Ripples

It was my birthday on Wednesday. I remember that I promised I would write a short story, which I hope you might like.

Maybe it is the start of another chapter in my life, too. We'll see!

Let me know if you like it.

Ripples

Nostalgia Trip: Oldies Unlimited

Today's post is a tribute of sorts to an 80's pop music institution - at least in Britain. Who else remembers Oldies Unlimited? Here's a reminder:


Not very visual, is it? Anyway, let me set the scene for you. First, I will get my pipe and slippers and mutter something like, "You kids today, you don't know how lucky you are...".

Let's say it's the mid-eighties and you want to hear an Ultravox B-Side. No downloads, no file sharing, you have to actually buy the real record the track was on. So you go down to the local record shop and say, would I be able to order "We Came To Dance" by Ultravox? Then the hippie looking bloke (some things have not changed that much) would pull out a book the size of Cardiff and look for the catalogue number. I think those books still exist - most libraries seem to have hidden racks of them in the reference sections. Then, you would wait. About a week later you would check back and they would look at their order book - all handwritten in biro - and shake their head, nah mate sorry, couldn't get it.

Oldies Unlimited was great precisely because they had all kinds of records, you just had to go through the whole mail-order experience. This starts with them sending you a booklet with a list of their records, which they would send every month or so. When you ordered records, you had to put some extras down so you never knew exactly what you were going to get (Hey, wasn't that also how you ordered Panini stickers for your albums? I'd forgotten about the whole "provide alternatives" approach). No scans, no digital photos, just writing to some place called Telford which could have been the moon for all I knew. No credit card - just send a check or a postal order. This was while I was still at school, so placing an order was a rare treat.

On one occasion I took a chance and bought a box of 100 singles for about ten pounds, it was one of those grab-bag deals. When they came, of course they were all rubbish and I'd never heard of any of them. The only one I remember at all was "I Never Go Out In The Rain" by High Society. For some reason I've always had a soft spot for tunes that hark back to Vaudeville and the roaring twenties.

High Society - I Never Go Out In The Rain (7" Single, 1980)

Graystoke - Up On The Roof (1988)

Graystoke - Up On The Roof (1988)

I actually preferred the B-Side to this one, so here it is:

Graystoke - Perfect Is The Girl

Local Hero - With A Woman Like You (1989)

Local Hero - With A Woman Like You (7" Single, 1989)

Search Party - All Around The World (1983)

Search Party - All Around The World (7" Single, 1983)

Another "makin' bacon" production, I'm afraid, but this one is rarer than rare. An interesting short-lived group, associated with New Musik and Tony Mansfield, more information is here.

Makin' Bacon

As a busy family man, I know there are others out there who will appreciate what I mean when I mention that although I love music to bits, there are very rarely times that I get to don a pair of headphones and just listen to something. Even when I'm ripping vinyl and working with those tracks, I'm always being interrupted and I'm usually listening to the sounds through some decent but obviously limited computer speakers.

I mention this in passing because on a whim I decided to compare a 12" Single track which I had just ripped at the highest rate possible (320kbps) to the same track I previously downloaded from somewhere which was at 192kbps. It's fair to say I've been obsessed lately with trying to replace smaller bit rate music files (128kbps is so 2001!) with the best I can either locate or produce myself. I naively expected my rip to sound obviously better, and it didn't. To be perfectly honest, it crackled and spat like sunday morning bacon.

So I listened to some other rips I have done through headphones, and there are pops and clicks all over the place. I still have a lot to learn, obviously. Not all of them were that bad, I hasten to add. Much also depends on the state of the vinyl before I get my hands on it, I guess. Anyways, if you find some pops and clicks on rips you find here, I apologize in advance. I've just got my hands on a few great new singles so I'll be posting those this week.

MFL Radio

For no particular reason, I thought I would share a few different tracks today.

The Silencers - The Art of Self Deception
(from Dance to the Holy Man, 1991)

The Rave-Ups - If It Was (A Matter of Mind)
(from Chance, 1990)

Eleanor McEvoy - A Glass Unkissed
(from What's Following Me, 1996)

Waves On Waves - Better Car
(from Waves On Waves, 2007)