Open Up And Say... Ahh!

A few months back I bought a couple of LPs missing their outer sleeves, which I didn't mind a bit, as they were only 50p each.  The first was Pink Floyd's Obscured By Clouds.

Pink Floyd - Obscured By Clouds (1972)
Side 1 label

Sleeve art

This was the band's 7th album and is based on their soundtrack to a film by French director Barbet Schroeder about a woman's voyage of self-discovery.  After a disagreement with the film company, Pink Floyd released the work under the name Obscured By Clouds instead of the intended La Vallée, the name of the movie.

It was recorded during hurried sessions between those for Dark Side Of The Moon, and consists of instrumental mood pieces (Obscured By Clouds, When You're In), conventional rock songs (The Gold It's In The...), and more recognisably - to me at least, as a casual fan - Floydian ones (Wot's... Uh The Deal? and Childhood's End).  It lacks the grandeur of the albums either side of it; no bad thing, as it's still an engaging yet gentle listen, although some of it feels unfinished, with Burning Bridges and When You're In coming to an end just as I'm getting into them.

Final track Absolutely Curtains finishes with an extended section of chanting, performed by members of the Mapuga tribe of the cloud-covered rainforest of New Guinea where the film is set.

The second sleeveless find was one disc of the double LP Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye.

Marvin Gaye - Here, My Dear (1978)
Side 2 label

Since the other disc was missing, I've in fact got sides 2 and 3 thanks to Motown's habit of pairing 2 with 3 and 1 with 4.  Apparently this was for ease of use with a turntable stacking system, although 1+3 and 2+4 would seem to me a better option as all four sides also could be played in successive order on twin decks.

Here's what I have (I've since listened to the missing tracks online):

Side 2.
5.  Is That Enough
6.  Everybody Needs Love
7.  Time To get It Together

Side 3.
8.  Sparrow
9.  Anna's Song
10. When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You? (Instrumental)

Half of the royalties for the album were to be paid to Gaye's ex-wife Anna, as part of their divorce settlement (I wonder whose half of the album I have?), and at first he'd planned to churn something out quickly, merely to meet this requirement.  For whatever reason he changed his mind and ended up pouring himself into it, resulting in one of his greatest pieces of work, not to mention a masterclass on washing one's dirty laundry in public.

After the long, slow funk of Is That Enough with it's slinky, mournful sax, Marvin gets into list mode, noting all those he believes need love, from flowers to babies, and bluebirds to, er, mountains, his voice never sweeter and never more full of pain.  The album is characterised by layered vocal harmonies (all his own) and mid-paced, mostly unstructured soul grooves with horns, synths and funk guitar.  Sparrow has a hint of jazz, and although it seems to be about his ex-wife, I do wonder if it doesn't have something to do with Diana Ross, whose nickname was Sparrow.

Cover art, which along
with the innner sleeve illustrations
contains further digs at Anna.

Throughout the record his emotions are raw, confessional and mainly bitter, and there are plenty of digs at Anna mixed with his regret at a failed marriage.  If Here, My Dear is a Motown 'Blood On The Tracks', then You Can Leave, But It's Going To Cost You is the vicious 'Idiot Wind', and if we were to take this shaky analogy further, A Funky Space Reincarnation is 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack Of Hearts', i.e. a fun but long-winded diversion that has little to do with the rest of the album (although AFSP is a plodder in contrast to the spirited Lily...).

It's definitely an album that takes some time to appreciate, due to its initial one-paced feel and lack of traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, but the songs really do distinguish themselves with repeated listening.  I now just need to keep an eye out at future boot sales for the missing disc.  Oh, and the sleeve.


One warm Sunday last September I picked up INXS's X, for £1.

INXS - X (1990)
The Roman numeral in the title is meant to represent
the ten years since they recorded their 1980 debut.

