Get the wish list below 900 by the new year (Check back Regularly)

28th November 2014

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.

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....

27th November 2014

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

Here is a wiki on the longbox.

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.

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!

26th November 2014

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.

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.

25th November 2014

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.

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!

Wantlist = 931

22nd November 2014

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.

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.

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.

21st November 2014

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).

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

20th November 2014

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....

It wasn't green, it was grey, of course. Even my photo of it (above) comes out green. Oh well.
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.

Let us see what tomorrow brings....humph!

19th November 2014

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

Waiting for at work was the Birthday Party album Junkyard, this time the New Zealand vinyl version and also a test pressing of Wolfgang Press' single King Of Soul.

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


17th November 2014

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


14th November 2014

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.

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 brings

From a time when music was inventive...Bauhaus

Years ago, as a young lad hungry for music, I spent many a year just going to any gig going. When I wrote my Fanzine in 1991-92, I went around the local counties interviewing bands and seeing concerts. Then when I joined a band and did gigs around the country, I inevitably saw a lot of other bands also doing the same thing. Then on top of that, going out nearly every weekend and then several times a week, meant seeing a lots of bands that just happened to be on.

Unfortunately, I would say in my humble opinion, that the vast majority of bands I saw were somewhere between OK and terrible. On the rare occasion that there was something that had potential or promise, they were never seen again. For me the early nineties were a turning point in music, where popularity started to mean more than originality in music. Even in the marginalised gothic culture that I was heavily into, anyone who thought the big goth four were just ok (Mission, Sisters, Nephilim, Rosetta Stone) and preferred more of the diversity of the culture, were even marginalised within a marginalised culture. Where goth music had sprouted out from the roots of punk, by the early '90's it had drifted heavily into standard stadium rock and the diversity was drastically diminishing. Every band on the scene was trying to either emulate the big four or emulate each other emulating the big four. The only hope at the time was from outside the UK.

So in my older years, I got more picky about what music I went to see. In the yesteryear, before the internet and a million young bands, the only way of finding new music was either taking a chance and buying it or going to copious gigs in the hope of stumbling across something worthwhile. Of course today, anyone can spend an eternity looking for new music on the interweb. There was an interesting statement in this months record collector magazine about how the easy access to music has cheapened it for many of today's youth, to the point that the majority just don't see the worth in music and have very little attention span for it.

In the past fews years I have seen some of the best gigs of my life. I've already gone on before (at great length you may think...sorry) about how good Dead Can Dance are live, or even better a Lisa Gerrard gig. But this week I went to a gig that really blew me away. Peter Murphy is currently doing a world tour, playing only Bauhaus music. I saw the first leg of the UK part of the tour this weekend and I have to say it was one of the best gigs I have ever seen. I came out it thinking about how privileged I am to be able to listen and witness the kind of music I am exposed to at the moment. I was too young to have seen Bauhaus when they were a live act, so be able to just grab a snippet of that experience before either I or the creators of this music pass away has been a rare honour indeed and one that I would encourage anyone to see before the tour is over.



What also struck me about the gig and has also been the elements that I found the most fascinating about goth music when I first got into it, were the strong combinations of drums and bass. Bauhaus' music was built on this combination, with everything else being an additional flavouring on the top. Today the bass guitar seems a forgotten instrument, unfortunately. My love of Joy Division and The Cure also had this same element, where the bass accompanied by some skilful and diverse drumming patterns, makes the music so powerful and strong, that the additional of a guitar or keyboard becomes almost an afterthought. The rhythms punched out at the Peter Murphy gig from the songs Dark Entries, Stigmata Martyr, In the Flat Field and Kick In The Eye were so powerful and strong it kicked the audience into a frenzy. These songs are over 30 years old now and still there is nothing like it around. I couldn't help but think how the younger generation are missing out on such music as there was practically no-one under 35 years old at the gig.


So just in case you are under 35 years old and starting out in a band, for goodness sake, give this stuff a listen, the world needs more music like this.


Then send me a copy of it please.
If you have the chance, go and see Peter Murphy on his tour. http://www.petermurphy.info/pmlive.html


The one surprise song from the set was a cover of Dead Can Dance's Severance, which wasn't done that well, but then I would think that Dead Can Dance wouldn't do a Bauhaus song very well either.


Just a quick message to TinyPie that I have seen your comment. There seems to be yet another version of the Bauhaus single Dark Entries which TinyPie has found, so that would bring the tally up to eight versions, will this end I ask myself while pulling the remainder of my hair out! I will get this added soon. Thanks again to you all for reading, let me know if you have seen Peter Murphy on this tour and let me know your thoughts

Win a Clan Of Xymox Promo and Feel Loved

Clan of Xymox are a difficult band to figure out. They started with real genius, pushed their luck a bit too far following trends instead of exploring and experimenting with what they were doing, flopped in a huge way, then tried to pick up where their invention was last dropped but finding some of the talent was gone. Of Course Clan of Xymox themselves would never agree this is correct, except most fans would agree that this is the simple but accurate depiction.

