Musical taste… the first albums we bought and other matters November 19, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Funnily enough this kind of elides with IEL’s post today on Rock of Ages – a lot of those tracks, not least the soft rock ones have a place in my heart. I’ve been reading Gareth Murphy’s overview of the record industry – Cowboys and Indies, dipping in and out as the mood takes me. It’s a great read. There’s so much in there, and some intriguing thoughts on just how ill-prepared for the digital era it all was – small wonder Apple snuck in when it did.
But when discussing Rick Rubin, famously founder of Def Jam and producer to a vast range of people there’s this quote from the man himself:
In high school I had listened to stuff like AC/DC and Led Zeppelllin. From there I got into independent punk rock – the Dead Kennedy’s, Black Flag. Then I got seriously into hip-hop, where it all moved full circle because I was missing the old stuff like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
Recently I was discussing music with someone who said to me, ‘but metal would be more your thing than punk’. While there’s an element of truth in it I was a bit taken aback because my musical evolution, such as it is, followed a not dissimilar track to Rubins. The first albums I bought were a Horslips Greatest Hits and Deepest Purple, followed by Highway to Hell by AC/DC. The next though – in a short month or two later – were Echo and the Bunnymen and the Psychedelic Furs. By the way, the latter two were second hand, something that I did for years subsequently. Freebird, Comet, Base X (as was), Macs in the George’s Street Arcade, all saw my custom on a near enough weekly basis. I’d easily have put vinyl before alcohol. Indeed for most of the time there was no contest at all.
So in school I was listening to metal. Then straight to new wave. Then and only then punk. I came late to that and was astounded by the range of guitar sounds. They were faster, crunchier than metal. After that it was pretty much a mix informed by the first three. Psychedelia, goth, alternative as was and then dance and then electronica – IDM, EBM, techno. Metal only elbowed its way back in in the late 90s.
And even that is just broad brushstrokes. There were always albums or songs from different genres which I liked as and when I heard them – some of them far from good, I like that Double album, I’m fond of Picnic at the Whitehouse, Hey Elastica had their moments, and so on…the point being I don’t believe I’ve a very good musical taste but I do like music.
Did others have similar or different paths? And perhaps more interestingly, what were the first albums people bought?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
I’m wondering if your musical journey was as “cool” as it appears. . . because mine certainly wasn’t.
I nearly got into Iron Maiden. . . but I chose the Smiths instead. I chose. . . poorly.
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I don’t think of it as cool at all. Goth? Not exactly lauded. Even metal is a bit naff for a lot of people. And I’m thinking that I like so much stuff that is almost middle of the road.
But I do agree in a sense that there was a sense of music being an area apart, and particularly early on there was a lot of snobbery about these things. These days its better in that people like lots of different genres whereas that was unusual back when I started out.
I think you chose well btw. I’m not a huge fan of the Smiths bar How Soon is Now and What Difference Does it Make but Iron Maiden and me – never liked ’em (bar one song Die with your boots on).
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No you didn’t.
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(choose poorly)
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🙂
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Oh yes I did. But I’ll spare you the full, awful story.
And the Smiths really have not aged well. Even if Morrisey wasn’t a twat, his lyrics are the sound of a closeted gay man beating himself up due to his internalised homophobia.
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Belle & Sebastian – now there’s the band the Smiths could have been.
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(Choose poorly) brackets and all, sounds like a meme- generated Smiths’ song
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And on the Smiths…. This interview with Marr in Salon picks up on something rarely mentioned in the UK:
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/20/johnny-marr-on-the-guitar-and-beautiful-melancholy/
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+1 I often think there’s a perception of them as quintessentially English by some in England, and yet, and yet… with that bunch of surnames was there ever a group more second generation Irish?
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First cassette bought with my own money: “Once In A Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads”.
First CD bought with my own money “Republic” by New Order.
First MP3 I downloaded “Cover Me” by Dot Allison.
Last album I bought “Marry Me” by St. Vincent.
I did always like groups like NO, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, as
a child. The idea that they were “alternative” didn’t really come into my head-they were just the bands on TOTP or the Chart Show that I
happened to like.
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Liking is the key. Heartbreak Avenue by the Maisonettes was a brilliant one off that I loved and still love, but they were no great shakes or cool. But who cares? Great song.
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I hear what you’re saying about being prepared to forsake alcohol for CDs WBS. I too struggled with that. And generally chose alcohol!