This was the band's 7th album, following 1987's Kick, and like Kick it was produced by Chris Thomas.  The biggest single from it was of course the fantastic Suicide Blonde, which features an absolutely corking sample of bluesman Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica.  Musselwhite also recorded some new parts for tracks On My Way and Who Pays The Price.  X contains the same kind of muscular pop-rock as Kick, but for me the songs are not quite as strong.  Surprisingly it got as high as no.2 in the UK album chart, seven places higher than its predecessor, although Kick remained on the chart much longer; 103 weeks, compared to X's 44.

All four of X's singles cracked the top 50 over here, the highest being Suicide Blonde's no.11 placing.  Disappear was the next most successful, peaking at no.21.


At another boot sale a few weeks later, I took a £2 punt on their 1993 album Full Moon, Dirty Hearts.

INXS - Full Moon, Dirty Hearts (1993)
Cheer up lads, it's not that ba... oh, wait.

This follow-up to 1992's Welcome To Wherever You Are has all the bombast of X but sadly none of the tunes.  Even roping in Chrissie Hynde on the title track and Ray Charles for Please (You Got That...) isn't enough to save this frankly boring LP from the dumper (or in this case the charity shop).  It somehow managed to max out at no.3 on the UK chart, although it dropped out of sight after just a couple of months.


Most of the time I don't have the patience to go through 45s, but when vinyl is thin on the ground at a car boot sale I'll occasionally flip through a box of singles.  I bought this half-dozen of late 80s 7-inchers last autumn for 50p each.

L-R: Donna Summer - This Time I Know It's For Real (1989)
Rufus & Chaka Khan - Ain't Nobody (Remix) (1989)
New Order - Blue Monday 88 (1988)
Spagna - Call Me (1987)
Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done To Deserve This? (1987)
Pseudo Echo - Funky Town (1987)

The original Blue Monday came out in 1983 and reached no.9.  This 1988 version was remixed by Quincy Jones and John Potoker and bested it, peaking at no.3.  The remix of Ain't Nobody performed a similar feat, climbing two places higher than the '84 original, achieving a no.6 placing.  It also appeared on Chaka's chart-topping album of dance mixes the same year: http://carbootvinyldiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/life-is-dance.html

The Pseudo Echo record is a version of Lipps Inc.'s much-covered Funkytown, and if any of the singles here can be classified as a guilty pleasure (not a notion I usually subscribe to!), it's this one.  The Australian new wave-ers' rockier take on the disco-funk oddity was the most successful single of their entire career, reaching no.1 in their home country as well as New Zealand and Canada.

All six of these singles were top ten hits in the UK.


If the weather is decent enough, one of my local car boot sales runs until late December and resumes just a month or so later.  In early February this year I spied this curiosity in a box of 80s pop.  It caught my eye as this is the school where my better half (Mr Breakfast) currently works.

Music from Sir John Leman High School 1631 - 1981 (1981)
Private press.  The name Margaret is written in the top
right corner.

The school band, orchestra and choir were recorded at a local church for county radio to celebrate 350 years since the school was established.  Beccles tradesman John Leman did rather well for himself and became Lord Mayor of London in 1616.  On his death he provided funds for the education of 44 boys from the town plus two others from the nearby parish of Ringsfield and two from Gillingham, on the condition they could all read and write before they enrolled.  The building, which was already a school when Leman gave it to the town, is now a museum, and the modern establishment is currently an academy.

Printed insert with credits and track listing.
The record's label reads "St. John Leman", still a common mistake
according to Mr Breakfast.

Back in 1981 when this wonky but charming collection of music was recorded, the school was a comprehensive high for boys and girls aged 13-18.  After giving it a listen I donated it to the school as they didn't have a copy.  It's now in their archive.


Also costing a pound was this from US rock tarts Poison.

Poison - Open Up And Say... Ahh! (1988)

This album is quite important to me, as I remember taping a copy from the local library and being absolutely wowed by it.  It was the record that got me listening to guitar music, in particular Guns N' Roses, whom I fell for hard in my high school years.

The album cover was changed
to this after complaints about
the original.