Don’t get me wrong, the re-invented Clan of Xymox aren’t rubbish, but they do lack a certain flair that set them apart from their counterparts. The biggest issue is the fact that there seems to be way too much ego in the way to have any accurate or factual history simply laid out about the band.

The first album Subsequent Pleasures was a self released album that has a shroud of mystery over it from the beginning. As mentioned in earlier blogs, it is rumoured that Ronny Moorings, the singer of Clan of Xymox, didn’t like the quality so threw away most of the 500 copies made. Whether this has any truth is difficult to prove, but these rumours have helped the original version become very collectable, fetching a handsome price.

Once signed to 4AD their first Official album that was released called Clan of Xymox. Again some interesting confusion is raised because the band were calling themselves just Xymox, a Tag, I suppose you could call it, that Ronny Moorings had given himself (a bit like Jonny Halfhead...although someone gave me that, I didn’t invent it). The first album title was supposed to be Clan of Xymox by the band Xymox. But in the understandable confusion the Clan Of.. stuck.

The debut album is very much in the vein of New Order. Quite dark, quite dancey and electronic, with hints of industrial, or what was to become industrial music. Detail was its greater hallmark. Interesting shifts and lots of little samples and noises keep you interested and adds an atmosphere and realism to the music. This was something for me which defined a difference between Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre’s music. Tangerine Dream were session electronic musicians. They could bang out an album every six months. Their music had a handful of layers and was clever in its simplicity. But Jean-Michel Jarre’s albums took time in the production process of adding a very rich texture using many, many layers and tweaks which gave his music more depth and realism. Clan of Xymox has this depth and multi layers.

The next album took the same ideas from the first album and galvanised them. Medusa is a perfect album. The production is spot on and the mix balanced just right. The songs have interesting and unexpected twists. The lyrics are simple, but have an air of honesty that allows the user to relate and feel the mood without being patronised. The whole album feels shared and equal between the musicians, but it would seem that tensions were building, there were too many talents wrapped tightly into too small a space.

The next single was to be their last with 4AD before the band changed their name to what it was going to be originally “Xymox”. The single was Blind Hearts, which was released on 4AD and then also released on the label the band moved to, Wing Records. This song was to feature on the next album Twist Of Shadows. Twist Of Shadows is the Medusa album made more accessible. It’s a lot lighter and more pop orientated, which is where the inner band tensions were. The band had a good balance of experimentalism and a desire to be popular with Medusa, with Twist of Shadows the urge to be popular was starting to win out at the detriment of experimentation.

Twist of Shadows is probably the most accessible as an introduction to Clan Of Xymox. Because of its desire for popularity, it is a little dated with a typical ‘80’s sound.

 

The band went on towards the pull of dance music in the early nineties like bands were trying to do at the time, latching onto an emerging house and techno scenes. But this drive for success and trend contributed to their downfall and by the mid nineties, the talents within Clan Of Xymox (or Xymox as they were now called) where pulling so hard in several directions that the whole band split apart.

Eventually the singer, Ronny Moorings, was left alone in the band. He decided to start from scratch and return to the dark moody, industrial sound that had originally defined Clan Of Xymox. Although this has been a partial return to original form, you can tell a lot of the talent is no longer with Clan Of Xymox. I have only heard the first album of the resurrected Clan Of Xymox called Hidden Faces and then a couple of later singles and I wasn’t too impressed. But then my musical period of experimentation from the early nineties was swamped with wannabe Sisters Of Mercy bands that got so repetitive and predictable, so when I hear another band doing the repetitive and predictable and also sound like they are trying to mimic the Sisters of Mercy, I automatically switch off.

Maybe the more recent Clan Of Xymox offers more hope, I don’t know, maybe one day I’ll give them yet another go.

There is another interesting psychological twist to my tale and Clan Of Xymox that works against myself picking the band up again. In the early nineties, I loved the first three Clan Of Xymox albums. When going to alternative and goth nights several times a week I would proclaim how great they were with the DJ’s and event organisers constantly and even lend copies for them to listen to. But as always, it fell on deaf ears because they weren’t in vogue, and everyone wanted to listen and dance to the same predictable stuff. Now they have become the goth underground darlings, with everyone proclaiming how they loved this stuff years ago. Bollocks! So I can’t help but be annoyed and want to steer clear of this fickle trend and current opinion shite. That doesn’t help trying to keep and unbiased opinion either

So to commemorate this great band, and of course because of the fact that I am a dimwit and yet again I have in my possession two versions of this release...I am once again giving away a 4AD release. Well that’s not strictly true as this version isn’t on 4AD, but you can forgive me for that. The winner this time round will receive a copy of Xymox’s 12” single of Blind Hearts. This is the US Promo version on Wing Records that was the bridge between Clan Of Xymox and Xymox. An interesting piece of history.
I will even post it for free. Feel the love.....