But it was all so expensive! I was storing away old CDs recently – having transferred them all to a hard-drive and I was shocked at the prices.
Weren’t albums something like £7.50 in the early 80s?That was crippling. I used to make not much more for a days work in a shop. The 2nd hand shops you mentioned were all Dublin institutions. We didn’t have them in the country.
And even when I did access them, it was still a significant investment. Particularly given that – once you ventrued outside the very mainstream – you had heard so little of the music before deciding to buy. Even a fiver dropped on an album that disappointed was more than a bit of a bummer.
But alcohol. You knew what you were getting with alcohol.
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That’s very true. And the balance did shift. I take your point re Dublin (and if I was in Manchester, or Belfast or Glasgow I’d make point of going to 2nd hand shops). Albums were that price. And that was heavy going financially. Still, I don’t begrudge it. I worked in kitchen porter jobs and it kind of kept me sane.
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Indexed against the cost of living, I worked out recently that when I first started buying LPs, the price then, about £2.50-3.25 would be equivalent to €30+ now. A hefty chunk from a schoolboy’s part time job. Put another way, in 1977, when I was first aware of the price of a pint, you could get somewhere between 7 And 10 pints for the price of an album. Or, my other big expense, 3 average paperback books. Last night. In Fopp at Cambridge circus, I could have walked out with an armful of classic CDs for that 30 quid. Really though, for most consumers now, music costs nothing.d
On the other hand, the first time I paid rent in Dublin, it was a tenner for a room for the week – less than half a day’s pay. You’d need to be earning quite a bit for that to be the case these days. Equally, the first time I flew to London, on a ‘cheap’ standby ticket, it cost (the record company) £129. I flew to birmingham last week for €9. Mad.
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….the point of the rent comment being that, as students/ young earners, a smaller portion our income was being swallowed by the rentiers
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I’m glad you did that exercise. I’ve often wondered what the prices were like. And that accounted for why I and so many of us bought stuff second hand. I never lost the taste either. I’d still look for second hand Cds and rarely enough buy them first hand. Though costs have fallen spectacularly.
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Thing is, Apart from new releases, new CDs are ridiculously cheap now too. I regularly find myself buying duplicates of stuff I have on vinyl just for handiness and to have a copy to play here. Which was what the record companies lived off for a while before dying of stupidity,
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I had a chat with someone yesterday, a mutual acquaintance as it happens who designs album covers, they were telling me that some stats in relation to vinyl sold today have only 50% actually listened to. The others are… well… what, kind of lovely artefacts. But not music as such.
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Yeah, every year I ask first years who has spent actual money on recorded music recently, and the few hands that go up usually turn out to have bought ‘vinyls’ (sic) . Then I ask who has the equipment to play them. Down go the hands…..
Faintly ridiculous buying new records on vinyl anyway; since it’s almost certain to have been recorded digitally, you’re essentially buying a CD pressed to plastic. None of the mythical ‘warmth’ that supposedly resides there will be evident.
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Argh… that’s interesting. So vinyl becomes a way of getting sales. I don’t know, is that good or bad?
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What is a good taste in music though? I suppose you could say that a good taste in music is listening to the sort of stuff that wins music awards, before and after, though less after, those awards have been won, however I’m inclined to think that is a view of music too heavily geared towards the sort of people who wear trendy hats and sunglasses indoors. Personally I don’t think good musical taste exists; or to put it another way, don’t let the awards pedlars grind you down.
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Yeah, 100% agree. Critical consensus isn’t necessarily a good consensus in terms of music (and sometimes there’s a tendency to equate new – whether a sound, a style, a group, or whatever with good. On occasion that can be right, but a fair bit of the time not necessarily).
I was just thinking that I still love music as much as I did when I was in my teens – I remember reading an interview with Dave Fanning where he said it didn’t touch him as it used to, and I think about how he was great at digging in and finding interesting stuff, as did John Peel as did any number of others – and wondering how does that happen…
I really should up a not at all guilty pleasures post…
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There’s an interesting essay by will Straw where he says that, sometime in the 80s, alternative rock in all its guises became mired in canonicity – ie, the record collectors took over and influences, and the cataloguing thereof became more important than originality and excitement. Whereas dance clubs remained committed to novelty and future oriented.
So, whereas in rock, new styles – grunge, indie, emo – simply took their place alongside older ones, in dance, fiercely local and competing genres and micro-genres battled for the dance floor and the airtime.
