Vinyl Stories - 2022 Vinyl

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 7 / 1 / 2023

intro

In his 'Vinyl Stories' column Dave Goodwin talks to several members of the Pennyblack team about their vinyl purchases of 2022 and some of the issues associated with it.

DAVE: Well, that is another year done and dusted and another to look forward to. It’s been interesting - that’s for sure - with events around the world both good and bad. In the world of vinyl, however, it seems that the general public has been dipping their hands in pockets once again this year. Last year vinyl sales had a 23.2% year-on-year increase, in the fourteenth consecutive year of a growth in sales. This is an exciting statistic for many as vinyl sales have been climbing consistently since 2006. Based on that trajectory, it was predicted that 2022 would see vinyl become the dominant physical format in pure sales, and indeed the number of units shipped rose 15.7% over the same period last year and from a staggering 18.8 million to 21.8 million. We have some serious vinyl nuts here at Pennyblackmusic. I, myself have been shelling out on all sorts of wonderful sounds to stick on the deck. Most of my indulgence this year has been for original Northern and Rare Soul USA 45s for my collection. I am buying mainly from sales adverts on a site called Soul Source but I also buy from other specialist record shops like The Soulmine down in Aldershot. I get a fair few soulful gems from Alex-loving old-timer Keith Williams up near Crewe as well. I have had lists from some of our disc-hoarding writers here at Pennyblack which I will share with you, but I will start off with my own list which goes something like this: 7” Singles 1. Bettye Lavette – I’m Just a Fool For You/Stand Up Like a Man – Calla (Demo) 2. The Naturelles – Love Has Joined Us Together – Venture (White Demo) 3. The Detroit Executives – Cool Off – Pameline (Orange) 4. The De-Vons – Someone To Treat Me (The Way That You Used to Do) = King 5. Johnny Moore – Thank You Baby – Mercury (White Demo) 6. Barbara Mason – Don’t Ever Want to Lose Your Love - Arctic 7. Tony Clarke – Landslide – Cadet 8. The Soul Twins – Quick Change Artist – Karen 9. Shane Martin – I Need You – CSP 10. The Geminis - You Put a Hurtin’ On Me - RCA 11. Detroit Soul – All of My Life – Music Town 12. Jimmy Castor – Just You Girl – Smash 13. Dee Dee Sharp – What Kind of Lady - Gamble 14. Secret Affair – Sound of Confusion – I-Spy 15. Secret Affair – Time for Action – I-Spy 16. Secret Affair – My World - I-Spy 17. Valerie and Bobby Capers – West 4th Street – Atlantic (Demo) 18. Linda Jones – Hypnotized/I Can’t Stop Lovin’ My Baby – Loma 19. Beverley Ann – He’s Coming Home – RCA (White Demo) 20. The Parliaments – Cry No More – Cabell 21. The Sweet Delights – Baby Be Mine – Atco (Demo) 22. The Singers – Just a Little Further – Lebam 23. Innovations – Just Keep On Loving me – Hit Sound 24. The Blue Sharks – These Things Will Keep Me Loving You – Gran Prix (White Demo) 25. The Jammers – True Love is Hard to Find – Jubilee (White Demo) 26. Carolyn Crawford – My Smile is Just a Frown – Motown (White Demo) 27. Gladys Knight and The Pips – Just Walk in My Shoes – Soul The highlight of this little lot of 45s is The Blue Sharks which set me back over £400 and the Music Town delight from Detroit Soul, being one of my all time favourite Northern Soul records which also set me back around that figure. Albums: 1. Kraftwerk – Autobahn – Vertigo (Original pressing) 2. Kraftwerk – Radio-Activity – Capitol (Original pressing) 3. Secret Affair – Glory Boys – I-Spy 4. The Northern Soul Story Vol 6 – Goldmine (To complete a series of sixteen albums of the same name) 5. Miley Cyrus – Plastic Hearts – RCA 6. Echo and the Bunnymen – Porcupine – Warner Brothers 7. Chvrches – Screen Violence – EMI 8. Taylor Swift – Midnights – Republic 9. Suede – Autofiction - BMG 10. Joss Stone – Never Forget My Love – Bay Street 11. Johnny Marr – Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 - BMG 12. Tears For Fears – Tipping Point - Universal 13. Placebo – Never Let Me Go 14. Bloc Party – Alpha Games - BMG 15. Arcade Fire – We - Columbia 16. Polica – Madness – Memphis Industries 17. Paolo Nutini – Last Night in the Bittersweet - Atlantic 18. Lizzo – Special - Atlantic The biggest surprise here was the enjoyment I got from Taylor Swift’s album. I bought it off the back of hearing the single ‘Anti-Hero’ which I thought was suitably dark and moody and found the album just as good. The other highlight was replacing my original ‘Porcupine’ from Echo and the Bunnymen with another better looking one. It was really beat up. I’ve now got what I have wanted all my vinyl life and set all my favourite albums in a cabinet in the front room with…wait for it…alphabet dividers with it all in order and