Look at this picture and what do you see?
Nothing much, right?
It’s just a cock-eyed shot of the front of a charity shop.
Take a closer look.
What’s lurking there on the pavement, covered in dust and abandoned? A record box. This scene greeted me this morning and I felt such a passionate wave of sadness that I felt the need to report on it. The photo is unremarkable and I make no apologies for that. The story the photo tells is what I’m about today.
There has been any number of occasions when I have ‘waxed lyrical’ (and I use that phrase quite deliberately) about my love of music, both live and recorded…..though curiously not ‘live albums’, which tend, in my view, to be either overblown and pompous or simply utter crap.
I’ve even photographed old records several times. Recently a woman called Roz contacted me via pbase because I’d declared a love of the records of the band she was the singer of twenty-odd years ago. She corrected a technical inaccuracy in my commentary and we’ve been having a friendly conversation since. I was thrilled to hear from her and I think she was probably quite thrilled to be remembered after all this time.
Anyway, the point of this is I nearly committed a crime this morning and maybe if I’d not been trundling a suitcase behind me, bursting at the seams and carrying a heavy handbag, complete with two paperback books in it and the obligatory 10d, I may have actually committed the crime. I am even aware as I say this that people have been prosecuted for this crime – stealing things left on the pavement for a charity shop.
You see, I burn to know what was in the box. I want to know what sort of person left the box there, dusty and clearly no longer loved. You can tell a lot about a person from their record collection, don’t you think? Was it full of Des O’Connor and Andy Williams with smiling faces in arran or fairisle sweaters?
Was it full of ‘Top of the Pops’ albums – you remember the ones, in the days before ‘Now that’s what I call music I’ appeared in record shops. They were, for anyone either too young or from a distance of more than 600 miles away from London, really crappy cover versions of the major chart hits of the day, recorded by session musicians. I must be honest, it baffles me as to why some of them are actually quite valuable just because Elton John played on them before he was famous but this is a fact. Of course unless you are ‘in the know’ as to which ones he played on, they’re completely worthless!
Was it full of precious ‘78s? There could have been a ‘78 acetate version of ‘Rock around the clock’, which I’d still love to own even though I believe I’m right in saying that the 7” single is more valuable because there were fewer pressed.
Could it have been full of Marvin Gaye or Martha and the Vandellas? My perfect sounds. The music that fills me with joy, even the sad stuff, because when you listen to the purity of the voices and the feelings and emotions in those records, it’s hard for your heart to be anything less than filled with joy.
Could it have contained ‘The Clash’? Probably my favourite live act of all time even though EC is my all-time musical hero, if you see what I mean?
Of course it could have been full of Level 42 12” singles or OMD or even Pink Floyd?
Some people are train spotters, some are stamp collectors and some collectors of passport stamps. I am a collector of music. A lover of pop. Always have been and always will be. The temptation to stroll past the box, do a gracious dip as I passed it and pick it up was huge. It may have contained a treasure, though it probably didn’t….there is always the tiny chance you might come across a copy of ‘BUY1’, the first release on the Stiff label or a batch of early two-tone 7”s or a Soul Brother Six album…. Who knows. I never will because I resisted that temptation and ‘Walked on By’.
Whatever was in the box, what I am absolutely certain of is that I could open that box and get a feel for the person who left it there by its contents. I could make a judgement about whether or not I’d get on with the person who left it. I could take a peek into the private life of the former owner.
POSTSCRIPT: I wrote this on a train before arriving home today after three days away. My heart sank when I wandered into the sitting room with two steaming bowls of chilli for supper and there was footie on. I begged for a change and was told that I could change channels if (and only if) there was something I REALLY wanted to see on another channel - in other words the footie was more important than almost anything!
Rather depressingly this was something my ex-husband used on me to get endless footie, American footie, baseball, ice hockey.....you name it, if it was sport he'd watch it. I flicked through the channels not holding out any real hope of being able to say a soap opera or a cookery programme was more interesting than the footie and then I spotted something that I knew would win him over. BBC 4 showing an Otis Redding documentary. Yep. It's that thing again. Music. I got my wish, he got something he never expected and we have had a fabulous evening. I wonder if there was any James carr in that box........
A year ago, I posted a picture that I liked but I've been shocked at its popularity. I have it sat in two galleries and between the two, it's had around 10,000 hits......not bad eh?
