'm losing, I'm losing". It's so easy to get drawn into a bidding war with someone. As usual the bids went through the roof on the final few seconds.<br />
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The winning bid .......£361.....!!!!!!!!!!!<br />
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Needless to say, I came away from the bidding empty in basket.<br />
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Following from my previous submission, I did promise further research into CD production and the ability to be able to spot newer prints from older ones. There were a few little things I spotted at the time, such as the change from the black print text on the CD to later having colour picture CDs. One very interesting piece of infomation was about the introduction of SID codes in 1994. These are 4 character codes on the inside ring, near the hole of the CD itself. These are usually marked with the letters IFPI followed by the 4 character code marking the mastering and replication source of the CD. Becasue this standard wasn't introduced until 1994, it's a very good identifier for later re-prints. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2WD33dyuQdJZUgzR0RINXpPZW8/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Here</span></a> is an official PDF which introduced the standard to the industry.<br />
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I have found that I have a number of CD's myself that I thought were original copies but have SID codes. This is a really useful piece of infomation for those trying to identify an original.<br />
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In the last few months, I toyed with a visit to the Netherlands in the autumn and the <a href="http://www.recordplanet.nl/en/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Utrecht International Record Fair</span></a>. This has to be one of the largest record fairs in Europe and has been on my radar for many a year now, but I easily talk myself out of things. The typical argument with myself is how poor every other record fair has been and this was likely to be just as bad, but on a larger scale. But then if I dont give it a go, I can't really have an informed opinion can I? The window of oppurtunity passed me by and I managed to talk myself out of it, but my lovely, long suffereing wife persuaded me to perhaps have a more serious attempt to go next year. So there is a good chance I will go sometime soon. When I do, I will certainly report back.<br />
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For two reasons I have another giveway for anyone that fancies a slice of history. The first reason is the fact that it's been way too long since I gave anything away on this blog, I'm piling up quite a pile of duplications. The second reason is down the usual bumbling uselessness from a trader, making out they were selling a white label test pressing then sending the standard release,... numpty. I've had my money back and the trader doesn't want the item returning.<br />
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So I'm giving away a copy of a Greek pressing of the Cocteau Twins album <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Treasure/release/2266163" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Treasure</span></a> on Polygram. If tens of thousands of copies of this album were sold in the UK, then thousands must have been sold around northern Europe and by the time the album filtered down to Greece I would not at all be suprised if the number of pressings were in just the hundreds. So in my estimation this vinyl copy is a rarity indeed. Not stupidly rare, but a lovely item to own none the less.<br />
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It also has those unusual Greek labels that seem to be either poor copies of earlier 4AD releases in the UK or left overs from the same period sent to the Greek manufacturers. Anyhoo, in the usual fashion, if you want to get your hands on this, just get in touch with me and I'm sure it will end up in a good home, I already have this anyway. Facbook, email, comment on this blog or carrier pigeon will do.<br />
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Thanks for reading as alwaysjonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-7247516927993353952015-05-02T18:43:00.003+01:002015-05-02T18:43:37.806+01:004AD original releases, re-prints and releases - Tips and Guide<br />
Hello again. I have been spending a little time trying to put together a simple buyers guide to buying 4AD from the second hand market, particularly of course the first ten years of 4AD's existence. It can be very frustrating when you think you have found one of those lovely original 12"s, only to find out much later that it's a re-release or a second print and actually isn't that rare at all. So I have been going through what I have acquired so far to try and find some pattern in the releases from 4AD in the UK between 1980 and 1990.<br />
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It turns out to be a very interesting decade. I know because I was a new consumer in that decade and things were changing so very fast. I remember seeing a TV programme called "Tomorrow's World" that highlighted the newest technology. I saw the now famous episode that introduced the new format, the Compact Disc and demonstrated that you could eat your dinner off it and it still played afterwards. Of course, we now know that you can eat your dinner off a Compact Disc and it will play, but don't get a fingerprint on it or a dog hair becasue that will completely bugger it up!<br />
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In the eighties, the 12" remix became king. While it cost about £7 for a new vinyl album, it cost about £15 for a new CD and that was those fortunate enough to be able to afford a CD player in the first place. Cassettes became commonplace and the 8-track disappeared. Then the trend for everything see through came into fashion. Cassettes followed the trend of Swatches (or was it the other way around?) making the mechanisms of technology observable by changing whatever the tech was clothed in transparent. Plastic see through watches and plastic see through cassettes.<br />
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Strange represenatations of a zebra's back started appearing on products everywhere. The struggle to find a price at the checkout at the store was replaced with that annoying beeping sound as barcodes took over the world.<br />
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CD sales went up, taking vinyl sales down and loads of second hand record fairs became more popular as fair traders struggled to get rid of the masses of stock bought at rock bottom prices from people swapping their record collections for CD's. Folk didn't want their turquoise lettered Led Zeppelin LP anymore, they wanted it on crystal clear CD instead. You could buy masses of rare vinyl for next to nothing by the late eighties. Record companies must have really thought they were onto a winner as people took even less care of their CD's and cassettes than they did of their vinyl. CD's were bullet proof, you could eat your dinner off them and cassettes were very convenient. It was not until the nineties that folk realised that CDs didn't last forever and that they had lost all those albums on cassette becasue their Sony Walkman or in car cassette player had chewed every cassette tape up.<br />
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The portable cassette player was a bit of a joke. Adverts with joggers and their hip strapped portable cassette player were common place in the late eighties. The adverts failed to warn you though that the tape would also jog around inside the player and wrap itself around the pinch rollers that guided the tape across the playing head. Everyone had tapes where on a particular track the music would go all whirly and druggy as the previously crinkled tape had been pulled back in a botched repair attempt. Those cassettes were the lucky ones. Many times they had to be thrown away because the tape had unraveled so much you couldn't get it all back in, like some war wounded soldier with his intestines spilling out. If the cassette unraveled in a car stereo player, you had little chance of salvage. The tape would bounce around in the jossle of the car on the road and get stuck around those pesky pinch rollers and get wrapped around them so many times that if you were lucky enough to get the cassette ejected out of the player, there would be a black spaghetti like trail dragging back into the teeth of the machine, and like a dogs locked jaws, it was never going to give you your tape back. Portable in car cassette players were thrown away left right and centre because of mangled cassette tape around the pinch rollers becasue the players were so portable, you couldnt get inside them to remove the tape and sometimes the whole cassette without breaking the whole player. It's a miracle that any cassette tape survived the eighties at all.<br />
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So, I've scrutinsied the best I can of the stock I have so far and looked to see any patterns from the changes in that first decade of 4AD releases. Some of this info may be wrong and if I find it is, I will come back and update it from time to time. There are quite a few signposts that can help a collector figure out what's genuinely original and what's a re-release. It was a useful decade for collectors becasue of the many changes.<br />
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In the begining....<br />
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As we know, 4AD started its life as AXIS. So in 1980 the first four UK releases had the AXIS red labels on them, all 7" singles<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKq9KOCDVkF3ndA6XArS2IdjUZi_f7SRpmKZrevQyX4sivAxH88NcKZAXmbsMU8foCR4-kLXvKgXCVnXcQHCUhO9cCf3IyQmSzXH6wdTd78WvoUDL47BR-twAZkurLgdf8sPyJkX4yADNE/s1600/BDEAXISDisc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKq9KOCDVkF3ndA6XArS2IdjUZi_f7SRpmKZrevQyX4sivAxH88NcKZAXmbsMU8foCR4-kLXvKgXCVnXcQHCUhO9cCf3IyQmSzXH6wdTd78WvoUDL47BR-twAZkurLgdf8sPyJkX4yADNE/s1600/BDEAXISDisc.jpg" height="320" width="317" /></a></div>
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For the rest of 1980, the blue and white 4AD square box was on the labels of all that years releases. This also meant that the Bauhaus Dark Entries 7" single that originally had the AXIS labels above was re-pressed again with the blue and white labels<br />
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All of the 1981 UK releases had this crumpled paper black and white picture label on one side of the label. So far I haven't found one that doesn't.<br />
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In 1982, the folded paper picture was done away with and the three picture types below were all used instead. The female wrestlers in black and white in both positive and negative and a male wrestlers in negative. So far the compact disc didn't exist commercially and the barcode zebra hadn't made it to the shores of the UK. The tape cassette was also not on the format list for 4AD in 1982<br />
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In 1983, another three types of black and white picture labels were used grass, grit and lights. That's a daft naming convention I know, but look at the samples below<br />
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At the end of 1983, 4AD issued their first cassette format release. This compiled an album and an EP together of the Cocteau Twins' Head Over Heels and Sunburst And Snowblind. The cassette was made of white plastic with labels glued on. From the end of 1983 to the end of 1986, only albums appeared on cassette tape. The see through clear plastic cassette tape wasn't introduced until 1985 by the record label Warner. There is an interesting site about the history of the compact cassette tape<br />
<a href="http://historysdumpster.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/history-of-cassettes.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">here</span></a><br />
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In 1984, 4AD went full colour on their labels. Still no barcodes, still no clear cassettes and still no CDs from 4AD<br />
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In 1986, 4AD began issuing releases on CD. They also went through some of the back catalogue and re-issued some earlier releases again on CD. For the next couple of years from 1986 to 1988 they re-issued a number of albums.<br />
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I hoped that by looking through the CDs released in those two years, I would be able to find a pattern of some sort that would help distinguish the years specifically, but that seems a task too far at the moment until I get my hands on a few more releases. There are some distinct CD print styles from 1986 to 1989, all silver CDs with varying print styles from sparse amounts of text to band logo fonts and then text which shoots off in all directions on the CD. From the CDs I curently have, I can't seem to find any clues to get them down to any time frame. The first few CDs of 1986 were French made CDs and have a small ring on the inside of the outer CD, here (below) it shows black, but on the actual CD is a goldish hue. I suspect that the original batch of CDs made in 1986 where manufactured in France where a lot of the vinyl was also cut, but a very short time later, 4AD could have started to use a manufacturer in the UK either alongside or instead of the French manufacturer. As yet I can't make a judgement, if this did happen, the change was very quick<br />
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The same can be said for the re-issues made of pre-1986 albums onto CD. The design of the CD print changes quite quickly over the next couple of years<br />
