Selling The Precious Things

I've just put a few of my singles up for sale on ebay, and you can see them here. You might even want to bookmark the link to my store, as more will be gradually added (with others going up on Discogs slowly over the coming months as well).

Whenever I do this, I generally get a couple of concerned messages from other record collectors asking why, and worrying about whether I'm in financial trouble or need the cash to pay for an eyebrow transplant or something. Selling bits of your collection off is, after all, unthinkable, isn't it?

While I'm happy to say that I'm not close to the debtor's prison yet, I do live in a very small two-up two-down house which I share with my wife. There are records I either have duplicate copies of, or hardly ever play, or have on LPs in much better condition.... none of them should really be taking up as much space as they are at the moment (confining them to the attic to possibly get warped or damp was the alternative option, and I'd rather they were loved by another keen owner).

Also, there are loads of singles I buy especially for this blog for the purposes of amusing or entertaining you all, but which don't necessarily have a place close to my heart.

The first few up for sale are:

1. Shades of Blue - There Ain't No Use (In Loving Me) - 1965 - Pye stock copy
2. The Kytes - Blessed - 1966 Pye demo
3. Bob Clarke - Haunted - 1971 CBS stock copy
4. The Jeeps - He Saw Eesaw - 1967 Strike stock copy
5. Airwave Orchestra - Channel 4 Theme Fourscore - 1982 Polydor stock copy

If this goes well, more will follow. 

The Unknowns - Tighter/ Young Enough To Cry

Members of Paul Revere and The Raiders in a contractually necessary 'mystery' guise

Label: Marlin

Year of Release: 1967

When bands emerged in the sixties with names like "The Guess Who" or "The You Know Who Group", the management and label responsible were usually hoping radio programmers and the general public would be suckered by the idea that it was The Beatles or The Stones in disguise. Usually, the story was blander and simpler, and behind those vague monikers lay hungry musicians or producers desperate for a hit. 

On very rare occasions, though, there would be famous people behind the record, and lo and behold, here we have a bona-fide example of that. The Unknowns consist of Mark Lindsay and Keith Allison of Paul Revere and The Raiders collaborating with friend and non-top 40 recording artist Steve Alaimo. The individuals all met while Alaimo was musical director on the television series "Where The Action Is", and began to scheme about the possibility of putting some of The Raiders' lesser known LP tracks across to a wider audience. 

The slightly blandly named The Unknowns were the resulting mystery band, with the individuals in question lying low in order to avoid being caught breaking their respective recording contracts. This had the obvious disadvantage of causing the group to be unable to promote their own releases. The first, "Melody for an Unknown Girl", got to number 74 in the Billboard charts despite this, but the second single "Tighter" seemed to totally fail to capture anyone's attention.

The Blizzard King - Break On Through/ Strangers In The Night/ In The Ghetto

Bill Drummond and Zodiac Mindwarp take on Morrison, Sinatra and the King of Rock and Roll.

Label: Kalevala
Year of Release: 1997

We've already talked in some depth about Bill Drummond's odd Kalevala label project, and we have now included all but one of the singles released (I'm still holding out for a reasonably priced copy of "Gimpo" by Gimpo). Like most of Drummond's post-KLF projects, it's been an odd, interesting, uneven, but occasionally very rewarding ride. These singles mark the last time he really dabbled with recorded music - the "17" project dealing entirely with one-off live performances - and while they generally indulge his whims rather than point to any directions the KLF might have gone in, Bill's whims are often more entertaining than most artist's considered works.

This record was always, on paper, one of most absurd-sounding of the batch. In Zodiac Mindwarp and Bill Drummond's novel/ road diary/ mesh of truths, half-truths and downright violent fantasy "Bad Wisdom", we learned about a Lebanese Elvis impersonator they had discovered in Finland who looked and sounded uncannily like the King himself. They also wrote about weird sounds they heard being piped through the radio in their car, including strange Finnish language covers of Bruce Springsteen tracks and songs by The Doors.

This is actually quite explicable - anyone who follows the Foreign Cover Versions Twitter feed will know that Finnish language covers of major American and British hits are two a penny, and some are surprisingly well produced given the probable size of the market they're catering for. Caught unawares, however, Drummond began to get obsessed with these sounds and wonder if he was in some parallel universe where everyone, Springteen, John Lydon, Elvis himself, somehow had Finnish heritage.

