Ah, RSD 2016. I know lots of you fine folks were out there on the front lines, queueing for goodies, DJ-ing, actually speaking to other vinyl men and women and suchlike, but I was MIA again for the fourth year running. Mrs 1537, evil tactical genius that she is, knew the ‘lets-go-away-for-the-weekend-before-you-blow-all-our-food-money-on-Doris-Day-picture-discs’ argument was running a bit thin after three years and so nothing was booked. Hopeful fool that I was, I thought I might get to queue outside a small shop for 3 hours with a bunch of other malodorous perverts and obsessives last Saturday. Fool.
Nope, instead for reasons I choose not to go into here, I was press-ganged into building a shed in our garden – you know, man stuff – building a framework for it to sit on, replacing some of the inner frame and planks; hammers, saws, grazed knuckles and frayed ends of sanity included. It looks great, but it isn’t a hugely rock and roll thang and it certainly isn’t a Doris Day picture disc.
Traditionally I head to Probe Records in Liverpool on a Monday to check out their latest releases but especially after RSD, because they usually have interesting stuff left there. Being the committed vinylholic I am, I completely forgot to go until today and I really wasn’t holding out much hope anyway, I mean freaks like you tend to snap up all the highly limited 10″ purple vinyl copies of Sammy & The Squirrel Penis It’s The Nuts, Stupid! EPs, way before bloody Wednesday!
So I popped along there after work today and couldn’t believe my luck as lightning struck for the third time in four years, there just awaiting my touch were two of the records I absolutely wanted most this year. No, really!
First up, released on the wonderful, wonderful Numero Group label I snagged a copy of their garage rock compilation Los Alamos Grind! complete with groovy rude sleeve and comic strip inside. Even if the music is absolutely garbage* I will worship this LP for all eternity, for having a cartoon, three-breasted exotic dancer on the front cover. 1000 copies only.
Secondly, there was a beautiful chunky copy of Sunday Nights: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough tribute LP to the great man on Fat Possum Records. To say I was hyped is an understatement. This is a great double LP**, on blue vinyl limited to 1500 copies, featuring such reprobates as Iggy & The Stooges, Blues Explosion, Black Keys, Mark Lanegan, Jim White and Spiritualized all banging out some great covers of the man’s songs. There are some real gems here.
So I’m a happy dude again. I hope you like the photos they are an attempt to reclaim the shed as a rock and roll venue and by association to assuage my own doubts about my virility. Job = done. Now who’ll back me in a movement for a new shed-based record day next year, we could call it RSheD 2017?
648 Down (in the shed).
PS: If you’re at all interested in blues, watch this documentary some time. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a brilliant journey through the work of Fat Possum and all those artists like Kimbrough and Burnside:
*which it won’t be, Numero are totally reliable. From their site: ‘Join the time-traveling A&R men of Numero as they simultaneously visit past and future, compiling a superior collection of sleaze than anything brought to the post-apocalyptic-bachelor-pad scene thus far’.
**which I may once have accidentally downloaded illegally by mistake.