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During 1987, 4AD issued its first video cassette for the label compilation Lonely Is An Eyesore<br />
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Also in 1987 was the first cassette single from 4AD Throwing muses Chains Changed, still on black plastic cassette with paper labels<br />
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Originally I suspected that the first CD single issued from 4AD must have been for the chart topping No 1 single from M/A/R/R/S Pump Up The Volume as there is a CD version of the single, but the copy of the CD I have is also the one showing on discogs, which is an English made black CD, which doesn't fit in with the style of the other CDs printed during the same period. I reserve judgement on this one for now, as the black print on the CD could be a clever use of text print in negative, where the text is clear showing the silver CD underneath and the rest of the non text part of the CD is black. Full coloured CDs weren't introduced by 4AD until 1989<br />
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The first clear cassette from 4AD appears to be in mid 1987 for the Lonely Is An Eyesore compilation. As of yet I haven't seen a cassette of this compilation on a coloured plastic. As with the next release from 4AD on cassette, which was Dead Can Dance's Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun, there are non paper label versions with red text printed directly on the cassette and no paper labels. At this moment in time, I suspect that these are later re-prints.<br />
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All the releases up to the end of 1987 can be found without any barcodes anywhere on the artwork. Sometimes you can find a release with a stickered barcode attached, most likely added by the retailer. The first release of 1988 from 4AD suddenly appeared with a zebra strapped to it's back.<br />
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In a decade obsessed with size, technology just had to get smaller and smaller. The CD was the way forward, or so the industry thought, smaller, compact, but annoyingly for them still not as portable as the cassette tape which could fit into a small player you could go jogging with. Mobile CD players at the time where useless and wouldn't stop jumping everytime you breathed. Out of this industry obsession came the DAT tape, carrying on the myth that digital sound was superior but packed into a tiny little cassette tape like the type you used in an office dictating machine. The biggest problem was for the industry was that you could record onto them. The Compact disc must have been a dream for the record industry. It was smaller, so a lot less needed to be spent on packaging, the average man on the street could easily be duped into thinking that the quality was so much better than vinyl, it could be sold at many times the price of vinyl just because it was amazing futuristic technology and best of all, it was a format that couldn't be recorded on. The record industry hated cassettes because of home copying. They even had a massive campaign in the eighties to try and make the public ashamed of copying music and sharing with their mates. Remember this?<br />
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The DAT may have been the next big format, but the industry hated it and the equipment cost put the public off buying it. Still, in 1988 4AD released their one and only DAT release, Cocteau Twins' Blue Bell Knoll<br />
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In 1989, after a couple of initial CD releases on the usual silver disc, the UK CD releases from 4AD went full colour! Well, black to start with anyway with Pixies album Doolittle<br />
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4AD soon moved onto coloured and picture CDs at the end of 1989 and into 1990. This pink beauty is Lush's Scar<br />
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Then in 1990 with Pixies Velouria came the totally clear cassette with no paper labels from 4AD. This may be the period that the afore mentioned red text printed Lonely Is An Eyesore and Dead Can Dance's Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun were re-printed.<br />
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Later in the 90's, 4AD went on another re-releasing spree on CD, but at least had the courtesy of labelling them with new catalogue numbers which helps collectors no end. These were labeled with a GAD number and started to appear around 1998. A GAD catalogue number is a sure sign that the CD is way after the event of it's original release, at least as far as the first decade releases are concerned.<br />
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Well, I hope that is a lot of useful information for you collectors. May I remind you all that none of it is definitive and so far just an observation from the releases I currently have and may be changed in future. In fact scrub that, this is very likely to change in the future as there are a lot of 4AD knowledgeable folk that read this blog. At some point in the future, I will have a go at observing the other major countries releases and try and ascertain any patterns from those too<br />
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Thanks for readingjonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-31311243228276384292015-03-18T11:42:00.001+00:002015-03-18T11:42:38.426+00:00Making music, buying music and trying not to get ripped offIt's so very hard to concentrate. After the rush of the build up to the year end last year, a lot of other things went on hold while I shopped frantically to get my wantlist down below 900 items. Since the new year my concentration has gone back to the neglected stuff, which included my best mate Andy and I creating some music again under our old band name <a href="https://www.facebook.com/personalitycrisisuk" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Personality Crisis</span></a>.<br />
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While that has been great, the 4AD music collection has suffered in the meantime. Pickings at the moment seem quite thin on the ground. There seems to be little to nothing coming from record fairs, but that seems to be nothing new. Ebay has become swamped in the last year or so with newspaper clippings, full page magazine spreads and promo photo's being sold, that it takes so much longer to sift through the listings.<br />
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5 years ago, an international search on ebay for the word 4AD would bring back around three to four hundred items. Today, searching for 4AD on ebay worldwide, 8,279 items are listed. This has doubled in the last year alone. While there are a few non 4AD items in there, such as vehicle parts and old coins, the vast majority is the 4AD label. On a search you can filter this down, but I have found that sometimes the best bargains are to be found where items have been either wrongly listed, or listed with little detail that the filters could easily take out.<br />
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Occasionally, confronted with these huge and growing numbers, I change my default sorting and have a quick look to see what is at the top of the price list. This weeks shock is a seller asking £879.88 ($1298) for a Pixies DVD. How much??? There's nothing special about it, the same one can be found for £1.56 with free postage. I can only assume that the seller has put the decimal in the wrong place, although even at $12.98 it's still overpriced.<br />
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Of course, a larger number of listings, means more choice and greater availability, which is a good thing. It just means that more time is needed to get around the newspaper clippings, the bad rated sellers, the sellers that charge a fortune for delivery etc etc. I try and not to go above the ten pounds mark, as there are a lot of overpriced stuff that starts to fill out the listings above ten pounds. Still, there are some lovely gems to be found even now.<br />
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On another note, I have noticed that I'm getting quite the collection of secondary items again. These are items I have bought and haven't been as stated by the seller and I end up keeping them even though I already have a copy because the seller just writes them off instead of paying for the return postage. I also have some duplicates because of my own arse ups, buying something and not thoroughly checking that I already have it. I think I will have to kick myself into gear and get these given away to some wanting reader for free. How about it, anyone intersted?<br />
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I have also been meaning to compile a list of some interesting 4AD uk release tell tale signs on here, which I must do very soon. Signs such as the introduction of barcodes, see through cassettes, re-release on CD etc. There are some interesting changes on the uk 4AD releases which can be helpful to define an original from a re-release. That would also mean that I need to kick myself up the bottom to rummage through my collection to find and accurately publish my findings to you all. I shall get onto it<br />
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Signing out for now, please check out my music page on Facebook and post an opinion on there if you wish.....<br />
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<a href="https://personalitycrisisuk.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Bandcamp</span></a><br />
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/personalitycrisis" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Soundcloud</span></a><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtUhfu7jrKobzGxrQeRYo9KilGRxywEMe" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Youtube</span></a><br />
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<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-7202248422517001542015-02-18T12:32:00.001+00:002015-02-18T12:32:13.896+00:00I'm going to stop sleeping, I need more timeI've lost a little momentum over the last couple of weeks. I managed to get the wantlist down below 900, even though I missed my own deadline for the end of the 2014 year.<br />
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My concentration has been diverted into the excitement of creating some new music for the first time in over ten years and the work is coming along nicely.<br />
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On Saturday I visited the nearby city of Derby to go to a record fair being held in the city centre. The fair was organised by VIP record fairs who hold some larger fairs down in London on occasion, so it was a good chance to see if the traders who work with VIP are any good and may give me incentive to check out one of the larger London fairs one day.<br />
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The record fair was quite small, held in a church and had around 20 traders. I just happened to start immediately on a stall that specialised in newer music... punk, new wave, indie and alternative. He had loads of stock, lots of really interesting stuff. It took me about an hour and a half to go through his entire stock. About half way through my search, the vendor started to chat with me and I told him what mostly my 900 item list consisted of which is mainly non-uk 4AD releases, to which he replied "goodness me, the standard UK 4AD issues are difficult enough to come by of late, you won't have much luck with the foreign releases". My heart slumped as I finished off looking through his stock. He was right. There wasn't a single thing at the whole fair. I would have come away empty handed if it wasn't for finding a sealed re-release of The Cure's album Disintegration that I needed to buy as the picture disc I have sounds awful under the needle.<br />
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Once again I was walking away disappointed, except for the fact that a couple of the traders actually did have some interesting stock (for a change). I had also planned to check out the local 2nd hand record shop in Derby, but was disappointed to find that the stock there was very typical, badly stored and overly priced. I always find it soul destroying when perusing through stacks of easy listening, soft rock and mass produced pop albums, knowing that which each finger movement the reality of finding anything remotely alternative is extremely slim. I was about to give up when I noticed a small stack of tape cassettes and among them the album Pod by the Breeders. I knew I had it already, but I thought "What the heck" and decided just to have a quick look as you never know.<br />
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To my surprise it was the Spanish release! What the bright blue hectum's rectum is a Spanish Breeders cassette tape doing in among the dreary selection of Derby's yesterdays? I've no idea, but I snapped it up. At least I wasn't going home totally empty handed.<br />
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Moving on, in the last couple of weeks I've been having second thoughts about using Discogs. Many of the people I know either steer clear of Discogs because of it's reputation, or did use it and got put off and now stay away from it. Discogs is a great online tool, a tool I would love to use more but struggle to use to it's full at the moment because of time constraints. As you know, I'm spreading myself thin, between the book I'm attempting to write, this 4AD project, my Tuesday night album listening, being a husband (I would be an idiot to live in a bubble), trying to lose weight and now the resurrection of writing music again with Personality Crisis. I also feel the need to fit in my love of movies and Formula 1 racing when I get the chance. There's no complaining here, if I didn't enjoy these things, I would be stupid to spend time on them.<br />
