How to crown a romantic day on my first ever visit to Liverpool with the woman of my dreams? easy, drag said chick into every record shop I could find and finally emerge from Penny Lane Records (RIP) clutching Action Swingers More Fast Numbers EP. Well, she can’t say she wasn’t warned.
The romantic gem in question? look past the cynical, black-clad, scary-looking dudes on the cover who look like they’d kill you for your wallet, violate your pets, burn down your house and make unkind remarks about you to your neighbours and you’ll find a collection of cynical, black-clad, scary-sounding songs who sound like they’d kill you for your wallet, violate your pets, burn down your house and make unkind remarks about you to your neighbours. If my theories are right and all my records come alive Toy Story-style of a night, then I’m afraid More Fast Numbers would be the psychotic loner, lurking at the back of the shelf terrorizing the hair metal LPs and trying to cop a feel of my Traci Lords 12″.
Basically for my money you get 4 tracks of horribly gnarled NY punk, equally informed by both Ramones and all those unsightly bands on the Amphetamine Reptile label, often played hurtfully slowly by men who sound like they wore boxing gloves to the recording session. The vocals are sung by a gentleman with serious throat problems and it’s all as nasty as a razorblade in a bar of soap. It’s also all pretty forgettable, aprt from the last track which is why I bought it, ‘Courtney Love’. This is a scabrous ode to the lady of the same name who,
She’s got a love that stings
She wants what money brings
She’s got diamond rings
Not the important things
It’s an unpleasant song about a supposedly unpleasant lady* sung by an unpleasant band; it’s all a perfect circle-jerk of negativity. Spinning this once every 5 years will do me fine and I’m not entirely sure I’d want to meet the sort of person who could take more of it to be honest. I’m going to start keeping this EP behind glass labelled ‘In case of irritatingly unbridled positivity: Break Glass’.
185 Down.
P.S – I was surprised to learn that Ned Hayden of Action Swingers likes Courtney Love , call me Mr picky but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to knock around with someone who wrote that song about me.
*sure she’s been a car crash at times but I still think there’s an element of hearty misogyny in the way she’s been thoroughly demonised by one and all.
Penny Lane Records?? Sounds like my kinda place.
“a perfect circle jerk of negativity”…that’s a tag line that would sell a record in my world. Genius.
Too kind – I could hear it being spoken in a gravelly voice over a TV advert; feel free to borrow it for any of your projects!!
Penny Lane were a 3 shop local chain, which sadly went the way of many others a good while ago. If you discount pure second hand places and specialist dance places, there is only one record shop in Liverpool that I know of. How sad is that?
Extremely sad. In my town we have one chain store. Fortunately the gentleman that owns it is a very cool guy and can get me pretty much what I want within a day or two. He’ll also get stuff in that’ll surprise me(The Olivia Tremor Control, Suicide).
Last time we had a locally-owned shop in this town was probably 20 years ago.
It’s not right
One romantic thing you can do: let your loved one drag you into every record shop in Liverpool. That Mrs 1537 sure knows how to romance an audiophile!
Absolutely,
Absolutely, not that I’d ever be that selfish now…