each one is in plastic bags! Marvellous! So anyway, my partners=in-crime that also sail the good ship Pennyblack have supplied me with their lists of the records that they have succumbed to. Maarten Schietart starts off with the famous last words…”Still ten days until the last deadline but I am not expecting new vinyl so here we go.” This is fatal in my experience. The amount of times I’ve said “that’s it for this year” and see the wonderful offerings in the Christmas record lists and that is another one for the cabinet! Maarten is actually a serial black waxer – this is his account of the year’s collecting. MAARTEN SCHIETHART In 2022 I hardly bought any imports from the USA as prices and packaging and posting went through the roof. Yet my list of purchases for 2022 reads like a UN Meeting. I have bought music that originates from Kenya, Portugal, Poland, the USA, England, Russia, Greece, Nigeria, Germany, Turkey, Scotland and the Dominican Republic. The vast majority though was pressed in Haarlem, Hanover and London. It is most certainly the smallest number of new vinyl I have bought in a year. Just twenty. 20. It is as if I've gone from playing five day tests to T20 cricket. Call me spoiled. Indeed I am sulking. My vinyl obsession includes buying things other than just the records. Stylus - Audio Technica - VMN10CB Accessories - 250 12 inch Polybag Inner Sleeves, Disco-Antistat cleaning fluid ... and good ol' soap bars;# Plain paper inner sleeves leave an alarming amount of dust particles on records. I'm lucky to have excellent chalk free tap water where I live and I always clean new items first. I wash my hands as if I were a surgeon preparing for an operation and collect the foam and dust with my piano fingers. This way I touch the grooves only sensitively. I pick up the paper dirt and wipe it off on my shirt. The faithful Moscow Arma Records label that carefully packages their vinyl in polybag inner sleeves is this year's notable exception. Even the Cheat Codes LP on BMG, Big Major Greedies, had gathered grams of dust at the pressing plant. At the factories the warm vinyl drops into paper bags and subsequently the dust sets in. The extra care pays off. Records on my defunct label came in polybag inner sleeves at the cost of fifteen pence; today they cost just 20 to 25 p. LPs Danger Mouse & Black Thought - Cheat Codes - BMG Batida - Neon Colonialismo - Crammed Disc Ty Segall - Hello, Hi - Drag City A. Moore - Flying Doesn't Help - Drag City Trupa Trupa - B Flat A - Glitterbeat Chip Kinman - The Great Confrontation - In The Red Alai K - Kila Mira - On The Corner Half Man Half Biscuit - The Voltarol Years - R M Qualtrough 12 inch The Nightingales - New Nonsense - Tiny Global Productions Golden Axe – Milky Way EP - Arma Boj - Abracacadabra / Christos Fourkis - Black Rat - Fajobela Moritz Von Oswald Trio - Dissent Remixes - Modern Recordings 7 inch Lonely Pirate Committee - He Was in The Father - Saddle Creek Ozan Ata Canani & Karaba – Vom Bosphorus bis zum Rhein - Fun In The Church Blanketman - The Signalman - PIAS Arab Strap - Aphelion - Rock Action Slow Pulp – Deleted Scenes - Winspear Data Animal - Bad M.F. - Dedstrange Sencion Minaya Y Los Quisqueyanos - El Jangueador - Waaghals Tocotronic - Jugend ohne Gott gegen Faschismus – Vertigo DAVE: Blimey! I thought I was bad! I’m with him on the polybag front though. I’ve just bought exactly the same. My wife thinks I have ADHD. Next up is our representative from the Steel City of Sheffield, Fiona Hutchings. Another writer that has been with the magazine for a fair few years, she has gone for just one item. FIONA HUTCHINGS Lightning Seeds - See You In The Stars - Limited Edition Midnight Blue Smokey Vinyl I have reviewed all the vinyl I have got this year for Pennyblack. When I reviewed the Lightning Seeds new album, however, I was working from a digital download. This album is one of the ones I then sought out and paid for. Ian Broudie and I discussed this approach to owning music when I interviewed him a couple of months ago. Spotify has its place we agreed but if you love an album you get the vinyl - and a CD to actually play. So, it wasn’t a surprise to me to see vinyl and CD packages as standard on his website. CDs can live in the kitchen or the lounge, get flung in bags and off surfaces by the cats. Vinyl is kept carefully in a box and played with even more care to try and protect it from any damage. As befits a gorgeous album, this is heavyweight and beautifully pressed record. The smokey blue fits the starry theme. The whole thing feels substantial but effortless too. There’s no shame in listening to the CD or the download and then going on to buying the vinyl. A lot of my buys have gone the same way. I’ve heard a track on a record list CD or something similar and then hunted down the vinyl