ONES THAT GOT AWAY

A guest posting by Fraser Pettigrew

Many are the pieces of vinyl that have passed through our hands that were bought, listened to, and then disposed of. Either they were traded in to generate funds for new purchases, or loaned, never to be seen again. Some we don’t miss, for others we harbour slight regrets, and some we mourn deeply, regretting to the depths of our souls the idiocy that caused us to ever contemplate parting with them. This is my confessional list, the ones that got away…

Ok, let’s start with the pieces over which we have no regrets, where we quickly recognised that a mistake had been made or where time eroded whatever mild entertainment the disc might once have provided. No regrets, however a sad experience follows that some of you may empathise with.

The follow-up to Generation X’s peerless first LP was eagerly anticipated by my school friend and I at the beginning of 1979. Thus, clutching four quid each in our sweaty fists, we sprinted out of school at 3.30pm on release day, Friday 26 January, and bussed into town straight to the Virgin shop on Frederick Street in Edinburgh, whence we emerged shortly afterwards each with our own brand-new copy of Valley Of The Dolls.

Monday morning at 9am, we re-encountered each other outside the school and exchanged a look that wordlessly conveyed what dozens of music journalists would fill many column inches expressing: Valley Of The Dolls was shite and our £3.99 had been utterly wasted. My copy went to Greyfriars Market 2^nd hand trade-in long before the year was out.

Even The Lurkers’ first two albums lasted longer in my esteem than Valley Of The Dolls, but eventually the guilty pleasure I derived from the Status Quo of punk rock wore down and they had to go. Similarly, the first Simple Minds album Life In A Day was recycled even though I still maintain an equally guilty pleasure in the rest of their early output up to New Gold Dream.

Which makes it rather baffling that I got rid of my copy of Real to Real Cacophony at some point, as well as Empires and Dance. The latter is more understandable as my first copy was pressed on defective vinyl with a sort of crusty pustule in the middle of This Fear of Gods that only burst after a couple of months playing, by which time the receipt was long gone. Thankfully, I have been able to re-buy decent vinyl copies of both, though probably for five times the original price.

The sacrifice of items from one’s collection was a necessary evil in days when budget was low, and it would be interesting to remember what it was that I bought with the proceeds of falling out of love with those early Simple Minds albums, or the likes of XTC’s Go2 (complete with bonus 12” dub remix EP Go+), or Glaxo Babies’ Nine Months to the Disco, or Vibing Up The Senile Man, the second album by Alternative TV.

All of those records I wish I still had, even though I know I wouldn’t be playing them much. By 1979 my taste for the avant-garde was sufficiently advanced to make me want to buy them in the first place, but it must be admitted that the ATV and Glaxo Babies releases were interesting but hardly classic. Another in this line was Andy Partridge’s solo extension of the Go+ concept, Take Away/The Lure of Salvage, a collection of XTC tracks unrecognisably deconstructed in the editing suite. I recently came across a copy of it here in New Zealand, many years after I’d sold my original, and while it’s nice to have it back I am reminded why I let it go in the first place.

My tolerance for music at the outer limits only goes so far. I once snapped up a double album by American saxophonist Marion Brown on the strength of his luminous and lyrical contribution to Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams, one of Brian Eno’s early Obscure Records releases. Imagine my disappointment when my bargain £2 purchase delivered four sides of unlistenable free jazz torment. My stylus passed through the grooves once only, if that, and then it was gone again.

As the years go by, it’s impossible for me to deny that I now find much of The Stranglers’ output to be embarrassingly stupid and vulgar. How much of this is justified and how much is a failure to appreciate subtle irony I can’t say, but I think I’ve got a pretty good nose for irony, so I call stooopid. Consequently I’m only a little annoyed that I parted with No More Heroes and Black and White, despite some really top moments on both.

I used to really like The Stranglers. They were one of my ‘big three’ new wave bands along with The Jam and The Clash who were flying the punk flag in the saccharine mire of the charts in 1977 (the Pistols were in a class of their own). I liked them so much that when Black and White came out in May 1978 just when I was out of the country on a school exchange trip, I made my older brother (who loathed punk) go and buy it for me to make sure I got the free white vinyl 7” with it.