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What I'm trying to say is that while some Discogs users would happily spend many hours a week on the site, I have my limits. So getting hassled to keep going back on and add or finely correct a submission starts to get quite annoying. I try and put in the bares bones of a submission if it doesn't exist, I think it's important that if a release is missing from Discogs and I have it, I have a responsibility to add it to Discogs. The problem is, is that there are too many superior users that think only a 100 percent, fully submitted and entirely correct submission should be allowed, all or nothing. As well as that, a user should submit a full submission with the full understanding of every rule and a full knowledge of every Label, Company, Artist and technical knowledge of how the industry has worked for the past 100 years and that the responsibility of a submission is solely down the to original submitter.<br />
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Needless to say, my judgment doesn't seem to be good enough and bowing to someone else's judgement isn't good enough either on Discogs. So I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place and getting to a point where I just feel like using Discogs for what I can selfishly get out of it, which goes against my nature in an environment that supposed to be for sharing and for the greater good. Oh well<br />
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This last week has seen my best friend Andy and I putting the last few touches on our new song under the old band name Personality Crisis. This has meant that I have also been working frantically to get a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/personalitycrisisuk" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Facebook</span></a><span id="goog_1890109066"></span><span id="goog_1890109067"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a> page up and running and some of the old songs onto <a href="http://personalitycrisisuk.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Bandcamp</span></a> for folk to download. That also means designing a cover for the new song and some extra little titbits like banners etc. As I've said before, this takes time away from other things, so my 4AD shopping has suffered lately. It has been many years since I last tried to promote the band online, probably ten years ago, and so much has changed. The market is saturated and I wonder how a young new band can get themselves heard nowadays. And of course, there's so much time needed to devote to it properly, I don't think I can give our music the attention it deserves, which is such a shame, as what we do is so good. Oh oh, the modesty alarm is going off......<br />
<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-80994544623011039262015-01-20T12:46:00.000+00:002015-01-20T12:46:00.698+00:00New year, bring me more goodies!After the year end of 2014 that was the marathon to get the wantlist below 900 items, I failed. But in some ways, 2015 has begun with new hope.<br />
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The biographical book I have been writing for the last two years had to go on hold while I devoted my time to this blog and getting my target reached for the year end. I actually did some work on it again last week for the first time in three months.<br />
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Then to my surprise, after nearly ten years of dormancy, my best friend Andy and I actually started writing some music together again in the studio, and the first flourish sounded extremely promising. I cannot believe that it's been ten years or more since we last worked in the studio together. This is one of the last songs we did<br />
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On the 4AD collection front, even now I haven't got below the 900 mark on my releases wantlist. The count is down to 905 items. As usual quite a few items have come in and a few new ones have been found to add to the list. Some were never even on the radar to begin with, such as a Spanish tape cassette of the Pixies album Doolittle, which coincidentally has recently been re-released as a triple vinyl compilation by 4AD with loads of extras, demo's etc. Take a look <a href="http://www.4ad.com/releases/22290" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">HERE</span></a><br />
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Every time something like this comes out, I am so tempted to buy it, but I have to keep myself focused on the challenge I already have. There have been re-releases galore lately that are so tempting. It's a different story with the none 4AD re-releases. Believe me, 4AD is not the only source of music (oh dear, I spoke the unmentionable). Having my weekly album listening evenings, where I devote an evening to just listening to two albums with no distractions, has made me aware of how poor a quality some of my vinyl has become and a welcome anniversary re-release on good quality vinyl has been a strong temptation.<br />
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So far in January my recent 4AD additions have been :<br />
Modern English - After the Snow LP - on Intercord from Germany<br />
Pixies - Bossanova CD - on Virgin from France<br />
Cocteau Twins - Iceblink Luck 12" - on Rough Trade from Germany<br />
Various - Spools Paradise cassette - from the Record Mirror a music magazine compilation which includes a Colourbox track<br />
Breeders - Pod CD - on 4AD from France<br />
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Today I got a cassette of the US version of the soundtrack album Pump Up The Volume. So things are steadily streaming in. I have a feeling in my bones that the year is going to be a good one......you never know, I may even find a decent record shop this year...<br />
<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-19495518791209206552015-01-04T17:02:00.001+00:002015-01-04T17:02:56.199+00:00The battle was lost but the war is only just beginningA couple of months ago I set myself a target to finish 2014 with a wantlist of just 900. That's 900 releases I still needed to acquire in order to achieve my goal of collecting everything that 4AD released between 1980 and 1990, including foreign releases in the same period, compilation entries and all formats. At the time I had around 920 releases in my wantlist. But over the past two months that yoyoed up and down reaching a peak of something like 931 all the way down to 907 with just eight days left before the end of the year.<br />
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The last two months have been a typical example of what this hobby is like. I find a couple of things and then find another couple of things that I never knew existed and my wantlist bounces around like a ball bouncy thing. On top of that are the wonderful traders, that arse up orders, lose items, wrongly list them and just don't seem to care at all the hell they put collectors through.<br />
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Needless to say, I didn't make the 900 by the end of the year. In fact, I still have a wantlist of 907 on the 4th January 2015. Not a single item I ordered in the last two weeks of December to be delivered to my home address instead of the usual work address has made it here.<br />
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I also realised the enormity of the task I have undertaken. I have 15 years before the 50th anniversay of the 4AD label, when I plan to exhibit my collection. To be reasonable, that really means I should be targeting getting around 100 items a year, which will give me a little breathing space. That means getting around 10 a month. That's a big ask, going on the previous two months. It also means I'm seven behind already this month. As the wantlist decreases the easier to find and cheaper items get crossed off the list first, generally. Which means that as time goes by, the remaining harder to find and therefore more expensive items are going to take up more of the majority than the minority.<br />
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I'm also finding an increasing 2nd collection size. The number of times, even with my trusty list to hand, I buy the same thing twice, or a vendor sends me what I already have instead of what's listed and tells me to keep it, or I take a chance on a cheap, but poorly described item. I'm getting a number of second items. I feel another giveaway coming on....<br />
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I hope everyone has wonderful new year and you get lots of lovely music to listen tojonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-53867953541094541352014-12-01T21:21:00.000+00:002014-12-30T22:31:46.425+00:00Get the wish list below 900 by the new year (Check back Regularly) Part III've decided to start a new post for December as the November one was starting to fill up. Come back for regular updates as I try and attempt to get my wantlist down to 900 releases by the years end....<br />
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30th December 2014<br />
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There is nothing I can do now. The ability to get my wantlist down to 900 items by the year end is in the hands of fate. All I can do is watch the post coming in and hope that there are enough items to finish off the seven needed to make 900. The post doesn't get delivered at my house until about noon and today each hour in the morning was spent listening for any noise at the letterbox. My wife decided to take the dog for a walk at around 11am, it felt silly sitting in for the postman just in case he was early, so I went along. On the way back the postman was making his way down the street in front of us. I was tempted to hassle him as we slowly caught up with him and consequent lost him as he turned into an industrial complex of buildings.<br />
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I needn't have bothered, as as usual there was nothing in the post except spam mail from every holiday company we have ever booked with in the last twenty years. No post again, nothing off the wantlist and only one day left, one last post. There is no way that I'm getting seven items in the morning, I have missed the target!!!<br />
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Let us see if it will be any closer tomorrow.<br />
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29th December 2014<br />
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I wasn't sure if Royal Mail posted on a boxing day or not, I still don't know whether or not they do as there was no post. Neither was there any on Saturday. The days count away and I feel helpless to even try and accomplish anything. There was some hope today as there was a record fair about 15 miles away, which produced a single compilation album called The Beggars Banquet File, but later today I also found a Cocteau Twins test pressing that I had to add to my wantlist. So the wantlist is still at 907. There was nothing in the post again today and I have two days left. It's looking like a fail for the end of the year, which is really upsetting. Maybe everything will turn up tomorrow morning, I can only wait and see<br />
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25th December 2014<br />
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No post at home yesterday, on my birthday as well. Of course there's no post on Christmas day either. So the count stays at 907, even though I visited a record store in Chesterfield yesterday...and found nothing of course. Anything bought now online will not likely be posted and received before the year end, so it's down to what will get delivered from already purchased stuffies. There is a small hope on the horizon. There is a record fair on Monday and a really nice trader chappie that I passed my wantlist to, says there might be a couple of things for me when I see him there. I will keep my fingers and anything else crossed. This is going down to the wire. Enjoy your day, I will be back.....<br />
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23rd December 2014<br />
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Every time everything looks terrible, no deliveries at home or at work, suddenly everything turns up at once. I managed to find a few awful pop compilations that once again features that persistent single Pump Up The Volume. I also had the exciting opportunity to acquire an item that wasn't on my wantlist, mostly because it's as rare as rocking horse poo found with bits of hen's teeth in it. Today I had a test pressing of Dead Can Dance's album Aion, not the UK release, but the Italian release on Contempo. The standard Italian LP is rare enough, the test pressing will obviously be even more rare.<br />
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Work is now over until the new year, so no more post from my workplace, I am now relying on post to home. This is getting so very close. Wantlist = 907, days left = 8<br />
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17th December 2014<br />
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No delivery yesterday and none today. There are quite a few items on their way but then it is Christmas and the post slows to a crawl. I have 4 work delivery days left, and 12 post to home days left and a wantlist count of 912. Again I lost one from the list as I found another compilation that was now listed as released in 1991 and so was outside my ten year inclusion (don't get me started on the fact that actually its eleven years, starting in 1980 means that the inclusion of 1990 is actually the eleventh year, it's the Roman lack of zero's and the 1st Century all over again). I need one a day, which is do-able, but with the postage issues, is quite a task. I'm not giving up though...<br />