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speaking of music…
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/landmark-dublin-music-venue-jj-smyths-to-shut-1.2872010
I struggled with music for years as a kid. Kept searching for something I loved but only found it in bits and pieces. It was in my 20s and 30s that music came together for me. at venues like this, and other similar spots around London, New York and San Francisco.
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Was there a particular sound or style you found you finally clicked with? Live music was always a bit of a problem for me but as time has gone on I’ve found I like it more and more. This year was a bit weird, after years of not going to gigs due to childcare etc I got to six this year, and they were all pretty great.
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You know its strangely hard to remember, but I think the first time I was just bowled over by music, so blown away that it was drug-like in its intensity (to mix many metaphors) was at a Moving Hearts gig in Salthill around 1986. After Christy Moore had left them. I suppose it was the tour for the Storm CD.
Over the years that got me hunting down small gigs in great venues. I saw loads of bands I’d never heard of – and never heard of again – in the 100 club in London.
And there was a blues night in a pub I used go to in the US that always excited me. An open-mic or sorts – but one where only serious musicians ever turned up
I never really enjoyed the big, stadium gigs. And I think it was only in later years I have begun to really enjoy recorded music. But now I love it.
I am left totally gutted by the demise of TXFM, for instance – having hardly listened to music radio when I was a kid.
Thanks for asking WBS.
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That’s a very interesting development of musical taste you describe. I’ve wondered about this too, the small almost random gig of whatever sort can easily be the best, a few people doing a session in a pub, or a small venue, and somehow the sense of intimacy is there, or even that the players play for themselves but you’re welcome to listen, if that makes sense. Or at slightly bigger gigs where there is a sense of intimacy. I don’t know if that’s possible at stadium gigs.
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And just thinking about it I can well believe moving hearts would be great. I mentioned before how much I love Open Those Gates but the album before that with CM was and remains a favourite.
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First album I bought was a Music For Pleasure T. Rex compilation, which turned out to be mimbly acoustic Tyrannosaurus Rex material. But it only cost me 52p, which even then was a bargain. The first proper album I bought was Mott the Hoople, Mott; the first CD, the Pet Shop Boys’ Very (it took me a while to get into CDs). Don’t think I’ve ever paid for a download – just freebies, download codes with LPs and some out-of-print stuff. I got into punk rather late (1978) after years of prog & folk – never had a metal phase; I’ve gone back to folk in a big way but never really gone back to prog.
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“The first proper album I bought was Mott the Hoople, Mott”
Now there’s a record….with the cut out sleeve?
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I think compilations were massively popular – I wonder if that’s still true. CDs really messed things up, didn’t they? I held out for years but in the end…
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“I think compilations were massively popular”
They call them playlists now
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🙂
Just on stylish and unstylish I caught Saturday last weekend a BBC programme of ELO live. I’ve always felt completely conflicted by them – the stuff I loved I really loved, the stuff I hated I really hated but on balance I like them and the gig was pretty good. What was funny though was that I’d never heard Jeff Lynne speak before and only just realised he has a fairly broad Brummie accent a bit like my late grans and it kind of makes him a more lovable character for me (this works too with Sabbath and Judas Priest , I hear my grans intonations in a swathe of midlands bands)!
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First album: Aladdin Sane. Bought Mott in Stillorgan Golden Discs about 1973 for £2.65 in new money. The definition of wealth for me then was to afford an LP and a paperback a week. Still is, in some ways.
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Completely agree. As long as there’s words and a bit of music, or vice versa the world isn’t entirely grim!
Great album Aladdin Sane. Still love it. Quick question, what is the best Mott the Hoople album. A group I’ve always wanted to get into.
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Tempted to say ‘all of them’ but Mott is probably the one,. Two distinct periods; pre- and post- All the Young Dudes. Of the early, pre – pop success records, maybe Brain Capers by a short head for Death May be your Santa Claus, but Mad Shadows, produced by Guy Stevens is also great.
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Cheers, this really handy, I always liked what I heard a lot and it’s from a period of music I love. I have no excuses for not knowing more about them, though I do like hearing stuff years after the event particularly nowadays and getting into it.
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My favourite Mott album would the Country-esque one they did.. . doesn’t seem to be on YouTube anymore. . .
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As a kid, what there was to listen to in friends’ houses was always constrained by what records their big brothers had, so we were all fenced in by metal, prog rock and so on. I think the first album I got was a Rolling Stones compilation.