copy. I have a huge collection of CDs as well as my vinyl. CDs were good and still are for everyday use, if you have something to play it on nowadays, but for me if you want the full-on sound experience, as Fiona points out, you have to listen to vinyl. DAVE: Our next contender is for the “I haunt old record shops” award comes directly from Scandinavia. Sweden to be exact. There are a couple of points that Tommy Gunnarsson makes in his account, as there are in some of the others in this article, that I am hoping to explore at some stage in the new year. We finally managed to prize him out of one of the lovely shops they have in Stockholm and he gave us this…. TOMMY GUNNARSSON When it comes to buying records, I get all my kicks in the shops selling used records, and there are quite a few of them here in Stockholm, even though the prices have increased a lot during the past years. Basically, I have never really understood the need to new reissues of records you could easily find in the bargain bins at the record shop of your choice. I mean, is it really necessary to own a 180 gram vinyl release of Thompson Twins’ ‘Here’s to Future Days’? Anyway, this has been a bit of a slow year for me record wise, especially compared to the previous two or three years. Maybe that’s because I have been spending more money on board games, or maybe I just haven’t found enough stuff that I need. Whatever the reason might be, the record dealing gods might throw more desirable records my way in 2023! Until then, these are a few of my 2022 purchases… Talk Talk – ’The Colour of Spring’ (album, 1986) The Talk Talk albums are getting harder and harder to come by (especially their last album, ‘Laughing Stock’), and while I do own the first two, this is one that I have been keeping an eye for while digging in the crates. And then suddenly, just a few weeks ago, while visiting a used record store in Nyköping, I found a very clean-looking copy for 100 SEK (approx. 8 GBP) that I brought home with me that day. Also, this album contains the brilliant single ‘Life’s What You Make It’, which was probably my first favourite song of theirs back in the early 90s. Now I just have to find those last two albums… Aztec Camera – ‘Mattress of Wire’ (single, 1981) Ever since I found Roddy Frame’s debut single on Postcard, ‘Just Like Gold’, dead cheap in a used record shop in Oslo many, many years ago, I have been looking for his second single for the label, and suddenly I found it, in a very unexpected place. I was visiting my girlfriend in a small town in the north of Sweden, when I found out that there is a man in that same town that has a record shop in his own house, accepting customers by pre-arrangement only. So, I arranged a time, and went there not knowing what to expect, really. I came home with a bunch of singles and LPs, this being one of them. And once again – dead cheap. The Four Seasons – ‘The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette’ (album, 1969) I stumbled upon this earlier this year while listening to Frank Sinatra’s forgotten masterpiece ‘Watertown’, wondering what else head songwriter Bob Gaudio had done, except for his work with the Four Seasons. Well, I came back to the latter, not knowing that they had (as so many other acts did in the late 60s) recorded a “psychedelic” concept album, written by aforementioned Gaudio and Jake Holmes (who he also co-wrote ‘Watertown’ with). Of course, I had to listen to it, and thanks to the streaming world of today, I could do that almost instantly, soon realising that it was just as good as I hoped it would be. No more lyrics about big girls not crying – no, this time the Seasons sang about war and social injustices, like race tensions. At the time, people didn’t get it. But since then, the album has grown in popularity, but it’s hardly considered a classic yet. I’m glad I found an original copy of this, complete with the newspaper style cover and insert, at the same store as the Talk Talk album mentioned earlier. It goes without saying that I like that shop. DAVE: See what I was saying earlier. Tommy is a complete record nutcase. There used to be a couple of record shops in Nottingham that when the wife and I went shopping…..sorry I’ll rephrase that…..when the wife went shopping and I tagged along, I would leave her to her own devices and spend the time in one of the shops because you could get a coffee and put a few sounds on their deck and just immerse yourself in vinyl. The shops smelled gorgeous too. A mix of old fusty records and fresh coffee… PETER COLE I think most of the stuff I paid for is now in the eternal purgatory of “sorry for the delay - we're still waiting for this to be pressed.” After a lockdown that probably had more online vinyl purchasing than was healthy for my bank balance, the real joy of this