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15th December 2014<br />
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In the post today was a UK 12" of Xmal Deutschland's Incubus Succubus II. I can't believe that I didn't have this already, but there are the odd Uk releases still to get, though they are very few in number. I have the time to do this, I don't have many delivery days left though and I just can't find the stuff to buy. I will keep looking though....wantlist down to 913<br />
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13th December 2014<br />
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Yesterday morning I had a delivery of a cassette bought through ebay. The item is the Colourbox album called Colourbox. The ebay page showed a chrome cassette and a virgin label and catalogue number. This wasn't on my wantlist and I hadn't seen it before, so I was quite excited to get my hands on it. In the post though was the standard UK cassette which I already own that looks completely different to the photo shown and has a completely different catalogue number. I also won a French 7" single of Cocteau Twins Love Easy Tears single a few days ago, then got a message from the seller saying they can't find the item.<br />
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Ebay does get on my tits. The failure rate is appalling. It doesn't matter if I get an apology, money back etc, it just grates on me that people can't get a simple thing right. That's two items I could have added, one of which would have reduce my wantlist count.<br />
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BIG ARSE!!..oh well, count still 914<br />
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11th December 2014<br />
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After 2 months on likely the slowest ships on the Atlantic ocean, a package from Canada arrived. Land mail as opposed to airmail is about half the price and for a reason, it seems to take forever to arrive. When buying from Canada it's a must as the the postage costs can be a killer.<br />
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Inside was a M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume Canadian 7" single, Modern English - After The Snow Canadian vinyl album, a pop compilation vinyl LP called On Top and finally a Canadian CD version of the soundtrack to the film Pump Up The Volume. I found out that the CD was a club version. I had noticed these club versions popping up on CD releases in a few places and wondered what they were, until my wife reminded me about the 80's and 90's Brittania music club. This was a club a person could join by agreeing to buy so many CD's a year. The CDs were slightly cheaper than the ones to be found in the high street shop. Of course the club was making money out of a guaranteed per year quota from buyers that may not have bought that many in the year. The clubs were sometimes run by record labels and the CDs were sometimes made especially for the club market and slightly different to the high street shop versions. There was even doubt over the quality of the club versions and accusations of them being of lower quality because of their guaranteed sale. See this <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/features/55/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">article</span></a> from around 1994 about the audio quality conspiracy.<br />
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I was always envious of the music clubs, I could never afford them at the time and just drooled over the vast selection of music, although a lot of it was pop tat.<br />
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Another good haul today and I also noticed on discogs that I had two entries in my wantlist that were obviously the same and should have been merged together. That has reduced my wantlist down to 914.<br />
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10th December 2014<br />
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Today brought me Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares US CD of A Cathedral Concert. This was in my wantlist, but then realised today that this version was released in 1992 and therefore outside my collecting criteria. This is the nature of such a fluidic and dynamic wantlist that struggles to keep up. There was another version of this album that I also had on my wantlist, but I was fortunate enough to notice this time before I bought it that it also was from 1992. At least taking that version off my wantlist reduced the count a little.<br />
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I also received today a VHS video of the alternative collection series Indie Top...As you can see it was the Indie Top Video Take Two compilation. This was obtained for the inclusion of the Wolfgang Press track Raintime. My boss at work first asked if had a video cassette player, to which my answer was "Nope". He then asked what the point of having it was, wouldn't it just have been worthwhile having the empty case?<br />
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This is the funny side of such a collection. I suppose I'm being a completest. But at some point I may find the time to convert it to digital, although I wouldn't be surprised if it ain't on youtube already. It's a peice of history and a relevant one to the collection as well. To have it and preserve it is the whole point I suppose.<br />
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Wantlist now down to 918. Wow what a difference in just a couple of days<br />
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9th December 2014<br />
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Thursday nothing, Friday nothing, then the weekend, so no post. Then yesterday and today there was much rejoicing...yeah.<br />
Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas - Japan CD<br />
Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll - Canadian cassette<br />
Cocteau Twins - Tiny Dynamine/ Echoes In A Shallow Bay - Canadian CD<br />
Cocteau Twins - Victorialand - Canadian CD<br />
Dead Can Dance - Serpents Egg - Canadian CD<br />
Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares - Canadian CD<br />
M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume - Spanish 12"<br />
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There was to be a US Promo version of Pump Up The Volume, but the seller sent the wrong item. It happened yet again, instead I got the standard US 12" which I already have. I'm starting to get quite the collection of releases that are duplicated. I feel another give away coming, although not Pump Up The Volume, I don't think anyone would take it off me. I also had an item on my wantlist that isn't 4AD related (there aren't many of them).<br />
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One item had to go onto the wantlist though. I found that there is a Canadian cassette version of Pump Up The Volume. But great progress has been made. The count is now down to 921 which I am very pleased and relieved about. The downside is that there is little in the pipeline at the moment and time is quick to pass.<br />
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3rd December 2014<br />
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Another package today filled with mixed blessings. A German pop compilation album was today's delivery, a release I needed because of the inclusion of MARRS Pump Up The Volume single. The rest of the compilation is pretty dire. But it would mean another notch off the never ending wantlist. Unfortunately I also found another cassette, this time a French single called Velouria by the Pixies. One down and one back up again. So the count stays at 928 for today<br />
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There are a few things in the pipeline, but not the amount I need to be getting for the end of the year.....<br />
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2nd December 2014<br />
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At last, a time to rejoice...I had post.<br />
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A French Colourbox album on Virgin and two Various artists records, both with MARRS single Pump Up The Volume on them, both Italian. That would have meant that I had 10 of the 12 versions of the Colourbox album, until I realised that there seems to be a Canadian cassette release that I hadn't previously known about. Bum!<br />
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Oh well, three ticked off and one added back on. That takes the current tally down to 928... in the right direction at least<br />
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1st December 2014<br />
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My wife is going to need room in the spare bedroom for studying, a room full up with records, cassetttes and CDs for selling to fund my 4ad collecting habit. The problem has always been finding the time to run the sales along with everything else. The time taken, finding stock, listing it and then selling it, packaging and posting it for very little return, has been better spent recently hunting for stuff to reach the 900 milestone. The need for room for my wife and the time that I need has meant that I have reluctantly decided to stop selling. That meant a trip down to second hand record shop on Langley Mill about 7 miles away with a car full of stock selling to a guy that really doesn't need a few hundred more pop items to add to the thousands and thousands that he already had.<br />
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While at the record store, of course I had to do a bit of shopping as well, even though I got practically nothing for all the stock I had accrued. I picked up a Wolfgang Press album, then realised when I got home that I already had it. I also picked up a great christmas album by a punk band called The Yobs, a record I recommend highly, especially at this time of year, you will never sing those christmas carols the same ever again.<br />
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There was one more album I bought which was an album I loved from my childhood and one that got my mind thinking about 4AD. I always wondered why 4AD released the Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares albums, which were Bulgarian folk songs recorded decades before. I could see the connection with Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance. Her vocal style borrowed from many cultures. When I was young, I saw a BBC documentary about the Condor and the wildlife living in the Andes. It became very popular and spawned a chart topping single and album of the folk music of the people's of the Andes and their panpipe music. What I didn't realise until recently, was that the music was released by the Beggars Banquet label, an independent label similar to Rough Trade that used to part own 4AD. The album was by a group of musicians going by the name of Incantation and was very popular in 1982. It was buying the album today that made me realise how it likely paved the way for 4AD to release the Bulgarian folk music after seeing the success of the South American folk music. With success from one independent label releasing unusual folk music, it wouldn't have been that unusual for 4AD to do something similar a few years later.<br />
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Wantlist count at 930jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-31347929045264801162014-11-14T18:43:00.002+00:002014-11-28T20:44:10.403+00:00Get the wish list below 900 by the new year (Check back Regularly)28th November 2014<br />
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One package today and at last, a release actually on the existing wantlist. It was the German vinyl release of the Modern English album After The Snow. That leaves only another 13 versions of that album left to get my hands on.<br />
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That's the wantlist down to 930. My goodness that seems like a huge ask now to get down to 900 by the year's end. The goal post most certainly keeps moving and Betty's useless, she hasn't bought a single release for me yet!! Oh well, the search goes on....<br />
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27th November 2014<br />
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At the beginning of the day, the postman came and went and I was left empty handed. But then a courier turned up later in the day with quite a large box from the US with my name on it. Inside were two CD longboxes of the Pixies albums of Doolittle and Bossanova. Longboxes have an interesting history. They were introduced to help customers moved from the large packaging of vinyl to the smaller and more expensive CD. It also helped to display CDs in vinyl display areas and because of their bigger size helped to reduce shoplifting. Here is our dog Betty demonstrating the size of the 12" longbox<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbox" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Here</span></a> is a wiki on the longbox.<br />
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It seems, although most CDs were sold in longboxes, most customers saw them as throw away packaging like a plastic bag and threw them in the dustbin. Now they are quite sort after.<br />
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At last some items delivered. Problem is, these two release weren't on my wantlist as I wasn't sure if they existed. So the wantlist is still stuck at 931. This is not looking promising at all!<br />
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26th November 2014<br />