The eye-opener for me was the son of one of my da’s friends playing SLF’s Hanx for me. As a nordie refugee transplanted to Dublin, it was just what I needed to hear and opened a whole new musical world just as I was going into college so I drank in all the post-punk and early punk stuff.
Couldn’t stand all the hairspray bands though, The Cure, The Smiths and co, too much whining going on. Dabbled with anarcho-punk, even got my mate’s da to pick up a Conflict single for me when he was in London on a visit.
The first gig my folks let me go to was Bob Marley in Dalymount so I was always predisposed towards reggae, started exploring that, going back to the early stuff, then travelled back to Motown, Stax and along the way drank in the African / “world music” stuff that was starting to come through, did a show on pirate radio DJ’ing all of the above and by 1990 was hardly listening to anything recorded by white people.
Then a mate played me Primal Scream’s Loaded and a whole nother dance world opened up (chemical substances may have become more of an influence) but to be honest, Underworld are about all I return to from that era. Her nibs has a staggering amount of Tiesto albums but I just have to leave the room when the mood takes her.
These days, I’m mainly back to listening to music by people who are dead, a lot of Studio One and Treasure Isle era reggae, King Tubby dub rather than Mad Professor, anything out of Stax (cos I went there on a pilgrimage in 2008), northern soul and blues legends. Anyone still plodding around the Electric Picnic retro circuit, I’ve probably seen at an earlier Electric Picnic, plus I’m too old and decrepit to be doing with a tent at this stage.
That being said, there’s still the thrill of discovery that comes from going to gigs. God Is An Astronaut bear no relation to anything else I ever listened to before but we saw them at a festival years ago and fell in love; the only band I’ve ever flown to see, even if it was only Cork. Her nibs saw Columbia Mills with friends, persuaded me to come along next time and I was enthralled. We saw Le Galaxie at the New Years Eve festival, and loved their melding of Kraftwerk, Human League and Underworld.
This Weekend, I’ll Mostly Be Listening To: The Heptones.
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A propos of which:
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That’s a great selection, and kind of fun too. I often thought at the time – and I liked some of the whiney stuff (though usually the more out and out goth, the Cure were a bit chancery and ‘mainstream’ as I saw it) that it must be very off putting, so many people didn’t. Reggae is one area I’m criminally out of touch with.
Just re out of doors festivals. Hate em. Hate every last thing about them. I’ve only been to a few stadium gigs and didn’t much like them, but festivals are worse. I hate the feeling of being corralled into a space for a day or more. Urhh…. Going to have to follow up those bands you reference (though IEL did God is an Astronaut not that long back).
I had a mate who came from Belfast to Dublin in the early 70s and he had SLF too!
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“A Nordie refugee”! You were 20 years too late to be any such thing.Real Nordie refugees petered out in the early 70s and anyway they would have been listening to the best selling Irish record of all time-“the men behind the wire”!
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Oddly enough, The Men Behind The Wire is the very first record I have any memory of actually playing – I can even remember the exact date. It was in our house in Belfast, my mother ran up the stairs shouting at me to turn it off for fear the neighbours would hear it. She was in tears as news was just starting to come through that a load of people had been shot earlier that afternoon at a Civil Rights march in Derry.
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Desperate times then Dr. Nightdub.
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I never had a record player at all for the first, I think probably 8 years of my adult life, when I lived in halls of residence and squats. I used to listen to stuff other people had accumulated on the house record player.
That would have been a lot of punk, rock and reggae.
A mono cassette recorder / radio boom box made more sense because it was more portable. This one had a line in so I’d often tape stuff from other people’s record players, or a lot from the radio. I still recall waiting for the song to start on John Peel and pressing ‘record’.
I think the first cassete tape that I paid cash money for was probably the Dead Kennedy’s first – that would have been ‘Fresh fruit.’ Then I used to buy bootleg tapes outside of gigs.
When I did get round to buying a record player, I think the first was was probably an ‘authentic’ (it was a thing in those days) performance of the Brandenburg Concertos (J.S. Bach). I was already beginning to loose interest in punk and the aftermath and listening to other musics.
I never did accumulate much vinyl, and welcomed the day CDs came out. I am more than happy that reproduced music is just ordered bits these days that you can store on the mobile phone. The family subscribes to one of those streaming services and I try to attend as much live music as I can – mainly so-called ‘new music’, free lunchtime concerts in churches, some jazz some so-called ‘world’.
Cheapskate that I remain, this is handy. Just capture the audio content.
I realise I’m the music industry middle-man’s nightmare. Fuck em, I say.