1988 was a golden time for hair-centric hard rock; Open Up... was kept off the top spot that year by Gn'R's Appetite For Destruction, Bon Jovi's New Jersey and Def Leppard's world-eating monster Hysteria.  It reached a high of no.18 here in the UK.

If you're into double entendres, single entendres, cheesy overproduced party rock and stoopid hair and makeup, this record will be right up your street.  Having played my C90 to death aged 13 then not hearing it in years, the whole album now gives me an enormous Proustian rush, but no song more than Fallen Angel.  Right, I'm off to jump on my bed, alternately punching the air and playing air drums.

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Hit Me With Music

Welcome to the first proper Car Boot Vinyl Diaries post of 2015!  I hope you enjoyed the four-part Little Box Of Horrors series (although 'enjoyed' might be overstating it given the subject matter), but it's now time to get back to the car boot sale and charity shop finds, which have been coming thick and fast in recent weeks.  I've picked out a few of the records that I've been listening to over the last few days, starting with this from Carlene Carter, bought at a boot sale last autumn for £1:

Carlene Carter (1978)

This was her debut album and was recorded in London, with members of British pub-rockers The Rumour both playing and producing.  A song each was also written by The Rumour's frontman Graham Parker (Between You & Me) and Carlene's brother in law Rodney Crowell (Never Together But Close Sometimes).  Also making a couple of appearances is ex Brinsley Schwarz member Nick Lowe, to whom Carter became married the following year.

It's solid collection of polished country-rock, accompanied by the strong, clear and expressive vocals she shared with her mother June.  Despite the stellar contributors my two favourite songs are final tracks Slow Dance and the lovely Who Needs Words, both written by Carlene herself.  The album is dedicated to Maybelle Carter, her grandmother and original member of the Carter Family folk group, who sadly died later that year.

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Car boot season is not yet in full swing and pickings have been slim, so I've made a few visits to local charity shops lately.  The St. Elizabeth Hospice shop in my hometown prices all its LPs at 50p, whereas its sister shop four miles up the road in the tourist-attracting seaside town of Aldeburgh has a rather different policy of pricing the dreck at £1, and anything else at the highest sale price found on eBay that week, regardless of condition.  This leads to some rather optimistic price tags on your normal charity shop fayre.

Last month I spied a rather dirty, well-played looking copy of Bob Marley & The Wailers' Live! album.  It had a noticeable scratch on Side 2, but I reasoned it'd be playable, plus the falling-to-bits sleeve could be easily mended with some double sided tape.  When I turned to read the rear cover I was rather surprised to see that the price tag read £15!  A bit much for something that can usually be found in better condition and for less than half the price on Discogs. I put it back in the box and left with a couple of other, more reasonably priced records. When I popped in again a couple of weeks later the offending label had been removed and the LP had magically found its way into the pound box.  So I grabbed it, obviously.

Bob Marley & The Wilers - Live! (1975)

After a good clean and some TLC it came up pretty well, except for a few crackles from the scratch.  The album was recorded in the summer at London's Lyceum Theatre, and is an exquisite snapshot of a band at their sizzling peak.  Bob, the band and the wonderful backing singers The I-Threes give a reggae-as-rock live makeover to seven songs, the likes of which I'd not heard before, except for No Woman No Cry, as the version here has become the definitive one (as heard on the compilation Legend).  Well known hits such as Get Up, Stand Up and Lively Up Yourself are performed with passion and given a new energy while retaining a joyous laid-back groove.

To me, it's an album to rival the likes of Sam Cooke at the Harlem Square Club or Donny Hathaway Live, and the Marley fatigue I induced in myself during my late teens was washed away by the thumping bass and the sound of the ecstatic crowd.  My top tracks are.... well, it's too hard to choose just two, so I'll pick the whole of Side 1; Trenchtown Rock, Burnin & Lootin', Them Belly Full and Lively Up Yourself.

