Record Store Day pt2

Well, that was quite an enjoyable morning.

Max was none to pleased when I got him up at the back of seven this morning for our trip into Glasgow but once he was up he was his usual self, a sullen teenager six years too early, on the way in I had to promise that if there was anything by AC/DC I would have to buy him it.

We got to Glasgow and parked in the Kings Street car park across from MONO at 08:15 and could see that quite an orderly queue had already formed and there were about thirty people in front of us when we joined. Then the mental calculations started if there were 500 copies of such and such and there were 150 stores taking part then how many copies of the Cults single did MONO get and how many of the people in front of me look like they are here to buy that single? I have to admit that Max did his best to distract me from such thoughts by asking "how long now?" every couple of minutes and to inform me that "Gran (my mother) thinks that you need to grow up and stop going to all these concerts and buying records" I would like to say that on hearing this I was shocked but on the contrary as he said it I could hear my mother saying it.

At 9:00 am on the dot the doors opened and the agonising ten minutes of watching people coming out smiling and trying to peer through their bags and find out what they had bought, before it was my turn at the counter,  began. My wants list was actually quite restrained this year with only two must gets on my list the afore mentioned Cults single and the ARP Pastoral Symphony remix 12".  That was until I saw the list on the wall in Monorail, there near the end was a single that caught my eye, The Velvet Underground Foggy Notion/I Can't Stand It, where did this come from? It was not on any of the lists I had seen. In the second or two that it took me to absorb this information my priorities had changed and this was the essential purchase of the day as these are two of my favourite VU tracks and last night I had included I Can't Stand It on my compilation cd.

After what seemed an eternity but in fact would have been less than ten minutes from the doors opening I got to the counter.

In as nonchalant a voice as I could muster I said " Have you got any copies of the Velvet Underground single left?"

" Yes" was the reply.

I nearly screamed like I would have if Andy Smith had scored the winning goal in the 1995 Scottish Cup Final but instead retorted "I'll have that then and also the Cults seven inch?"

I then went on to get a few other things, The Warpaint and Red Crayola sevens, The Hangover Lounge 10" which was a rash heat of the moment tihng which I am regretting now as it is a bit, well twee for me, the ARP 12" and of course Shoot To Thrill by AC/DC because as Max rightly pointed out " a deal's a deal, dad".

I have to say that I think that some of the stuff was a bit over priced,  eighteen quid for a 10" of The Queen Is Dead, the same for The Vaccines bootleg but maybe that's just me.

So then it was over the road to RubaDub to purchase a new stylus and the buy of the day as it turned out,  not a Record Store Day exclusive but the latest installment of Jeff Mills Something In The Sky series, pt 7 an absolute belter of a record.

All in all not a bad day out but I am well and truly skint now.

The Velvet Underground - I Can't Stand It 

Record Store Day 2011

Tomorrow is Record Store Day 2011 and I'm looking forward to going into Glasgow with Max and trying to get my hands on the records that are on my wants list. If it's anything like last year it will be a really good day. There was a definite buzz going on at Mono. I am not the most patient person in the world and hate queueing, I think that I may have some German blood in my veins but even I didn't mind the wait, although I was a bit anxious about not getting a copy of the Fall single but I needn't have worried.

Anyway to get in the mood this afternoon I decided to make up a couple of compilation cds up for the car and decided to go back to basics and complete the task without the aid of the laptop or itunes, no dragging and dropping today, all of the tracks would be from vinyl or cd and would be recorded in real time.

It's ages since I made a compilation this way, it's ages since I made myself a compilation full stop, these days I either just pick a play list on the mp3 player or rely on the machine's impeccable taste on random.

I had a basic outline. I wanted to do a recent dance cd and also an indie/northern whatever one where I would just open one of the singles boxes pick out the first random single that my hand got to and see where it went from there.  The dance one was quite easy as I knew the tracks that I wanted and kind of knew the order in which I thought it should go but was kind of hampered by not being able to use two decks for a couple of reasons, firstly that my old mixer is knackered and the other decks are packed away behind a pile of other stuff in the cupboard half way up the stairs. It would have been better to have the tracks mix into each other and then it could officially be called a mixtape but after playing it back it sort of flows alright and the gaps between tunes are kept to a minimum.

The second cd has not been so easy. Due to the time taken to record the first and listen back through it I haven't even started it yet!

I have randomly selected the first single, posted below and I will let you know how the compilation turns out.

Please go and support your local independent record store tomorrow as we would all be in a sorry state without them, check the website here for participating stores.

Have a good weekend people.

Random single out of the box is  . .

The Clash - Bank Robber