year has been being able to buy records at gigs again. Shout out on that note to m(h)aol for the excellent ‘Gender Studies’ EP (released last year). At venue purchases also avoid the main problem with buying new records at the moment—the absence of any actual records, with delivery dates for most new releases currently sometime in 2025. This—and continued insistence of some bands on only putting out exceedingly expensive special-technicolour-editions for wall mounting rather than listening—has largely put me off buying new. One thing I am looking forward to eventually receiving is the surprising and excellent return of Canadian rapper Buck 65.’King of Drums’ is a glorious album from an artist back in a period of real creative energy after a long hiatus. Worth waiting for, worth waiting longer for the record. Also worth a mention: I bought the Tangerine Dream soundtrack to’Flashpoint’ off eBay one night after rewatching the movie with a bottle of tequila. And I don't regret buying the record or watching the movie or drinking the tequila. DAVE: …And quite rightly too, mate! I must admit I have an intolerance for tequila, or should I say it has an intolerance to me. Again the rising cost of actually buying vinyl is becoming an issue, or is it just a sign of the times at the moment with everything else on the rise? A cause for debate on that one that we might touch on in future ‘Vinyl Stories’. The other issue I find annoying too, so Peter isn’t on his own is the choice of just an expensive coloured vinyl rather than just a plain common or garden black vinyl album. Another cause for debate? Anyway, time to see what our comrade Ben Howarth has been up to this year in hunting down the elusive dynamic disc…… BEN HOWARTH The golden rule with vinyl is that it must be a sure fire winner - no skipping tracks. I also don't want lots of similar albums in my vinyl collection, so each new addition has to do something different to the albums it will sit next to. This year I added PJ Harvey's ‘Let England Shake’ to the collection. A classic album, one of the few Mercury Prize winners nobody complained about and one that gets better the more you play it. It's hypnotic, as timeless grooves sound especially good on vinyl. Less heralded but no less good is T Rex's ‘Electric Warrior’, often overlooked in favour of its glam rock big brother ‘Ziggy Stardust’. But, the songwriting is consistently thrilling, the guitar playing is sensational and the production is uniquely powerful. ‘Greatest Hits’ albums work well on vinyl - not least because the slightly shorter format has reminded bands to be a bit more selective. Supergrass (‘The Strange Ones’) and Ash (‘Teenage Wildlife’) are both ideal for the format, with their teenage punk pop hits rubbing shoulders with equally catchy gems from their later years. The other ‘Greatest Hits’ format is the repressed mid-career companion. Aretha Franklin's sixties work is compiled on a single disc. Many of the 'greatest' hits aren't here, then, but those that are here are flawless. Some bands have such a stark drop between their rise and fall that you ideally need to catch them at their apex. No better example of this than Oasis, so a triple vinyl edition of ‘Knebworth 1996’ represents the very peak of their discography. Playing the songs a lot faster live than on record, it's a thrilling nostalgia trip. I aim not to buy albums on vinyl I already own on CD. Unless it's a repress of Idlewild's ‘The Remote Park’, twenty years old this summer gone and no collection is complete without two copies of it! Hopefully in twenty years' time I will feel nostalgic about some of today's newer acts too. And if I am, I wouldn't bet against it being AA Williams, who has united ‘Mojo’ and ‘Metal Hammer’ around her moody goth-tinged ballads. I now own everything she has released (including a limited edition cassette release I have no way of playing), and each package looks especially good on vinyl. DAVE: Ben has opened up another avenue for exploration here - The ‘Greatest Hits’ compilations. I must admit I don’t have many of these myself as I’ve usually bought everything that band has done before they issue a greatest hits which is a sign of my addiction I suppose and my wife’s long suffering. Bless her! But I fully get the principle. They sometimes have extra tracks on them like alternate takes and such like that you can’t buy as they were never issued. Either way, Ben is quite clearly on the vinyl spectrum and one of the fold in terms of disc addiction. I totally get the nod to Aretha. I have several originals but I can see the need for them all on one disc. On to another lover of the black wax who has, by all accounts, been a little reserved this year. Not in my book, Eoghan. Sometimes it’s the quality not the quantity that counts. As long as you love