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Another week, the same shop had a copy of Van Morrison's Saint Dominic's Preview. The record was in better condition but the sleeve was tatty, and certainly not worth the £10 tag.  I asked the lady behind the counter if she'd take £3 and she immediately agreed, showing that it's often worth pointing out damage and questioning some of these OTT asking prices (I do realise that charities want to get the best prices for their donations, but overpricing scratched records is more likely to keep crate-diggers away).

Van Morrison - Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)

SDP was Van's 6th album, coming after 1971's Tupelo Honey which I have yet to hear (sadly Spotify is largely a Van-free zone).  I'd only previously heard Astral Weeks and Moondance - both car boot vinyl finds - and on first listen of SDP was surprised by its variety of styles.

R&B opener Jackie Wilson Said was immediately familiar, no doubt mainly because when I was eight my Dad bought Dexy's Too-Rye-Ay which contains a cover version.  Less excitable but equally soulful are the celebratory, nostalgic Redwood Tree and the Ray Charles-y piano blues of I Will Be There, while the title track is infused with gospel-inspired piano.

There are just seven songs on the album as it contains two 10 minute-plus meditative pieces that wouldn't be out of place on Astral Weeks; the atmospheric Almost Independence Day and my favourite, Listen To The Lion.  During the latter Van improvises much of the vocal, incorporating grunts, moans and the occasional growl, which although I'm sure is meant to evoke the lion inside him, gives me visions of the great man trying to cough up a tricky furball, during which I can rarely keep a straight face.

The album as a whole is a rich and beautifully performed and produced record, and one of my favourite finds of the last 12 months.

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More lightweight, but still very enjoyable is this recent 25p find from a local church's charity shop:

Various Artists - Deep Heat 90 (1990)

Compilation telemarketing label Telstar Records began their Deep Heat series in 1989. Deep Heat 90 gathers together chart-bothering hip-hop and dance tracks from the past year that had appeared on Volumes 5-8, and as you might imagine, Kraftwerk samples and Run DMC's ubiquitous 'Ah-Yeah!' abound.  As you can see from the tracklist, there's only one number one record, in the shape of Beats International's mega-hit Dub Be Good To Me: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Deep-Heat-90/master/53187 

This copy is a bit scuffed on Side 3 and skips a few times, so I use an old stylus reserved for such cases.  I'm currently operating a 3-stylus system, labelled X, Y and Z (since I found some alphabet stickers in a drawer!) with X for brand new records, Y for car boot/chazza ones and Z for dodgy/potentially dodgy discs.  It works for me!

There's lots to enjoy here, but my top tracks are Snap's Ooops Up (note the triple-o), Queen Latifah & De La Soul's Mama Gave Birth To The Soul Children and this from En Vogue (principally for the James Brown guitar sample, I must admit):

Least favourite are the rubbish Sixth Sense-Latino Rave - a megamix originally used to promote Deep Heat Volume 6 - and of course Candy bloody Flip, whose version of Strawberry Fields Forever's only redeeming feature is the echoey Funky Drummer sample.

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Towards the end of last year I saw a copy of Bob Dylan's Saved at a car boot sale in a box of LPs marked £1 each, so I picked it up to take a closer look.  Although a relative Dylan neophyte, the release date of 1980 was enough to give me second thoughts and I put it back.  It was still there the following week and by now the combination of colder weather and the end of booting season meant that vinyl was thin on the ground.  I took pity on it, paid my quid and took it home, with fairly low expectations.  I'm glad I did.

Bob Dylan - Saved (1980)

This was Bob's twentieth studio album and the second in his overtly religious trilogy which began with Slow Train Coming in 1979 and ended with 1981's Shot Of Love.  He'd undergone a conversion to Christianity in late '79, initially sparked by an audience member throwing a silver crucifix onto the stage at a gig.

'Saved' is an album of gospel-rock and modern spirituals, recorded at Muscle Shoals early in the year with his current touring band.  Side 1 is by far the best, with the rousing title track and Solid Rock plus the very moving What Can I Do For You? particular highlights.  Side 2 is a bit of a let down, especially the plodding Saving Grace.  The most off-putting aspect is Dylan's rather patronising, often self-righteous tone.  Oh, and the cover.  Overall though, it's not half as bad as I'd been led to believe, and certainly worth a quid!

