Well, readers, it was my annual visit to a record shop yesterday; gosh, it seems to come around quicker every year. Just like last year I worked in the morning and ambled over to, the mighty Probe Records in Liverpool afterwards. I know this isn’t the way to get hold of the absolute hot cake items like Bowie live releases and shit like that, but to be honest I really don’t care. I gambled on the few items I really wanted not selling out because of their fairly obscuritan nature and I am happy to wait for the few others I want to come down in price in the next 6 months, as they always do*.
At Probe, I politely elbowed several other folks out-of-the-way and grabbed the two LPs I wanted most anyway:
The Heads Everybody Knows We Got Nowhere. Limited to 500 copies on blue vinyl and packed full of ironic nude cover chicks**. I have wanted this beastie to compliment RSD 2017’s Relaxin’ With the Heads. Again it is packed full of menacing garage psych rockers with titles like ‘Pill Jam’, ‘Stab Railroad’ and ‘Chrome Plated’, as girls, cars and heinous drugs combine with a genuinely maniacal edge to give us the full Head experience. Far more people should know this band’s music. I was happy to pay RSD prices for this rerelease as the price for vinyl originals was exorbitant.
White Hills / GNOD Aquarian Downer. Limited edition on ‘deep space swirl’ vinyl. This was a first time on vinyl rerelease of an obscure CDr only collaboration between my favourite space rockers and Manchester oddballs GNOD, with some great psych artwork. This one consists of 5 pretty in-your-face cuts of psych oddness, churning keyboards and harsh sounds proliferate, along with some great rhythms. This demands some further, careful listening.
A chum of mine also picked up a copy of the Led Zeppelin 7″ Rock and Roll/Friends in another town. I quite fancied the Hawkwind Dark Matters LP, which I did have in my hand but put back on a whim^ and the Tom Waits LPs which I haven’t seen yet. I would have bought Saxon Thunderbolt on picture disc, particularly as I read that it was released with a sticker on it saying it was a Morbid Angel release, which is such a Saxon thing to happen to them. I will bide my time though, like the fungus I am.
I can cheerfully report that just like RSD 2017, Probe had commissioned their own special brew to give away to choice customers – Boogaloo Guru this year, which is gratefully received along with a bag of free CD goodies. So thank you Probe.
849 Down (still).
*trust me, I’m a doctor. Just pop your clothes off behind the screen and I’ll be with you just as soon as I’ve warmed my hands up. Amazon, oddly enough, is always a good reasonably cheap source a few months after RSD.
**ironic boobs = good. Non-ironic boobs = sexist. I fear both types sell LPs in large numbers, even to this very day; well they certainly sold one on Saturday.
^for ‘whim’ read ‘strange moment of financial clarity’.