Please don’t enter just to sell it...that’s not the point.

 

For a chance to win this lovely article, just friend me on Facebook and send me a message telling me you want it, because you just want it OK! One lucky winner will be chosen at random by picking the entrant that shouts the loudest

I’m Jonny Halfhead and you have been a wonderful audience

What is Goth???

First of all, let me remind everyone that I’m giving away a free Cocteau Twins 7” single, the winner to be decided on the weekend of 3rd December 2011. See my last blog entry for details.

This last week or so I’ve been setting up my facebook profile under my alias (an alias I have dragged with me for 17 years now, thanks Mr Kingsley). I keep noticing little arguments and squabbles about the definition of goth, the culture and music. It’s so funny....nothing changes.

I have always admitted to being unashamed of being a goth. But more of a home and slippers goth nowadays. The definition has changed every year for the past nearly 30 years. The music, I think, can never be defined. Probably because the early goth music, the real stuff and not the 2nd, 3rd, 4th set of pretenders, was so diverse. The bands were more defined by the post punks that listened to their music. By the late 80’s goth music in the UK was becoming narrowed in it’s variety. Post punk was going massively out of style and became so “yesterday”. The tag “goth” became more of an insult than a description. The big bands the goths followed at the time, Sisters of Mercy, Mission, Cure, Fields of the Nephilim, All about Eve, Cocteau Twins and Dead can Dance, all hated the term, constantly making a point of refuting even the suggestion that they were goth bands.

By the early nineties, goth in the UK had become a very underground and inward looking scene. Goth had become more about a whole culture than just about music. It was about respecting death and darkness, getting the “meat” out of life, reading literature that dealt with culturally  uncomfortable issues, such as death, deformity, depression, exclusion. It became a feeling more than a simple definition.

Because of this, goth also became elitist. As the culture became inward looking and protective, the music became elitist and inward looking. The vast amount of UK goth bands in the early 90’s were just copycat bands of the big bands of the late eighties. Goth had started as a single step from punk and glam, with a do-it-yourself inventiveness and a daring to try anything in style and direction. It was varied to such a degree that even 30 years on, the older goths still argue over who is inclusive and who is not because of that variation in style. By the late eighties the style got narrowed into a stadium rock direction. The early nineties copycat bands hardened the rock edge to the point that punk and inventiveness had disappeared completely. As some goth bands blended into death metal , anyone wearing black clothes and eyeliner was a goth.

Goth’s downfall has always been it’s elitism. For me, what goth is is defined by a feeling. An attraction to dark romanticism, a real romantic, not just someone after a shag or trying to be better than someone else. Mixed with a spirit of invention and exploration, it is also a deep love and a need to understand and respect the darker and negative aspects of human life. As I define goth this way, I have met very few goths in my life, even though I have supposedly been surrounded by goths for a great portion of it. As I don’t know what is in a persons heart and desires, I cannot say that anyone is not a goth either.

Too many people spend too much time, deciding who around them is goth and who isn’t. Which for me shows a lack of love and respect and adds to the elitist element that has become all too common in the modern goth culture. If you wish to define yourself as a goth then that is part of your relationship with yourself and your own definition of it.

As for the music, to really get an experts definition, the best person on the planet is a journalist called Mick Mercer. The best person to have heard and seen it all and documented every bit of it.
http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=mick+mercer

Here We Go Then

First of all I must apologise for my terrible grammar and spelling. I'm not too hot on correct English.

I'll give you a bit of background info on myself first if I may. I got into music as an early teen. My first love was synth pop. Ultravox, Gary Numan, Thompson Twins. Then at about 14 I started listening to Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Tomita. This got me onto Prog Rock on the one side and strangely Goth on another.

I was very attracted to the Goth culture, the weird and even frightening way folk dressed and the way many goths loved the music wholeheartedly. The first Goth band I got into was The Cure. It was a new slant on the electronic music I was already listening to. I made regular trips to the library and borrowed records what I thought were other Goth bands like Cult, Sisters of Mercy, Mission. Then I borrowed three albums which started my love of 4AD. Treasure by Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance's first album and Medusa by Clan of Xymox. Medusa was an incredible album. Similar to the Cure, and similar to the electronic music of Jarre and Tangerine Dream.

In 1987 I bought a 4AD sampler album called Lonely Is An Eyesore. The wealth of music on this one compilation was incredible. On the album's inner sleeve was a full run down of all releases from 4AD up until 1987. Many were already deleted, which seemed such a shame. But I wondered how cool it would be to have all of those releases.

So this is what I hope to do. I have chosen only the first ten years as this will be a big enough task of it's own. I have listed 720 possible releases already and I'm still adding to this list constently. But I hope to add more detail to this blog over time.

The purpose of this blog is to track my progress towards many goals. Build a website, build a database, reach other enthusiasts, share excitement, and share plans of the big vision to exhibit in years to come. What would be very cool, would be to find a fellow collector that would like to collect the second decade and exhibit their collection along with my own.