Cultural Appropriation

So how does someone as obsessive as me go about appropriating and assimilating my uncle’s record collection? even if I wasn’t the sort of neurotic weirdo who keeps everything alphabetically then chronologically it would present issues, even if we lived in the sort of world where I had enough shelf space just to plonk them all on.

Now this really isn’t a whinge, it is a privilege to have my uncle’s records, a sad one but a privilege nonetheless. I want to make sure I listen to them and appreciate them too. Plus as I have mentioned before a lot aren’t in great condition and need cleaning, split sleeves need sticking and touching up* all of them need airing and cleaning up to combat 40 years of heavy smoking.

So this is what I’m doing. Uncle Ali’s collection live in the room I work in**, they sit in two big record boxes I bullied my kids into ‘lending’ me. Every so often I rummage through and pick a record out and listen to it. If it really hits the spot it gets pulled out, cleaned and scrubbed, popped in a nice polythene sleeve and … filed in the back of the record box, because I am so squeezed for shelf space^.

The occasional one that grabs me less gets thrown back into the box, ready to bid for freedom at a later date. I have a good few earmarked for charity-ing now too, anything to raise a little funding for Marie Curie Nurses who helped my uncle.

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This is all a lot of fun too. Here are a few highlights I’ve discovered so far:

Rock Goddess

Their 1983 debut album, cut when sisters Jody and Julie Turner were 19 and 15 years old respectively. It’s a real hard rocking treat with a typical Vic Maile production and some precociously good songs, ‘Heartache’. I am just listening to a very beaten up copy of the follow-up, Hell Hath No Fury, which is also good.

Ozzy Osbourne Blizzard Of Ozz

I’ve never been big on OO’s solo stuff … what drivel I used to come out with. This is a brilliant album, Bob Daisley’s song writing is excellent as always and that young chap on guitar was pretty good too.

Rush Permanent Waves and Power Windows

Some Canadians are okay, apparently. There’s a whole collection here but these are the two that I explored first and/or which grabbed me the most too. I expected Permanent Waves to be as good as it is but I also expected to dismiss Power Windows as too synthy and 80’s, but I really enjoyed it, some cracking tunes in there ‘Territories’ is particularly great.

Tangerine Dream Rubycon

An ominous, yet restful treat. I get a bit impatient with their later, to my ears, blander output but this one, following up my personal favourite Phaedra, is great. A good album to work to.

Tank Filth Hounds Of Hades

Lemmy’s mates and all round beer monsters. I had always been Tank curious. How can you go wrong with an album named from an oath taken from Viv Stanshall’s Sir Henry At Rawlinson’s End? song titles ‘Shellshock’, ‘Blood Guts & Beer’ and ‘Heavy Artillery’, tell you all you need to know.

House Of Lords Sahara

I had very low expectations based on their debut but this is a brilliant hard rock album. There are so many guest stars on here that I am a little offended they didn’t ask me to provide backup percussion on a couple of tracks. Really unexpected treat.

Nazareth Exercises

Great LP cover but a really confused 1972 LP from these Scottish gentlemen. It’s all a bit humdrum until we hit ‘Woke Up This Morning’ which sounds like it was released last week, brilliant stuff; Manny Charlton was a helluva player.

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That really is just a snapshot of it all, missing out a few of the more obvious big hitters. It’s all a wonderful work in progress appropriating all this culture.

1152 Down (still).

PS: You know the heavy plastic sleeves that picture discs come in? these were all opaque with smoke and I was worried that the records would react to the plastic they had been in contact with so long – there are lots of scare stories for collectors online about this. So with a little research I found that you could buy replacement heavy duty polythene sleeves, that was a very satisfying, if slightly expensive, thing to do.

PPS: I played this the other day. Hmm, apart from the sleeve art which looks like it was done by someone who had never seen real boobs in his life, there’s at least one track here that sounds like Uriah Heep gone disco. The jury is out.

*packet of baby wipes, strong glue and a black marker pen are the collector’s friends here. You should see the grime that comes off these albums. NB. don’t use baby wipes on non-glossy sleeves.

**thousands of years ago it was the playroom for my kids, which sounds grander than ‘room full of so many kid’s toys and mess that we could barely pull the door shut‘. So it went from play room to workhouse, then.

^help is at hand though. By virtue of getting rid of a sofa and other non-essential furniture, bricking up a window and having some serious shelves built my front room will double my record storage. If I fill that too, I’m done and I’ll move on to collecting something microscopic and cheaper.