the records you are buying it is okay with me... EOGHAN LYNG I purchased two vinyls this year. The first concerns Fela Kuti, who invited Cream founder Ginger Baker to contribute to what became the ‘Live!’ album. The album concludes with a gigantic drum solo between Baker and Kuti mainstay Fela Kuti, embodying the proclivities that differs Western drumming from African. And yet, melded together in this way, the colossal sounding drums marks it as one of the most expressive displays of percussion on record. Kuti was suspicious of Paul McCartney, although there's no denying that the second LP, ‘Wings Over America’, is an album that is entirely different to the aforementioned album. It's a pop rock album that sizzles along with the speed and energy of a Seventies rock band performing to the masses. Wings was the perfect vehicle for McCartney, who had spent the majority of the late Sixties begging his Beatle bandmates back onto the live stages. Judging by this album, Wings were the better value for money! DAVE: As well as a passion for all things Northern Soul i started collecting all types of Black music when I finally sold my PA stuff when I finished DJ-ing. I found that because I needed the sounds for the dance floor I wasn’t buying records that I would have actually bought so I sold a lot of those sounds and started collecting the more expensive stuff I had a craving for which involved Ska, Rocksteady, early blues stuff, Obscure Funk and Disco and I developed an interest in some of the African sounds Eoghan touched on here. I went to The Big Chill and witnessed an Ethiopian Sax player playing with a band from Amsterdam we had seen a few times called Getachew Mekuria. The band were called The X and were a sort of funky\ guitar-ridden, heavy affair but were just brilliant and from there I got into artists such as Rokia Traore from Mali. Anyway,I’m waffling again. We had this little response from Malcolm who is a little disillusioned with the whole vinyl thing, and I have also got a few bees in my vinyl bonnet about some of the issues Malcolm has here. MALCOLM CARTER What has kept me from buying is the bloody price. I got ripped off back in the ‘80s by paying a lot. compared to vinyl then, for CDs, especially of classic albums I already owned on vinyl, and now it’s happening again with vinyl (here at least) roughly three times the price of the CD version. Much as I love vinyl, it’s how I started buying records (three 45s for a quid, 6 shillings and eight pence each…helped my maths too!), I won’t be ripped off again. DAVE: This is something that I’m hearing a lot from friends and others about the resurgence of vinyl over the last decade and something, as I mentioned earlier, that I want to explore later on in the year. Malcolm offers up some serious thoughts to where music is going and especially with viny… MARK ROWLAND Visiting Greenwich Market for the first time in a while, I noticed a stall selling records that I hadn’t seen before. Naturally I went over to start perusing their wares. I saw a few interesting things here and there and picked out a few things I might end up buying. Then, I found it: an original UK pressing of The Saints’ classic debut album ‘I’m Stranded’. I instantly put down my other choices and checked it out. It was in really good condition. I bought it on the spot. This year has been one of several such purchases, mostly in Greenwich. Funnily enough. I picked up a pristine copy of Iggy Pop’s ‘The Idiot’, a 1980 pressing, in the record exchange, along with some less than pristine (but still very playable) copies of Echo and the Bunnymen’s first three albums. Certainly The Saints and Iggy Pop are this year’s big prizes, and I intend to keep searching out gems like those in 2023. Elsewhere, I’ve made an effort to buy records by bands who I happened to catch live. I bought the debut album by the slightly terribly named Ducks Ltd, who play fun, breakneck jangly indie pop, after seeing them support Illuminati Hotties. Having finally seen the mighty Zeal and Ardor live, I bought their second album, ‘Stranger Fruit’. If you’ll permit me a little self indulgence, there’s one particular record that was of real significance to me this year – my own. My little bedroom band, The Volunteered, became a real one this year, playing our first gig along with putting our first album, ‘We Fall Apart’ out on Scratchy Records. I doubt it has sold much – putting out an album before you’ve played a show isn’t normally advised as a strategy – but putting my music on vinyl fulfilled a lifelong ambition. Hopefully we’ll make another in 2023/24. Two things here, Echo and the Bunnymen! I’ve just treated myself to the one I’ve never bought! I got a pristine copy of ‘Porcupine’ through the post the other day and it’s not been off the deck since. What an album! And