Their cover of Walk On By on that single is a decent, respectable version of a great song, but the flip side, a song called ‘Tits’, sums up the other face of the band. Lad humour only lasts as long as you’re a lad, and eventually you have to grow up. I think I sold No More Heroes, but Black and White, funnily enough, may still reside in my brother’s attic. He can keep it. The single I sold separately.

The one Stranglers item I DO regret losing is an American release pink vinyl EP, containing four of their very best tracks: Something Better Change, Straighten Out, (Get a) Grip, and Hanging Around. It’s not worth a great deal now, but I doubt I got anything for it when I traded it in.

But now we get to the bad stuff. A short list of records I have willingly sold, at which I can only hang my head in shame. Deep breath, here goes: Give ‘Em Enough Rope by The Clash, Remain in Light by Talking Heads, Cut by The Slits, Penthouse and Pavement by Heaven 17. Yes, seriously, I possessed first pressings of all of those stone cold classic albums, AND I SOLD THEM! WHAT A FUCKING ARSE!!

The Clash were one of the first bands I ever saw live, at an epic gig supported by The Slits (described in my very first guest post for JC). It was the promo tour for Give’ Em Enough Rope, which I bought and loved at the time. But some time later I decided it was dispensable for some reason. I blame my friend, the one in the Valley of the Dolls episode above. I was young, naïve, and susceptible to his influence, and somehow I picked up a vibe that The Clash ceased to be indispensable after the first album.

To be fair, The Clash did generate a fair bit of debate around their dispensability or otherwise. One moment The Most Important Band in the World (© New Musical Express 1978), the next authors of an eclectic rag-bag of Americana despite being once ‘so bored of the USA’. I knew someone who bought and sold Sandinista! no fewer than three times in the confusion. I re-bought Give ‘Em Enough Rope some years later, an identical first pressing to my original, at a decent price.

With The Slits, I was always a little less enthusiastic about the Dennis Bovell studio incarnation compared to the gloriously ramshackle abrasiveness of the group I saw on stage and heard in the John Peel sessions. I had the Strange Fruit mini-album of those sessions and felt that I could live without the ‘official’ album, so some lucky 2^nd hand shop reaped the benefit of my imbecility. When I got the opportunity to re-buy it later, it was in a shitty re-press with I Heard it Through the Grapevine shoehorned onto the end and artwork that was obviously just scanned from a printed copy of the original sleeve. Better than nothing, but I still prefer the Peel sessions.

I don’t know what I was on when I sold Remain In Light. Some mind-altering substance that severely impairs aesthetic judgement, clearly. I mean, everything Talking Heads did AFTER that is certainly dispensable (though I still have it all and never play it!) but Remain In Light is the watershed, the point BEFORE it all drops off, so I really can’t offer a decent excuse. Once again, I struck lucky when I found an almost perfect 2^nd hand copy to restore my collection with.

And finally, Penthouse and Pavement. What can I say? All of us go through phases in our tastes, we are momentarily consumed with an obsession for Balkan folk music, or zydeco, or free jazz (well, up to a point), and conversely we drift away from certain former favourites. And in that drift lies the danger that we think we’re never going to drift back, so we spring-clean, and then years later we do drift back, especially when we realise it’s not just nostalgia. We have erred. Indeed, we have sinned! And we repent, and seek forgiveness, and must pay penance. Much penance. Much more penance than the pennies we paid for something in the first place. But there it was, a pristine UK pressing of P&P in Slow Boat Records here in Wellington. $35. Probably at least six times its original price. Forgive me father, I won’t do it again, promise.

Fraser

JC adds……..

Fraser never made any suggestions as to which tunes should accompany his brilliant post.   What follows is down to me. But all the songs included are referred to above.

mp3: Various – Fraser’s Ones That Got Away

There’s a running time of 40:43.

Tracklist

Generation X – King Rocker
Alternative TV – Facing Up To The Facts
XTC – Are You Receiving Me?
Glaxo Babies  – Shake (The Foundations)
The Slits – Love und Romance
Simple Minds – Life In A Day
The Lurkers – Shadow
The Stranglers – Something Better Change
Mr Partridge – Commerciality
Talking Heads – Crosseyed and Painless
The Clash – Stay Free
Heaven 17 – Penthouse and Pavement