Hello mortals. I, the almighty all-powerful 1537 have been neglecting you recently. Life, including still, the after affects of Covid* has got in the way of blogging.
I have been on holiday, fulfilled substitute father-of-the-bride duties at my sister-in-law’s wedding^, rescued a baby hedgehog from a busy road, won the national lottery^^, aged, endured ridiculous heat and even thought a bit about doing some DIY since I last posted here.
I know, sorry to keep you out of the loop.
Very sadly and more relevantly to this blog I inherited my uncle Alastair’s record collection a fortnight ago too. Well, his record collection after all his Iron Maiden stuff had been stolen in the early 90’s, to be precise. Five big shopping bags full of LPs.
It is really difficult because I remember him showing me a good number of the records here at one time or another when I was a spotty teen and when I first got them home and jammed into the record room^* it was overwhelmingly sad. I am the only one who remembers his stories about them, they live only in me.
So it’s my job to cherish, appreciate and above all listen to them.
I’m no hypocrite though, it is exciting and I won’t need to buy any records for a long time to come now. There are surprisingly few duplicates with my own too.
Like I said 5 bags full of lots of rock and metal, as well as some surprising changes of pace. An incomplete list includes: Anvil, original John Mayall albums*^, Tank, Motörhead singles, Magnum, Savatage, lots of Saxon goodies, Rock Goddess, original Stones LPs, Nazareth, original early Beatles, later Hawkwind, Dio, lots of Ozzy, Stevie Nicks, Eloy, Badger, Amon Düül II, Thunder, Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep, Budgie …
The real treasures so far are a pretty complete Rush collection, well up until Power Windows when he got bored with them. When I say complete I mean there are 3 separate different copies of Hemispheres alone (coloured vinyl, 2 different picture discs), that complete. Loads of 12″ singles and signed tour programmes. So far I have explored and liked Permanent Waves I’ll get back to you on the others.
A copy of Black Sabbath We Sold Our Soul To Rock ‘n Roll signed by that singer bloke and the banjo player. Wow.
On the Sabbath, have a look at the Wikipedia page about WSOSTRAR, I wonder if my uncle was one of the fans mentioned? I’d like to think so.
‘Despite the album being an official release, Iommi has been quoted as saying that the first time the band knew of it was when asked to autograph copies which fans presented after concerts‘
For all his love of his music my uncle appears to have used his records pretty hard. So a lot of cleaning, some gluing and judicious touching up is required here and there. I fear gentle reader that he may actually have played and enjoyed his albums!! I know!! Apparently a lot of old schools guys like him made that mistake^^^, drinking, smoking, enjoying them with friends. It was a generational thing.
Now my uncle was a heavy smoker all his life and each and every record here reeks of it, some having been marinated in fug for 50+ years. So I am doing my best to clean every one of them and air them, with mixed results so far. Don’t do cigarettes kids!
So life continues apace here at 1537 Towers with NWOBHM archaeology and hedgehog wrangling, I may even find spare coupla hours to blog again.
1143 Down (still).
PS: Quite liking this.
*weirdly I do find it harder to write now, than I did before getting ill. I’m a fully functioning citizen again, have been for 4 months now but this one thing is still tough. I should probably blame Bill Gates, or whoever made those voting machines in the US**, or something.
**only joking, highly paid lawyers, only joking.
^my speech was so good and I looked so great in my suit that it made the national news and I now have a lucrative side line in selling autographed copies of the DVD. True story.
^^£3.20. I have vowed not to let my winnings change me as a person, as much as I can help it.
^*thank you long-suffering Mrs 1537.
*^A Hard Road is a great listen, way better than the Clapton one.
^^^a line stolen from HMO.