If you're a Dylan fan - or even if you're not - you might like to pop over to my new blog where I've just begun working my way through the enormous Complete Album Box Set, a 47-disc set stretching from his debut up to 2012's Tempest.  I'm up to 1965 at the moment!  You can find it here: http://bobsbigbox.blogspot.co.uk/

You'll be able to hear tracks from all of these albums, plus much more on the next Car Boot Vinyl Diaries cloudcast, coming soon.  Catch up with previous episodes here: https://www.mixcloud.com/carbootvinyldiaries/

That's it for now, thanks for stopping by.

Episode 6 of the CBVD Cloudcast now online!

The newest installment of the Car Boot Vinyl Diaries Cloudcast has been uploaded to Mixcloud.  It showcases lots of my boot sale and chazza vinyl finds including The Doors, Chic, Sonic Youth, The Monkees and lots more, including a fantastic long song at the rear end of the show for The Boot of Loot.

Car Boot Vinyl Diaries Episode 6 by Car Boot Vinyl Diaries on Mixcloud

Hope you enjoy it!

Nobody's Children

During Ceausescu's rule of Romania, attempts to boost the country's population included a ban on abortion and contraception.  This led to thousands of unwanted children being abandoned by their parents.  With their already pitiful resources orphanages were unable to cope and the result was an unimaginable toll on the physical and mental health of a huge number of Romanian children.

At the end of 1989 Ceausescu and his wife were executed after the government was overthrown. The wider world became aware of the terrible conditions in these hundreds of orphanages and the suffering that was taking place.

Many charities were spurred into action and many new charities formed.


George Harrison's wife Olivia founded the Romanian Angel Appeal (RAA) along with the other Beatle wives Linda McCartney, Barbara Bach and Yoko Ono.  Together with a raft of friends and contacts they organised a fundraising album called Nobody's Child in 1990, a copy of which I found at one of yesterday's car boot sales for £1:

Nobody's Child - Romanian Angel Appeal (1990)

It consists of fourteen songs "donated" by an array of musicians including Elton John, the Traveling Wilburys, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees, but the crowning glory of the album must surely be the epic "Civil War" by Guns 'n' Roses.  I was in high school at this time and thoroughly obsessed with G'n'R.  I remember that this song was also used as the b-side to the single "You Could Be Mine", which I still have somewhere on cassingle!

The RAA Foundation was registered in Romania in 1991 and continues it's work with vulnerable children to this day.  Since a secondhand purchase of the LP wasn't really in keeping with the original spirit of the album I donated £10 to UNICEF, one of the RAA Foundation's partners/sponsors.  You can too here.  Here's "Civil War".

Living To Music September 2012

Join in if you can, alone or with friends, this Sunday at 9pm with Greg Wilson's Living To Music worldwide communal listening experience. This month's selected album is the KLF's Chill Out (1990).

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2012/08/living-to-music-the-klf-chill-out/

Living To Music April 2012

Join in if you can, alone or with friends, this Sunday at 9pm with Greg Wilson's Living To Music worldwide communal listening experience.  This month's selected album is Portishead's Dummy from 1994.

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2012/03/living-to-music-portishead-dummy/

How Could I Be Wrong

Musician, songwriter and author Luke Haines formed The Auteurs with girlfriend Alice Readman in 1990, along with friend Glenn Collins and James Banbury.  They made distinctively English melodic guitar pop.

I found a 10" vinyl EP of their 1993 single How Could I Be Wrong at car boot sale last year for 50p:

 

The Auteurs - How Could I Be Wrong (1993)

 Side One.
 1. How Could I Be Wrong.
 2. High Diving Horses.

 Side Two.
 3. Wedding Day.
 4. Staying Power - Live.












The song is taken from their debut album New Wave, which came with a free 7" single and reached no.22 in the uk album chart.