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I was in a record shop that sold only old vinyl – there seems to be more and more of them about the place – the other day to pick up tickets for my daughter’s first gig at a club (one Melanie Martinez at Huxley’s Neue Welt – don’t ask me!) and noticed that 30 year old records were selling for 30 to 40 yoyos.
Mad.
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Yes, in Cork recently fairly average records from the 1980s – actually very average, not particularly good Motorhead, Asia, the odd Cure album were going for 20-30 quid second hand. It’s a bit crazy. Though I do love albums for the art etc.
I think being the music industry’s middle-mans nightmare is something to be. And kudos to you for your path avoiding a lot of the pitfalls.
I’ve subscribed to emusic since the mid-2000s and for a bit over a tenner a month got a lot of indie, alternative, world, jazz and so on for next to nothing. It’s been bought up more recently and changed but for years it was great – stuff straight from small labels in a range of genres.
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I have to say I do worry about how the wealth of great musicians ever make a living out of the streaming sales.
Which is why I try to attend live when I can.
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I don’t like streaming either. Emusic at least offers MP3s. Whether that model is good for musicians is another matter, but it seems better than streaming. Stress on seems.
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The first LP I bought was a Gilbert O’Sullivan album. The one with ‘Claire’ on it. It was a pretty good album too. I’ve always had great musical taste.
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Re Mott: singer Ian Hunter’s book ‘Diary of a Rock’n’Roll Star’ is still one of the best.
Re ‘taste’ the collapse of the music press has made music harder than ever to learn about while it’s easier than ever to access.
Re festivals: hateful. One point about them- in recent years US acts in particular, that might have played a mid-sized venue like Vicar St, are making their only Irish appearance of the year in a field in Laois. No thanks.
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The first album I bought was Level 42’s Running in the Family. They became a byword for 80s naff quickly but I’d be of a mind to defend them now.
The second album I bought was It Bites’ Once Around the World. Hmm
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A mate of mine loved Level 42. It wasn’t quite my cup of tea but they’d worked with M who I kind of liked.
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Hatful of Hollow and the Bob Marley compilation Legend, both on vinyl, both on the same day, probably some kind of birthday gift token in Golden Discs.
Though I think when I was very young, I got Adam and the Ants, “KIngs of the Wild Frontier” for an Xmas present. None too popular at home when I played it.
Saw something on Youtube suggesting that Adam and the Ants had some kind of renewed post-punk credibility these days, but I’m not sure I really want to see that…
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Whenever I get the chance, I look at the music kids have stored on their phones and/or are playing. I really like the way its all so varied compared to when I was a kid. Metal mixed with funk mixed with indie rock.
And there’s a huge amount of 80s music in that mix too. But as much as I like the way that music has got less tribal, I find it amazing how ’80s music’ has seemingly morphed into a genre all of its own. And its a genre in which Duran Duran, Adam and the Ants and the Clash all seemingly have equal billing……
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Heheh, yeah, genres have kind of collapsed as defining issues but there’s no end of oddity in relation to what we’re left with. I’ve seen that too. I guess – and I always think of this in relation to those like myself who caught the tail end of punk, it’s like liking music from the 40s. At that distance in 1980 it was so long before (and without the immediately of downloads and extensive back catalogues easily accessible) that everything goes.
lamentreat, I have the paper card for a Golden Discs token, I found it a few years back and have no idea how it survived.
Marley and the Smiths is a great mix too. Adam and the Ants, was listening to them last year, not great beyond the singles though the first album was pretty good to my ears but I could have been listening to the wrong stuff.
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I inherited a course on ‘music cultures’ when i started here – all Birmingham School stuff about subculture and football terraces and mods and rockers, and then onto punk and that Dick Hebdige book. None of which makes any sense at all to students now. Similarly, the stuff we still teach on genre.
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I remember when Dick Hebdidge was the future! I loved those books but you’re right, its like a different world. That said there are genres that persist, goth, the rockin’ scene etc
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There’s a Paul Gilroy book – one of his later ones – where he mentions in passing that new subcultures were forming around sports, athletics, keeping fit etc. And your students must know, or know of, Trekkies, or the Warhammer crowd?
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My first albumn, if I remember correctly, was ‘All our own work’ by Sandy Denny and the Strawbs. Not sure about the Strawbs but Sandy Denny stll holds up. A fantasic singer and a very good musician. Stiil got it and still give it the odd play. I was an odd teenager. loved the heavy stuff but was still swayed by folky influences.
