When I was younger I used to have no problem at all doing it almost every night, sometimes twice a night* even. Now I find myself struggling to crank it up once a week, hell I went a full 11 days without at the beginning of this month. Maybe it’s my advancing years, the fact that my son has been celebrating his 18th, the unseasonably great weather keeping me outside ’til late most nights, my full-blown Witcher 3: Wild Hunt addiction, the World Cup, or the fact I’ve been working away for a few days a week – whatever the cause, my frequency has suffered. Maybe I’d benefit from a bit of role play? I have heard that dressing up to do it can help rekindle the fire sometimes.
So, yeah, I haven’t been posting as much recently. Sorry mortals, I do appreciate that I have a wider responsibility to brighten up your otherwise quite ordinary lives with my incredible talents and I have been letting you down. Whilst I am pretty sure my back isn’t up to doing it twice a night anymore I will henceforth try to manage to bang one out a bit more often, possibly.
I have been buying some records though, you’ll be shocked to hear.
Today I found myself in grey & Pink Records, Chester – I was dropping my kids off at the train station, which is sort of on the same street so it would have been rude not to pop in and say hello. I’ve been worn down and bullied** to the point where I had to buy Aerosmith Live! Bootleg the first time I saw a copy and it is excellent, visceral and raw, a perfect antidote to the load of ballads they are now. Blue Öyster Cult Spectres is the one with ‘Godzilla’ on it, reason enough to buy even if I wasn’t becoming more and more addicted to Buck Dharma’s whiplash lead guitar. As for the Ian Hunter, any LP with ‘Once Bitten, Twice Shy’ on it is worth the price, let alone one with gems like ‘Boy’ on it as well.
Along with the usual suspects like the new Sleep, Wooden Shjips and Earthless LPs I may have treated myself to a couple of other ones recently too:
Age of Taurus The Colony Slain: Full-on swords and sorcery metal on Rise Above. Show me a man who can resist songs sung in character with titles like ‘The Lost Garrison’ and ‘From The Hills To The Halls’ and I will show you a man who … has a mental age of more than 14 and probably has a girlfriend.
David Bowie Bowie Now: Released for RSD 2018, this is a re-release of a 1978 US promo LP featuring all the odd, haunting album tracks from Low and Heroes. They sound great together but I half think I have sort of conned myself by buying this one when I have all the music already.
The Mission God’s Own Medicine: A gift from a mate, who bought a second copy of it by accident during a particularly frenzied LP buying session^. I have seen the Mission twice and they were excellent, but I have never owned a note of their music. I love their brand of widescreen, portentous goth rock – ‘Wasteland’ and ‘Severina’ are excellent.
Oh and on entirely related news my son bought his first ever LP today, aged 18. Better late than never, I am very proud.
682 Down (still).
PS: I passed on Maiden Japan, Slide It In and Women And Children First at the shop today … I can feel that fact gnawing at the base of my soul even as I type this. Will my record buying never be done?!
*not to brag on y’all, but my powers of recovery were legendary.
**Mr Superdekes and Mr Ladano, to name names.
^I haven’t done that yet, accidentally buying a second copy of something, I mean.