The sands of time keep on dropping away, darn it!

Can anyone remember where I was this time last year?

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. 

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. 

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....

893

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. 

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!

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

So a Happy New Year to you all and all the luck for this year in all your crazy collecting ventures!

Top 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).

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.

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.

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.

But then I am an over opinionated walrus!!!

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

I always thought that the Cocteau Twins cover design for Love's Easy Tears was very similar to Pink Floyd's Meddle

Anyway, onto my top ten 4AD covers, in no particular order, let's get on with it...


1 - Birthday Party - Junkyard

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.

This picture was created by an artist called Ed Roth 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.

2 - Dead Can Dance - Aion poster

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 Garden Of Earthy Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. 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 Top 10 4AD Albums list (in fact, a lot do, so am I biased towards the sleeve design).

3 - Dead Can Dance - Within The Realm of a Dying Sun

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 Raspail. 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.

4 - Colourbox - Baby I love You So

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

5 - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares

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.

6 - Pixies - Doolittle

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.

7- Coctea Twins - Treasure

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.

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


8 - Cocteau Twins - The Spangle Maker

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.

The original UK release came with an embossed sleeve where the frame was slightly raised around the photograph by Gertrude Käsebier 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.

9- Cocteau Twins - Head over heels & Sunburst and Snowblind

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.

10 - Lush - Scar

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.

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....

Thank You Dear Reader, Thank You

I just had to post again.

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.

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.

After seven months from starting this blog, I was estatic about getting 1000 views 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.

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.

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.....

This morning this little blog reached 49,999 page views, then......

...........50,000 page views

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.

The journey continues ..............

You 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.

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).

The ebay auction finished at a whopping £180....ouch!

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!

The final winning bid .....£205....what???

I know smart ass, this isn't the uk version!!

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 here 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.

The winning bid .......£361.....!!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I came away from the bidding empty in basket.

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. Here is an official PDF which introduced the standard to the industry.

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.

In the last few months, I toyed with a visit to the Netherlands in the autumn and the Utrecht International Record Fair. 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.

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.

So I'm giving away a copy of a Greek pressing of the Cocteau Twins album Treasure 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.

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.

Thanks for reading as always

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.