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Sandy Denny was a marvel. The way folk is still hugely influential across so many areas is telling (prog in particular but also indie, etc).
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My first album, if I remember correctly, was ‘All our own work’ by Sandy Denny and the Strawbs. Not sure about the Strawbs but Sandy Denny stll holds up. A fantasic singer and a very good musician. Stiil got it and still give it the odd play. I was an odd teenager. loved the heavy stuff but was still swayed by folky influences.
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Sorry, delete the corrected version and leave the uncorrected albumn spelling. Maybe it gves my contribution added cudos. Anyway just because I wasnt cool then didn’t mean that I didn’t blossom later. I once was the only drinker at the bar during an entire Jimmy Summerville comcert.
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First album I bought was “Jailbreak” by Thin Lizzy which I think I bought in Woolworths in Newry on a shopping trip North.
First CD was “Cake” by Trashcan Sinatras. Two great albums.
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100% agree. Jailbreak was one of those albums that if you didn’t have you’d have to borrow of friends who had it. One thing I loved about music (and books to a degree) was the sharing economy that went with it.
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First album I bought was Fresh Evidence by Rory Gallagher. Bought on vinyl (already fairly retro) a few years after it came out. While I love Rory Gallagher, I was never hugely enthused by his more blues-inflected work, although I know that’s where his heart was. However, Fresh Evidence still sounds extraordinarily contemporary to this day. As is often the case with an artist’s final work, there’s a dark and menacing edge to the whole album which is hard to shake off.
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I’d be the same, love him but not so much the totally blues inspired stuff. Though as you say that’s what he loved. But I have a theory that sometimes music is better when a musician works outside their comfort zone.
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First album, on cassette, was the Jam’s All Mod Cons in early 1979. I’m not 100% sure on the first LP but it might have been SLF’s Inflammable Material.
All Mod Cons was bought in Stillorgan Golden Discs, so CrosShoes we might have been neighbours?
The talk about Freebird and BaseX brings it all back. Many’s the saturday afternoon spent flicking through the record bins, or often looking over someone else’s shoulder as they flicked, it was that busy. First 2nd hand LP I bought was Ramones Rocket To Russia, in Freebird. I’m struggling to remember if I ever sold an album, I don’t think so.
About the cost of music, I used to get two quid pocket money per week as a teenager, all of which got spent on music. If it wasn’t albums it was singles, if not singles it was blank BASF C90s to swap albums in school.
Our kids listen to lots of music but as SoS says above they’re part of the generation that has never spent a penny on buying music, it’s all downloaded from YouTube.
Finally, first ever gig was DC Nien in the Dandelion Market one late summer Sunday afternoon in 1979, Life changing really. Probably the best gig I was ever at.
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Great pic here of GD in Stillorgan
When we lived down the bog, we’d come up to Dublin regularly and stay with cousins in Stillorgan, the house my ma grew up in. Stillorgan shopping centre was the most modern thing in my world at the time and Golden Discs there was the coolest place ever.
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SoS if your ma grew up in Stillorgan she must have been a culchie, it was well outside the city limits back in those pre suburban times. I’m guessing the house must be one of the old ones in the village? I grew up in one of the new late 60s estates, Lakelands in Kilmacud, about a mile from the Shopping Centre. You’re right though, the SC was very modern and cool in its day. I was in it a few years ago, not having been there in decades, and I was struck by how small it was. Not just by comparison to other more modern and bigger centres that have been built since, but literally smaller relative to my memories of it which I had built up mostly as a child when everything just seemed so big.
That’s a great photo of the GD show. It had probably been updated a bit by the time I would have frequented it, but the layout looks the same more or less. Apart from the cassette racks along the left wall above the record bins, which obviously wouldn’t have been there in 1967 when that photo was taken. Memories eh.
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“SoS if your ma grew up in Stillorgan she must have been a culchie, it was well outside the city limits back in those pre suburban times”
Stillorgan Park – she was born in London though, and they moved to South Leinster St. across from Trinity first when they came back to Dublin and only out to Stillorgan when she was a teen – ‘grew up in’ was a bit wrong, though her younger siblings did.
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“I’m struggling to remember if I ever sold an album, I don’t think so.”
+1
And BASF C90s… bane of my life. Loved them and hated them. I never saw DC Nien but still love their next incarnation and the album that went with it.
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Presumably GD employees weren’t wearing suits by 1971🙂
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