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I got really excited when a small parcel landed on my desk this morning, at last maybe the count can actually go down. It was not to be. I had forgotten the DVD called Sanctuary that I had bought a few days back. It's a documentary about Lisa Gerrard, which I am excited to get, but was hoping to hammer down the wantlist even in a small capacity. The wantlist stays at 931. I'm still struggling to find anything on ebay, but have found a couple of decently priced items on Discogs.<br />
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I did listen to The Sisters Of Mercy's album Floodland last night. It is funny how time changes one's perception of music. In the late eighties I really loved that album, but got sick of the worship it got a few years later, like it was some sort of goth must have. It was good, but not that good. On this listen I noticed how an EP's worth of ideas can be over stretched out to an albums length. The first two tracks Dominion and Mother Russia are one song without even a chord change, the album title track is used twice, the main single This Corrosion is mixed out about twice as long as it should have been and 1959 looks like a bolted on afterthought because there was 5 minutes left to make a full labum's worth. The album is ok and it did inspire a lot bands to go into territory they had not gone before, but nearly 30 years later it made little impact on me again. Not a patch on Clan of Xymox's Medusa.<br />
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25th November 2014<br />
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Nothing was delivered yesterday and nothing came today either. I'm running out of stuff that I can find on ebay again, it's as though I was just lucky the last couple of weeks and now the luck has dried out. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of items from my wantlist that are on ebay, they're just not reasonably priced especially when adding the postage on top.<br />
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I then noticed this morning that the album Sleeps With The Fishes by Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook has a Spanish vinyl version, a Japanese CD version and another UK version not previously listed. Therefore my wantlist has gone up, while my achievements have flatlined. Time is running out!<br />
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Wantlist = 931<br />
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22nd November 2014<br />
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Visited a small record fair this morning about ten miles from home. I was there to meet a vendor I had met at another record fair a month ago and said he may have some 4ad stock for me and would bring it with him. I emailed him my wantlist a couple of weeks ago and went to the fair with a smattering of hope. No luck once again though, he had been busy at work through the week (he's only a weekend music trader) and didn't have time before going to the fair to go through the huge build up of stock that he struggles to find his way through. Still, there's some hope that he still actually might have some interesting stock at some point for me in the future.<br />
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There were only about five vendors there, of which only one other had anything remotely alternative. I would have come away empty handed after two hours if it hadn't have been for finding a specially remastered version of The Sisters Of Mercy's Floodland album that shouted at me to take home. I think that album will be making the album listening night this coming Tuesday.<br />
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At least the wantlist count has stayed at 928 for a day, seeing as I haven't found anything as yet to add to it, thankfully.<br />
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21st November 2014<br />
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Two parcels have been delivered today. The first one is a magazine called Debut from 1984 in which each edition came with a a compilation LP included. The magazine is 12" x 12" and looks like a gatefold album with a thick booklet in the middle. The reason this magazine is the collecting list is because of the inclusion of a Colourbox track called Fast Dump (very likely a song about an emergency poo).<br />
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The second package was a US pressing of the Modern English album Ricochet Days also from 1984. That has moved my wantlist count down to....928. That would have been 2 down, except that the German compilation called Formel Eins Space Hits I found out today, has a cassette version not currently in the list. 2 down and then 1 up, I'm still yo-yo-ing. Oh well, there's a local record fair on tomorrow, let's see what that brings<br />
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20th November 2014<br />
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A couple of days ago I discovered a copy of Ultra Vivid Scene's 12" single of Mercy Seat on ebay. There's a version with a green sleeve with a circular hole cut from the centre of the sleeve and another sleeve of the same release that has no hole cut but in grey. I have both of these, but the photo on ebay looked like a version that should not have existed, a green sleeve with no hole cut. I asked the vendor what colour the sleeve was, just in case the camera shot was not colour accurate (which can happen) and the answer came back a resounding GREEN. I had little to lose, it was only selling for a couple of pounds, so the risk was worth taking....<br />
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It wasn't green, it was grey, of course. Even my photo of it (above) comes out green. Oh well.<br />
So you would think that my want list would be at the same number, but no, it's gone up by one. Today's count is 929 because of a fellow collector called berndhugo who has recently acquired Birthday Party's Junkyard album on a UK cassette, which many believed didn't exist. Berndhugo was good enough to send me some pictures and I added it to discogs, hence the extra release.<br />
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Let us see what tomorrow brings....humph!<br />
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19th November 2014<br />
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Dragged myself into work this morning, still feeling a little spaced out, that's man flu for you, nastiest disease in the world. I actually dropped three from my wish list today, as one release on discogs was added incorrectly and so was deleted, WooHoo<br />
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Waiting for at work was the Birthday Party album <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Birthday-Party-Junkyard/release/869957" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Junkyard</span></a>, this time the New Zealand vinyl version and also a test pressing of Wolfgang Press' single <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Wolfgang-Press-King-Of-Soul/release/4407474" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">King Of Soul</span></a>.<br />
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Count is now down to 928. Some more beauties to get to me yet, but the purchases are starting to dry up. I need to find some more releases and pretty quick<br />
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17th November 2014<br />
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In typical fashion, when everything I purchase I have delivered to work, I haven't been into work today because I'm chocked up to the eyeballs with a cold. So no work, no pick up of deliveries and nothing to add to this blog as promised. Fate has a funny sense of humour doesn't it? Chances are, there are deliveries on my desk at work that I can't tell you about yet. Between the running nose, sneezes, coughs headache and sore throat, is a desperation to get back to work. There are some lovely purchases making it's way to me, let's just hope I can shake the sweats and get back to work....watch this space....a bit longer<br />
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14th November 2014<br />
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As promised, I'm here again. Today has been a typical day. I started of with a want list of 928 and although I have had a delivery today...the count now is....931. Today's post revealed a Birthday Party CD of the album Prayers On Fire.<br />
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All looked good. It looked like the UK release with the catalogue number CAD 104 CD, bought from ebay. The only give away that it wasn't the original 1988 release, was the matrix number near the centre of the CD itself that has GAD104CD on it. The GAD code was used by 4AD to re-release lots of albums in the 90's with. So any release with a GAD code is not an original. Buyers beware. Darn it! This morning I also found another three items not on my list and I had to reluctantly add them. It almost feels painful to find yet another release that I don't have listed in my wish list. Oh well, lets see what Monday bringsjonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-1711200273389308792014-11-13T20:06:00.001+00:002014-11-13T20:06:11.249+00:00No Bloggin makes Jonny a very dull boyI can't believe that I have left it this long to post, I'm so sorry everyone. I'm still here and still plowing through what seems like such an impossible mission. The last few months have been depressing in terms of progress. While I have been acquiring lots of items and some really cool stuff, I have also been discovering lots of releases I didn't even have in my list of items to acquire. This is a monumental project, which as is usual, not helped at all by the traders and shops in this country.<br />
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During my absence and in line with a previous blog entry, I had a brief look into any record listening evenings that someone may be running locally. These are similar to book clubs where people from the group nominate an album and everyone switches off phones and distractions and just listens to the music together. I love that idea, but couldn't find anything like it around. I asked one of the local record shop owners if they had thought of doing something along those lines in their shop one evening and they had tried it, but because of the minimal floor space and no comfortable seating, a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere just couldn't be correctly attained and so after just two attempts it stopped.<br />
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For the concept to work, a club or pub would be needed, preferably with good vinyl audio equipment, with sofa's and relaxing atmosphere and somewhere away from the noise and hustle of the town centre. Instead of aggressively pursuing anywhere, I just put aside one evening a week to switch off the TV, get the vinyl out, switch off the phone, laptop etc and just devote myself to listening to two albums in the comfort of my living room. At first it was difficult to make myself do it each week, on my own for the evening and the TV being the easier option, but I've persisted. Over the last couple of months a couple of times, a friend has dropped in and brought an album with them. My friend Andy brought a Pete Bardens album one evening and another friend Daniel brought in Alison Moyet's recent album, on red vinyl! The atmosphere is perfect at home and the music has been diverse, but mostly it's been a singular affair. So if anyone ever fancies joining me and bringing along an album, then get in touch on Facebook, it's becoming an open house if anyone is interested.<br />
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Listening to music in this room is just awesome<br />
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Over the past few months I have been reading a book called Last Shop Standing about the success and fall of independent record shops here in the UK. While it has been a fascinating and humorous read and I can mostly agree that the major record companies have been their own worst enemies, I have found it funny from the book that the writer seems to believe that record companies have some sort of obligation to keep independent record shops in business. This year has shown to me how much independent music traders in this country are their own worst enemy.<br />
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In September, my wife and I were visiting friends in Bracknell for the weekend. Bracknell is only about ten miles away from the city of Reading and on the very same weekend, boldly advertised in my monthly Record Collector, was an international mammoth record fair, boasting 120 plus stalls. It was an opportunity not to miss, surely from 120 plus stalls and not forgetting the words "International" and "Mammoth", I would have every hope of snatching a good few items from my list of near 950 releases that I still needed to acquire. On the Sunday, I cheekily made my apologies to my hosts and drove off to get there at doors opening at 9am. I was surprised that there was practically no-one outside the venue which was a sports leisure centre, except for a couple of people going to use the sports facilities.<br />
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The record fair was in one of the indoor courts, which on approach looked a lot smaller than I expected. I was the only person at the entrance point and paid my entrance fee to find at the very most there was only about 30 traders in the hall. Some had a single table, some had a couple of tables and the odd few had three tables. Even counting up the tables I couldn't get anywhere near 120 plus, just in case "stalls" meant something other than the number of traders I was expecting. I was there, so I thought I would make the most of it and spent 2 hours rummaging around the stock......NOTHING, Nada, Zip....Bugger all. How, out of a list of 950 releases, I couldn't find a single thing, baffled me. Although if I collected standard rock albums, sixties crooner albums or chart hitting punk singles I would have been in my element as I hardly saw anything I've not seen a million times before.<br />