congratulations are in order methinks? We should all hunt down copies of The Volunteered and get it to number one instead of Ladbaby. Not that Ladbaby isn’t a worthwhile cause and they are from my own fair city. The Volunteered is also something that our editor John Clarkson has also been enjoying,,, JOHN CLARKSON Much of my vinyl buying in the last year has centred around the marvellous Last Night From Glasgow label. It is based around The Big Blue, a record shop in Finnieston in Glasgow, and has been doing a lot to promote and highlight the careers of many Scottish musicians of the 1980s with sumptuously packaged vinyl releases of both old and new albums. Albums that I have bought from LNFG and its Past Night From Glasgow reissues imprint have included: Hipsway/Hipsway Already one of my favourite albums, their self-titled 1985 debut album, which has been beautifully remastered by Starless’ Paul McGeechan, sounds better than ever in this new vinyl edition. It comes with hilarious but poignant sleeve notes from writer, actor and ‘Still Game’ star Sanjeev Kohli Love and Money/Dogs in Traffic The acclaimed Glaswegian act’s broodingly beautiful 1991 album again sounds even more pristine on vinyl. The Poems/Young America The last band of original Love and Money bassist Bobby Patterson who died in 2006 in the year this album was originally released. A merging of Scottish talent, it also features Bobby Bluebell from The Bluebells on guitar and guest appearances from Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell and Del Amitri’s Justin Currie on vocals. The Bathers/Summer Lightning The Bathers’ first new release in over twenty years is a stunning collection of reworked versions of songs from their 1987 debut album ‘Unusual Places to Die’ as well as unreleased songs from that same era. Cowboy Mouth/My Life as a Dog The much under-rated 1994 debut album of Cowboy Mouth, the project of Hipsway’s Grahame Skinner and one of Scotland’s busiest musicians, Douglas MacIntyre. It slots into the middle ground between the Velvet Underground’s eponymous third album and Scott Walker. Port Sulphur/Speed of Life The latest project of Douglas MacIntyre, who has been a member of The Nectarine No. 9. The Sexual Objects and The Secret Goldfish as well as worked with Love and Money. It is a hypnotic set of Krautrock-style instrumentals, which was rapidly recorded in a day and remarkably improvised upon from the first idea which Macintyre had for each track. Other vinyl highlights for me this year have included: Valley of Weights/Valley of Weights - I wrote a lot in the early years of Pennyblackmusic about Boston producer Pete Weiss’s groups Pete Weiss and The Rock Band and The Weisstronauts and New York rocker Mike Griffin’s band The Wobblies. Now the pair who have known each other since student days are working together as Valley of Weights and their wildly experimental double vinyl only album, which includes Hawkwind-inspired instrumentals, Krautrock numbers and post-punk anthems, is my favourite of the last year. The black watch/Brilliant Failures Los Angeles alternative rock band have been my big discovery of 2022. They have recorded over twenty albums over the years, and this fine 2020 album, which I bought on vinyl, combines literary lyrics with sweeping, jangly guitars. The Volunteered/We Fall Apart The Volunteered front man and songwriter Mark Rowland also writes for Pennyblackmusic, and we have been friends for over twenty years. He has always been able to get around me, and The Volunteered were on fire when they played our recent London Bands’ Night after he talked me into putting them on the bill. ‘We Fall Apart’, which has been released on the always excellent Scratchy Records as a vinyl-only album, is also a belter, stridently mixing together alternative folk numbers, Americana-influenced pieces and distortion-friendly tunes. Interlopers/Interlopers The new band of Stephen Lindsay, the former frontman with the under-rated Glaswegian group The Big Dish, who released three albums of sublime pop in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, The sleeve to their contemplative and melancholic debut album, which has a repeated photo of a blindfolded, suited man being Jackson Pollock-ed with red paint, is as eye-catching as it is as enigmatic, and is my favourite cover of the last year DAVE: So as they say “There we have it”. It’s been a gargantuan effort this year and I would like to thank every one that has contributed. I am hoping with the input of some of my vinyl-hoarding partners in crime to do a few ‘Vinyl Stories’ over the next 12 months varying in the subjects and pressing issues that have been raised in this article Happy New Year from me and all at Pennyblackmusic. Keep em spinnin

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