I visited Finland myself last year, and I can confirm that somehow the country does do funny things to your head, even if you're not Bill Drummond. Everything looks superficially Scandi at first, but the Finns had closer ties to the USSR than most Western European countries, creating a weird hybrid of cultures and a sense of being neither one place or the other. The Finns also possess a particularly dark, unusual sense of humour. While there, I was nearly tipped over the edge by a drawing of a giant demonic rabbit in the window of a barber's shop, which looked closer to my imaginary idea of the Echo spirit Bill Drummond envisaged years ago than anything I'd seen before. There were other odd things too - a man in a penguin suit dancing to out-of-tune cathedral bells, two Maneki-Nekos infinitely stabbing each other to a death that never came in a knife shop window, a rusty trombone in the window of a High Street bank, the creeping sense that if I stayed long enough I'd be told the purpose of why I came and what I was to do with my life next... all of which evaporated and felt embarrassingly nonsensical as soon as I touched down in the UK again. But perhaps that's just me.

Putting personal feelings and experiences aside for one moment, this single tries to reproduce the Finnish flavoured Elvis and Doors sounds Bill and Zed heard. Staying true enough to the original arrangements to feel familiar but just skewed enough to make you feel unsettled, it does a good job of summing up their experiences and acting as the book's "soundtrack", but possibly isn't something the average listener would return to much (unlike some of the other Kalevala releases this blog has documented).

Reupload - The Monitors - Nobody Told Me

Fantastic and much-neglected early 80s Australian synth-pop

Label: Festival
Year of Release: 1981

The Monitors were fleeting sparks in the steelworks of Australian pop, and - so far as I can tell - didn't really manage to have any impact outside their home country. Formed as a studio ensemble in 1980 by session musicians Mark Moffatt and Terry McCarthy, they're most mentioned these days for their connections with the twin sister actresses Gayle and Gillian Blakeney who eventually joined the TV soap "Neighbours".

The concept was quite simple, and quite cynical if we're being critical. Neither Moffatt or McCarthy were particularly photo or telegenic, and the workaround for this in the band's videos and TV appearances was to involve the young sisters in a variety of ways. While they didn't sing on any of the records, the very young Blakeneys donned Kiss makeup and leapt around a lot for the debut single "Singin' In The 80s", which reached Number 16 on the Australian charts. Such was their visual impact at the time that some people began to believe that The Monitors were the Blakeneys group, rather than them simply being employed as a visual element.

They featured in a rather more subtle way in the video for the follow-up single "Nobody Told Me", which was less successful, peaking at a modest number 32. Unfair, since if you ask me "Nobody Told Me" is a far superior single, sounding incredibly of its time with the pulsing and squeaking synths and melodramatic vocals, but having such a killer hook in the fanfare of a chorus that it's irresistible. The nagging female backing vocals (performed by Kim Durant and mimed by the Blakeneys) are also enormously effective, and it's glorious pop music - Moroder tinged, melancholic and horribly addictive.

UK Bonds - Anything You Do Is Alright/ The Last Thing I Ever Do

Two sharp slices of 60s Brummie mod-pop

Label: Polydor

Year of Release: 1966

OK, it's very unusual for me to put a record quite this battered-looking up on to "Left and to the Back", but in my defence, it is knackered in a fairly unique way. With an horrendous looking label and the pops and crackles intensifying towards the final moments of the audio, the most severe damage appears to have taken place towards the centre - almost as if somebody had stored it directly next to a four inch circular sander.

Suffice to say, it plays far better than you'd expect, and is a scarce enough record for me to deem it worthy of inclusion here. With tinkling piano lines, crashing Townshend-esque chords, a steady backbeat and icy cool vocals, "Everything You Do Is Alright" is straight ahead mod-pop for switched on kids. The track was also later attempted by Northern Soul favourites Chapter Five on CBS, though copies of that single seem equally tricky to come by.

The flip "The Last Thing I Ever Do" has been compiled on sixties rarities compilations before, but for my tastes isn't as satisfying - the vocals feel a bit less confident and the backing too plodding and pedestrian by comparison.