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To say I was disillusioned would be an understatement. Non of the traders sounded foreign at all, they all had quite strong English accents and I didn't see a single mammoth! The large fair was my last hope of being able to find records the old fashioned way with some human interaction, but it seems more and more unlikely. I sent an email to the organisers of the record fair asking them why they advertised having so many stalls when there was nowhere near the number and the fact that I travelled half way across the country for it (kind of). I haven't had any reply, unsurprisingly.<br />
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Last week I had a holiday in Scotland. Whenever I go anywhere, I always make a list of any records shops in the area that I might take time to visit. There is a record shop of 35 years trading that sits in the heart of Dundee called <a href="http://www.grouchos.co.uk/" target="_blank">Grouchos</a> that I noticed and had to give a try whilst out that way. I was shocked to see record sleeves in racks, without any cover protection, with price stickers stuck on the sleeves. They were all battered and tattered and I hate to think what damage would be done when trying to take those price stickers off. Some more collectable items were in plastic sleeves on high shelves, one of which was a Prince Purple Rain album on purple vinyl which I just had to have. But apart from this one album, that wasn't even on my list of wanted releases, none of the 950 releases I was looking for was in store. It's no wonder record shops have nearly disappeared over the last 20 years.<br />
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In my usual attempt to constantly revive my interest and motivation and keep my fervour alive, a couple of months ago I wondered if I could get my list of wanted releases below 900 by the end of the year. As a simple idea it seemed like an easy target, but it quickly seemed more of a challenge than I initially thought. I'm constantly finding more stuff to acquire and this year for the first time, the number of purchases outweighed the number of discoveries. I've shown this before, but it will be critical over the next few weeks. This shows the number of releases I have found I still need to acquire, recorded as often as possible in a spreadsheet a few times a week<br />
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Over the last couple of months, I managed to get closer and closer to that 900 mark well ahead of time to hit my target. But over the last couple of weeks there seems to have been a rush of releases I have discovered that I didn't know about before that I have had to add to my list of wanted releases. The target has started to look difficult to accomplish. I'm now at 928 releases. If I had an endless supply of cash, I suppose the 900 target would be a joke, but I have to keep a level head and buy only at the most reasonable price I can.<br />
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So, up to the end of the year, I'm going to do a running blog entry. Starting at the next release I acquire, I will start a new blog entry and add to it most days as I get another release (or perhaps even when I don't) on the run up to the end of the year. Ok, it's a poor attempt to make up to you all for not posting for such a long time, make up for it by going over the top. Hopefully it will give an insight into the day to day struggle of finding what sometimes seams like the impossible. Watch this space.....well not this literal space, the space above the next blog entry!jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-34876629858716523732014-07-12T17:08:00.000+01:002014-07-12T17:08:08.254+01:00Tour De France, Tour De York, Tour De Record ShopsLast weekend I had the great privilege to stay in the city of York to watch the Tour De France stage start from there. I always love seeing the Tour De France, having watched it on the television since 1985. But this was also a great opportunity to go and pay a visit to all the record shops in York. On the Friday I had made a trip to a local record shop at home first. It's an interesting shop, thousands upon thousands of records, cd's and cassette tapes.<br />
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As an experienced record shop visitor, I can usually tell quite quickly if a record shop is going to be of any use to a 4AD collector. Cocteau Twins and Pixies have to be the easiest and most prolific releases to find. If a shop doesn't have any releases of these two artists, there's a very good chance that there is practically no chance of anything more obscure such as Dead Can Dance or Clan of Xymox. It's not a hard and fast rule, but is an easy indicator. I was determined that weekend to put aside my previous judgement of UK record shops and thoroughly search through them to see if my prejudice was justified or not.<br />
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The local record shop did actually have some Cocteau Twins and Pixies, so things were looking up. But the first hurdle was the lack of discipline in organising the records into their sections. I found 4AD stuff under Goth, Indie labels, rock and 80's pop. It would take days to go through every section on display, so some sort of common sense was needed. There were about seven or eight Cocteau Twins releases, of which The Spangle Maker was three of those, all the same (except for one which was an original embossed - at the same price as the other two). All of the release were English pressings of which I had all of them. Except for Cocteau Twins and Pixies, there wasn't anything else and certainly nothing outside of the typical English releases.<br />
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Knowing that there was a real mix up in the discipline of releases between the sections, it meant that it was likely worth going through some of the unlikely sections to try and find a hidden gem. But I always find that kind of search soul destroying. Looking through masses of 80's pop, with tons and tons of cheap chart topping drivel, selling at 50 pence a time (which is still overpriced), with practically no surprises and having done this so many times before, getting sick of seeing the same faces, the same graphics as hundreds of previous searches over decades of record collecting, the will is sapped.<br />
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After a couple of hours searching, I leave empty handed, not even close to finding anything of interest. Bearing in mind that I have over 930 items in my want list and the fact that I'm also interested in picking up anything else of interest that I may find. The word disappointed doesn't even come close.<br />
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At least I had the weekend in York to look forward to and a list of five record shops to go and interrogate.<br />
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With my phone and a list of handwritten post codes I set off for the first shop in the centre of the city. There were two close by on the list and while looking for the first, actually found the second instead. It didn't look promising. In the shop window was a selection of classical and jazz releases and I feared that it would be a more specialised shop than I was looking for. Inside, there was jazz music playing and first couple of sections were listed as Jazz and Classical. The main reception was all CD's and along the back wall was a section of Rock, Indie and Pop. The rack had a few hundred CD's and was very helpfully split into lots of artists and an alphabetical catch all of every thing else. In about a half hour I had looked through them all and found one compilation CD of The Birthday Party, Mutiny / The Bad Seed EP. I couldn't remember if I had this already, so bought it anyway. At the back of the shop was a small collection of vinyl of which there was nothing of interest at all.<br />
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Across the road was another of the listed record shops. Entering it though, it looked more like a brick a brack shop, than a record shop. There was about four boxes of vinyl, three of which was all new and sealed stuff. The fourth box just had charity shop quality stuff, easy listening and pop albums. No luck there then.<br />
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Another shop was right in the very centre of the city. My lovely long suffering wife had brought a book with her and it came in handy as the shop actually had a little bench outside in the sunshine, just perfect for the record shopper widow. I always thought that shops miss out on a treat here. Record shops should have a widow waiting area with tea, biscuits and usual shopping magazines. Clothes shops should have a bloke waiting area, with a games console or a tv with Rambo or some such crap on, that way the other half can spend more time shopping guilt free.<br />
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This third shop had a couple of thousand pieces of vinyl, with no sections at all, except for a couple of boxes of dance 12"s. I started at A and worked my way through. I could tell from the start that the shop wasn't going to have much. By the finish of C and no Cocteau Twins, my expectations had fallen completely. The whole shop had nothing at all.<br />
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The third shop on the list was on a small lane, again right in the centre of the city, but was up the attic of another shop and supposedly easy to miss. I couldn't find it though. The lane only had three shops on it and none of them had anything going up into an attic room. Another record shop bites the dust.<br />
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The last one was about two miles out of town. It was a lovely red hot and sunny day, so we walked to it. I hoped for a good record shop. Being out of town probably meant better rent and therefore a bigger shop and a better chance at some luck.<br />
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After a grueling hot walk in the sunshine, we finally got to the record shop in a little York suburb. Once again, the sections were poorly disciplined. There was a punk / new wave section that had no Cocteau Twins at all, which was a bad sign from the off. I asked the owner where I would likely find the stuff I was looking for and he pointed me at a bunch of boxes on the floor marked as 80's. The shop didn't have any surprises in it at all and was typical rock albums mostly. The owner moaned about his work experience youngsters he had in recently just to put the vinyl into order and selections and I envisaged a couple of spotty teenagers without a clue of what they were sorting through as the owner sat around doing nothing at all while all his stock was a mess.<br />
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I left once again with absolutely nothing!<br />
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5 Record shops over a weekend and one CD bought. When I got home, I realised I had The Birthday Party CD, only I had the original and the purchased version bought in York was actually the re-release from around 2007, which looked almost identical except for the matrix on the disc itself. The telltale sign was a GAD number on the matrix against the CAD number on the sleeve. GAD was the number given to whole lot of 4AD re-releases.<br />
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I used to love going to record shops a couple of decades ago, but the experience is just not the same anymore, and I don't think the difference is from me. The record shops just don't have the stock or organisation to compete against the online competition even though online you also have to pay for postage as well. Maybe I'll give one of the large fairs a go?jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-87628438945140652472014-07-01T19:15:00.001+01:002014-07-01T19:15:13.995+01:00Record collecting, how long will it last?I have been getting on with the job of buying in wanted items on the collection. Once again I have been bitten by idiot traders that can't be bothered to list an item properly. This time it was Frazier Chorus and the alternative release of Sloppy Heart re-released on Virgin in an unusual card sleeve, the important bit being the card sleeve, as without the sleeve, the version is then incomplete. As seems to be the typical story, the sleeve by the trader was graded as EX+ which looked positive, only to find on delivery that there was no card sleeve just a plain black die cut sleeve that anyone could have added. One complaint to the trader later was met with the typical indifference and lack of any surprise.<br />
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A couple of weeks later I found the same item from a more respectable outlet, let's see what difference that makes.<br />
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Over the past month I have noticed a worrying, but so far small, slip in the natural climb of music collection worth. I know that collectors only keep a small eye on what is happening as regards the monetary value of their collection, but what is happening in the market is important. If the market drops and people stop buying, apart from the value going down, traders stop trading and many important pieces of music may well end up in landfill. Ok, so that's an extreme end of the loss of value, but while it may seem good that prices go down for the collector in the short term, a fall in general value of music collections would look bad for the second hand industry and bad for the collectors and material would be a lot harder to find.<br />
