Okay, okay I know this is two days late, please know I’m not doing this to be a ghastly little attention seeker; I have an excuse, owls.
I enviously read how several of my favourite bloggers spent this hallowed day, on my mobile in a freezing cold tent in North Wales, having spent the day helping Mrs 1537 supervise a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award group. Now I liked tents, I like North Wales and I’ve sort of grown used to having Mrs 1537 around the place; however, as you well know, if there is one thing that makes my blood pump a little faster it is vinyl. Especially (gulps) ultra-limited edition stuff.
Now I would have loved to have been queuing up with the best of you at 7.30am, chatting to my fellow devotees with the freewheeling-yet-calculated good nature one needs when socializing with someone you bear no ill will towards, yet would bludgeon to death with a free blueberry muffin in an instant, if that’s what it took to get hold of the last copy of The Squirrel Foreskin EP by Fart Ramble on 10″ orange vinyl. I’m not proud, it is what it is.
So by long-standing arrangement I wasn’t one of the faithful queueing up outside my beloved Probe Records in Liverpool on Saturday. Not that I let it enter my head more than once a minute for the whole day, obviously. Anyway, the whole thing forgotten, we turned in about 9.30, as you do when you’re camping in April. It was 5 degrees C where we were, that didn’t sound cold to me, 0 or -2 that’s cold, 5 would be a doddle; especially for a butch outdoorsman such as myself. At least this was what I thought as I levered myself into my ‘bag, wearing 2 pairs of socks and my much-loved but faded-to-the-point-where-it’s-been-relegated-to-nightwear Iggy & The Stooges Metallic K.O T-shirt. Thwarted in our attempt to watch The Hobbit on my I-pad by dint of there being no solid surface to rest it on* and there being a finite length of time either of us could bear to hold our arms out of the sleeping bag, I abandoned myself to the arms of Morpheus. That’s where the owls come in.
Now I’m an environmentally conscious sort, I volunteer and lobby for various projects and causes, give money where I can and generally feel at one with most of Mother Nature’s creations. I have on occasion given money specifically to help secure habitat for barn owls; ask me again now MF! The just don’t shut up! They woke me up at 2.32, 3.33 and at 4am, that was the point at which I vowed I would never play my Barn Owl LP ever again and did some depressing WordPressing on other’s RSD experiences. Owls.
Anyway, having survived my Arctic trauma and the subsequent aftermath for my back, although still a bit grumpy about Saturday night, I found myself just passing Probe Records today at lunchtime (having had a brisk 15-minute walk to achieve this) and ambled inside to cheer myself up. Lo and behold there were still a few RSD goodies to be had, some reissues I had no interest in, the Moon Duo remixes and others. However, they did have the one thing I wanted most of all from RSD, I couldn’t believe it! Mugstar Centralia, a new LP limited to 300 copies on beautiful blue vinyl. Having seen them supporting White Hills this month I was desperate to grab some of their vinyl and here it was – thank you Gods of Rock!**
Mood fully restored to usual perkiness, I made my way back to work carrying my new favourite record, blessing RSD 2013 and maybe, just maybe, forgiving the owls a little.
144 Down (still).
*my stomach having ceased to be such, some time ago.
** Probe actually had 3 copies, I am not proud to report that I did briefly consider buying all three to be able to legitimately say I owned 1/100th of an LP release – imagine being able to say the same about Eagles Hotel California? although I fully accept I may need more shelves if that particular fantasy ever came to fruition.
Ok, I admit it, I’m jealous of people who get such pleasure out of polymerized stuff with little tiny grooves and bumps. You can’t cuddle an MP3 … or you shouldn’t.
Don’t be jealous – when’s the last time you had to smuggle an mp3 into the house, or the last time you had to pay someone £100 to put up another mp3 shelf?
It’s an ailment not a hobby.
That’s a beautiful site right there. Is it a full-length? Colored vinyl. There is nothing better, except for maybe a pint along with it.
Glad to see you snagged some RSD love. Now I really need to get some Mugstar. Hello, Discogs.
Yup full-length LP ‘recorded live to two-track’ it says here, the quality of both material and music is excellent. I have to say though and this is no dig at Mugstar, I’m not sure how many other LPs of theirs you’d need to buy.
Owls.
After hearing three or four of their albums, I’d say the ‘Lime’ record is a must-have for sure.