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I have attempted to keep on eye on the general value trend of the market myself by keeping a spreadsheet of data going by adding to the spreadsheet the market value each day. At the moment I have 2,437 items in my collection, of which only a part is devoted to 4AD. The range of genre's and styles in my collection is pretty varied and so I think this gives a reasonable representation of the variations in the market. What I have done for the past couple of years is take the average selling price of releases sold on Discogs, then got the average of those across my entire collection. I have a couple of rarities and a whole load of stuff worth next to nothing. I think the results have always been quite interesting. As time has passed and more is added to my collection, the more accurate the data becomes as the averages iron out the discrepancies.<br />
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When I started with this data, I was still adding my collection to the database, hence the fall at the very beginning. Over time though I could see why some finance experts were proclaiming music to be the new financial investment like wine and antiques. The first year showed an increase in the average price by 12.5 percent. By April of this year, that trend was looking to be going the same way, as by April 2014 the increase was 6 percent over the half year.<br />
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Although all of this is an aside to the joy of collecting and enjoyment of the music, it can be nevertheless mildly fascinating. I have watched and wondered, when Beatles original pressings, Led Zeppelin originals, etc, etc, just keep rocketing in price, will the bubble burst and all of a sudden, no-one will give a rats arse about vinyl. Whilst it wouldn't make any difference to me in terms of my desire to collect, it would have repercussions on my ability to source the pieces I need for my collection.<br />
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Adding these figures to the spreadsheet since April 2014, I started to notice a stall against the expected increase. While ups and downs are always expected after a couple of weeks the figures tend to right themselves. But after 3 months of near stagnation, I can't help but wonder if there is a change underway. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Perhaps in the next couple of weeks everything will shoot up and the norm will be established. But it is interesting as to whether the market can carry on getting £4,000 for a Beatles Please Please Me, £1700 for a Led Zeppelin I and still keep an interest for those that want a '60s Cliff Richard single worth only 50 pence.<br />
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On a side note, another trend I've tried to keep a record of is the extent of my want list with a hope to seeing a down turn in the number of items still needed to complete my collection. Items are discovered and get added sometimes at the same rate that I'm ticking things off the list.<br />
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The last time I published this chart I was getting a little frustrated by the fact that the trend was going up rather than decreasing. Nearly for every item I bought I found two others I hadn't previously known about. But at last as you can see above, the trend is going the right way, down. You never know, in a couple of decades I may have this thing wrapped up......hmm,... all kind donations will be gratefully received!!<br />
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jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-51437738974290155252014-05-27T19:01:00.001+01:002014-05-27T19:01:47.218+01:00Album Listening Clubs...Somebody set one up pleaseI very much like the thought of a new concept that has been sweeping the music world these last couple of years. It involves getting a group of like minded people together, which means lovers of music, not any genre specific grouping and devoting the evening to playing a couple of albums in their entirety and without interruption. The choice of album played is decided by an attendee in advance and there are strict rules applied about respecting the music and listening to it without talking, without other distractions and solely devoting attention to the album being played. Some clubs are taking this a little further and playing only vinyl, on top quality record players and amps.<br />
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I love this idea. It's unfortunate these days that the majority of people don't devote time to listening to music without any other distraction. I find myself listening to music when I can fit it in, while driving the car mostly, which is a real shame. When I was younger, I had a lot more respect for music and devoted more time to listening to it. I would decide in an evening that the TV wasn't going to be switched on, loads of incense would get burned and fill the room, the lighting would be dimmed and I would just listen to the music while at most studying the album sleeve and contents. When you listen to music that way, one studies the intricacies, the twists, turns and little nuances that make up the whole palette that otherwise would be missed. Also an album is put together without distraction. An artist doesn't record an album while watching the television at the same time or doesn't record vocals while driving down the motorway. All the structure of an album is also carefully thought out and put together as a single piece of artwork with a specific running order. Listening to it in any other way, other than with total attention and in proper running order is missing the point I suppose. We can't say we have seen a Rosetti painting if we just saw little close ups occasionally or if we saw a black and white photocopy from a magazine.<br />
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The idea of these book club style album listening groups just sound like the very thing for me. I love to listen to other peoples music (as long as it's an educated taste) and this kind of arrangement gets you listening to music that you may not naturally veer towards. Unfortunately, nobody for miles and miles around is doing anything like this at the moment. Yes, yes, I can hear you say "so why don't you do something yourself". I'm one of those sort of people that comes up with ideas, but for some reason has no idea how to execute them. In the past I've tried a couple of alternative music club nights myself with a couple of friends which died a death. I just don't understand people in the main, so when it comes to getting people together, I fall flat on my face. In my head I'm a leader, in reality I'm a loner with daft ideas, like this collecting crusade I suppose. I don't drink and I look like most younger people's dad nowadays, and because of that have no interest in dancing. If an evening doesn't involve drinking or dancing, that's 99.9 percent of the population disinterested.<br />
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If only the "build it and they will come" dream would work in that scenario, but I'm too realistic to realise that it wouldn't.<br />
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What started this train of thought? I spent last Tuesday evening, with myself and the dog listening to Dead Can Dance's two albums Within the Realm Of a Dying Sun and Spleen and Ideal, on vinyl, with the mood lights on, incense burning and no interruptions and it was fantastic. My problem when experiencing something wonderful on my own, is the pity I feel for those missing out on such an experience. But then you can't force anyone to appreciate something wonderful.<br />
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I am surprised when looking at the Album Listening clubs around the world, how many 4AD albums spring up such as This Mortal Coil or Pixies, mixed with the obvious classics such as Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin and Bowie. It just shows the influence of 4AD worldwide, punching far above it's weight.<br />
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Well the sabbatical month of April is well behind me and the collecting has carried on where it had left off. I picked up a nice Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgare CD recently. I hope soon that I can get everything on a many variants release. Some of the Dead Can Dance or This mortal Coil releases have tens of variants and would be good to show. Maybe sometime soon. For now thanks for readingjonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-57641794457398503632014-04-30T21:52:00.000+01:002014-04-30T21:52:32.966+01:00Ooh, let's watch The Voice....Fuck OffI was watching a documentary about the genre of music labelled Easy Listening or Elevator Music last night. I always find documentaries on any form of music interesting, it it helps oneself define genres or understand where certain types of music have come from and how the history of that music progressed. The one thing that kept repeating from the fan and musician interviews, was the repeated reason for liking Easy Listening or writing the music for that genre was to get away from the dark, the angry or the depressing music that was always around and escape to somewhere relaxing and free from stress and the anxiety of life. It came across as an escapism.<br />
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As an avid music lover, I constantly get asked a few things repetitively, why do I listen to such depressive music, what's wrong with listening to "Normal" music and what type of music do I like (or usually the conclusion cast upon me, that I only listen to very heavy rock music)? I have already touched on my interpretation of music to food - <a href="http://4adfirstdecade.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/if-music-be-food-of-life-give-me-pizza.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">here</span></a><br />
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Other people can listen to whatever music they feel they want to listen to, why should I have any problem with that? I do get a little annoyed when folk try to introduce me to music that they say is fantastic when their tastes in music never veer away from the top 10 music chart or heard from a sodding advert on tv. Why do I get annoyed? Because I'm addicted to music and there is nothing more incredible than finding new music from an artist or band that is writing and performing now. The problem is with sifting through the thousands of new artists and bands and the music they create and finding something that appeals to me. In my experience and opinion, the best music comes through after tens of hours of repetitive play. One test of good music is how quickly it gets annoying, good music NEVER gets annoying, but in order to figure that out takes hours of listening.<br />
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So that huge amounts of my listening time is not wasted, experience has given me an ear for what I know just won't last the distance. Music made for the buck rather than the outpouring of an artists soul is very likely to go off quickly for me, so I tend to steer clear of charts and the popular choice from the off. Then there is the tedium of drudging through massive amounts of ok music, stuff that has substance, can be respected for the artists love of their music, but gets in the way of finding the real meaty stuff that stays with you for life.<br />
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It's difficult finding that music which is life affirming and has staying power and it can be a very personal decision, so it can be hard to find that music based on other people's tastes and opinions. To reduce the opportunity of finding any of that incredible music by being genre biased for me would be a sin and harmful to the quest of discovering great music.<br />
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But that brings me to what was remarkable about that documentary. Many of the artists and fans of Easy Listening music, saw it as an escape. The music let them escape from the harsh realities of their own life and the reality of the harsh world around them. It must be the unusual way that my brain works, because I have always had issues with escapism. Some of us seem to live in a modern western world where the majority of our time is spent trying to escape it, either through drink, drugs, partying, tv or even religion. The western world seems to me a sick society that cannot cope with life, even though they don't really experience the real hardships of life like the rest of the world does. A Victorian mentality is still so very prevalent where instead of facing personal issues head on, we try to run away from them using any shortcuts available. Everyone has issues to some extent or another and I have always try to live by the code of facing those issues, dealing with them, even if that just means acceptance that they exist and then trying to get the most of life from the rest of living. My philosophy has always been that happiness is much sweeter when forcefully produced by oneself than when induced by a shortcut or escapism.<br />
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I am far from proclaiming myself as any saint, far from it, all I'm doing is expressing why music means so much to me. Music for me has been a tool of confronting demons, facing reality, having an understanding friend with me at all times that knows exactly how I feel and cries with me, then lets me move on. I don't need happy music to make me happy as I know that the shortcut route is fleeting. There are constant things in life that make me happy because I allow myself to fully appreciate them, like just being in the company of my wife.<br />
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For me, art is life therapy. How artists have got through life, dealt with its trials and problems and whether they succeeded to deal with them is an artist's primary lesson, which goes hand in hand with the art they create and stands like a brother or sister and sits besides you, fully understanding every emotion you go through because they have been through the same and see no shame in what you feel. A person doesn't need help or a shoulder to cry on when they are happy, happiness is for sharing with real people in real time. So the therapeutic healing of music is for me always against what is termed as dark music. The term dark music for me simply means depth, depth of emotion, depth of meaning and not a genre specific term.<br />
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I'm not a Christian, a party pooper or a do-gooder. I believe that that in the western world we bury our feelings, shy away from facing our demons and use partying, drink, drugs and sex to run away from our problems in a belief that maybe they won't be there when we return to normality, which always happens and the problems are still there. In the long term, the short fix, short cutting solutions never solve anything and just make our troubles all the worse.<br />
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Easy Listening music has always been the obvious face of this kind of "Stiff Upper Lip" type of mentality, a mentality that has run through popular music for an eternity, from the old English music hall tradition, through massive multi platinum crooners of the sixties, to Richard Clayderman, "saxophonists playing the hits" albums, lounge music, cabaret and karaoke. At least Easy Listening has an honesty that it is nothing more than what it unashamedly peddles, my annoyance comes with music that at it's heart is Easy Listening, but pushes itself as something more serious, when it blatantly isn't!<br />
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And the worst is this modern trend that if something is old, then it's classic. Because the general public generally can't tell the difference between the genuine artist that exposes their deepest fears and feelings because it's the very core of what they are and the junk being shoved down their throats at a constant rate, the longevity of that junk, for some reason, becomes highly praised and respected. Just because a label for a boy band is very good at peddling the same shite for more than a decade, does not suddenly make that music any better.<br />
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Music is your personal love affair. Love it, but for gods sake, don't be taken for a ride.<br />
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That's this months rant over. It has been a slow month. For financial reasons I have taken a months sabbatical, which has made me very hungry to get stuck back in again.......<br />
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Ciao<br />
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<br />jonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-8638884729364604622014-04-06T22:04:00.001+01:002014-04-06T22:04:07.611+01:00Throwing Muses - DizzyI will try and show all the versions of a release when I complete collecting them. I've decided to make an executive decision though and not hold out for matrices variations and test pressings. If I have or notice any of these, I think I will add them, but as we saw with the Bauhaus - Dark Entries, it gets to a point with matrix variations where you wonder if the development of yet more discoveries mean that collecting it never ends.<br />
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Now I have an awful confession to make. While I find most bands that signed to 4AD in the first decade of its existence brilliant, interesting, beautiful, inspiring and many other heart or mind activating words, throwing muses always left me a little cold. I have lived through a period of explosion in music and while still listening to new music in the late eighties and early nineties and also trying to catch up on three decades of already released music by that time, I made a conscious effort to not be swamped with an impossible task of listening to everything. I learned very early on in my musical exploration that some music reveals its greatest depth and life after tens of hours of repeated listening. Some music just gets better and better the more you listen to it. This means that the battle of getting the real meat out of a piece of music takes so much time that new discoveries have to be limited or picked carefully first from the ocean of music available. 4AD was always a pretty good bet for me, the label gave a kind of partial guarantee of satisfaction.<br />
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My introduction to 4AD was mostly through the Lonely Is An Eyesore compilation in 1987. On that compilation was a track by Throwing Muses called Counting Backwards. From all the amazing music on that album, the Throwing Muses track along with the Wolfgang Press and one of the Dead Can Dance tracks left me a little unsure as to whether I liked them or not. The Dead Can Dance and Wolfgang Press tracks just grew on me the more I listened to the compilation. The Throwing Muses track however, just didn't do anything for me to the point that I started to get annoyed by it getting in the way of the rest of the great songs. Because of that track, I never gave Throwing Muses a chance really.<br />
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Listening to Dizzy now, The Throwing Muses single from 1989, it still reminds me strongly of that track from the Lonely As An Eyesore compilation and still leaves me cold. Now I know.....this is sacriledges, I'm dissing a band from the sacred 4AD vaults. But this is only my personal opinion and I'm sure there are many, many 4AD fans that absolutely love Throwing Muses. A 4AD collection wouldn't be very complete if I decided to leave a band's releases out just because I didn't get their music.<br />
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So for those that do like the Throwing Muses 1989 single Dizzy, here is the complete list (so far) of all the versions of the single<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO03mqvFavIKxaDW_me4WuhQxZqNks5IDSvrJztiGv-o_M2x0ZucXXt9HlFGLSAGqTuEddkOqJpZL7gyDn2VN7oTRtDTtqykNkH6-XXYiPZpX-fZPIpvTq2NU3hno5xCfqGz8rqtyJ9rjf/s1600/Dizzy+Collection+Numbered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO03mqvFavIKxaDW_me4WuhQxZqNks5IDSvrJztiGv-o_M2x0ZucXXt9HlFGLSAGqTuEddkOqJpZL7gyDn2VN7oTRtDTtqykNkH6-XXYiPZpX-fZPIpvTq2NU3hno5xCfqGz8rqtyJ9rjf/s1600/Dizzy+Collection+Numbered.jpg" height="351" width="400" /></a></div>
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(1) UK 12"<br />
(2) US 12" Promo<br />
(3) UK 10" Gatefold<br />
(4) UK 7"<br />
(5) US CD Promo<br />
(6) UK CD<br />
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As far as I know, all these releases were all released in 1989.<br />
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(1) UK 12" - 4AD - BAD903<br />
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(2) US 12" Promo - Sire - PRO-A-3395<br />
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This US promo only sleeve used part of the sleeve design from both the Hunkpapa album and part of which can be faintly seen in the UK singles sleeves. Dizzy wasn't released to the general public as a single in the US, so I assume that the promo 12" and the US promo CD were used to promote the Hunkpapa album, which had the Dizzy single included.<br />
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(3) UK 10" - 4AD - BADD903 - Limited to 5000 copies<br />
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(4) UK 7" - 4AD - AD903<br />
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(5) US CD Promo - Sire - PRO-CD-3618<br />
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This CD Promo from the US has a grey back sleeve, but no front sleeve, with the single title and release code printed.<br />
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(6) UK CD - 4AD - BAD903CD<br />
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The full details of all these releases can be found <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Throwing-Muses-Dizzy/master/20821" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Here</span></a><br />
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Listen <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Throwing+Muses/Dizzy" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Here</span></a><br />
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This is all I have on this release so far and, as far as I know, is everything released for this single. If I find anything else, I promise to add it to this page. There will no doubt be a test pressing for each vinyl release, but these will be hard to come by<br />
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Thanks for reading as alwaysjonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3685339726493057634.post-23984822810421701692014-03-04T22:00:00.000+00:002014-03-04T22:00:19.292+00:00Bootlegs, licensed or modern releases, eastern European 4AD releasesSomething that has bothered me for a long time now has been the lack of understanding of the line between official releases and the bootlegging world. This isn't too bad in countries like the UK and the US. Very strict copyright laws exist that stop the blatant copying and selling of copyrighted music and prosecutions are made all the time. Bootleggers still exist in these two countries, but are generally from live performances or from demo recordings which are not part of any official release and tend to come under a more grey area. I think these are still illegal, but generally are poor quality and not really done for the advantages of money but more done by a fan excited at the thought of releasing their own collected samples.<br />
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It then becomes a matter of choice as to whether or not the UK or US collector wants to collect these unofficial releases as part of their collection. I think most collectors would not class these as legitimate collection pieces, yet some still fetch collector prices.<br />
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The waters become a little more cloudy though, when it comes to the non UK and US releases. Many European countries can be mostly relied on as a source of official releases and versions licensed from the main country of the owning label. Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, seem to be reliable in the fact that a release under these countries own labels will most likely be legitimately released through a licence agreement and, therefore, be official. Further into Eastern Europe though is where the line between official and unofficial starts to blur a little and starts to make you wonder as to whether something for sale is a genuine licensed release or not.<br />
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There are quite a few Polish releases of Dead Can Dance albums and Cocteau Twins albums in the late eighties on Discogs. In the mid to late eighties, one of my great uncles had family in Poland and we used to send clothing parcels to them because the Polish economy was so bad that each day people where queuing for hours just to buy bread. To think of western CD's being licensed for sale in a market that can hardly feed itself seems difficult to comprehend, not because of the moral questions but more for the reason that no-one would manufacture something that wasn't sellable.<br />
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I would love to know other people's opinions on this. When did countries like Russia, Poland, Turkey and Israel actually license and sell authorised versions of 4AD releases? Israel's releases seem to look more genuine, but are they legit releases? I've no idea. At the moment my gut instinct is that the Israeli releases are genuine and that a few Polish vinyl ones could perhaps be genuine, but the Polish CD's and tapes, all Russian releases and all Turkish releases from the eighties are either bootlegs or much later pressings. It would be good to hear from anyone that bought any 4AD releases from these countries. There are a few others that are intriguing as well such as Yugoslavian and Czechoslovakian releases, that could well be the real thing. There is the growing South American market from countries such as Brazil and Argentina. Once again some vinyl releases could be genuine, bought from the eighties? It's hard to say.<br />
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It was interesting noting from Martin Aston that 4AD never really had much in the way of tight records of what was produced, where and in what quantities. Sometimes I think it would be great to be let loose on boxes of old papers in the 4AD office and try and find out how many copies of each release where pressed, but it seems those paper trails don't exist.<br />
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Anyway, I must apologise for such a long absence. I have spent a long while reading Martin Aston's book. I have carried on writing my own book and have got a little engrossed in it. Still, the collection does not stop collecting. I have now acquired all the versions (well the ones I know about so far) of Throwing Muses' single Dizzy. So I need to get a set of photo's done to add here. I promise not to leave it another 3 months until I post again...promisejonnyhalfheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11819778337774043775noreply@blogger.com0